Review by Sonny for Hour of Penance - Devotion (2024)

My only previous dalliance with Italy's Hour of Penance was their previous album, 2019's Misotheism, an album about which I can remember very little, but which I see I scored as a 3/5, so evidently I wasn't greatly impressed at the time. However I have come a long way in my appreciation of death metal in the intervening five years and I went into Devotion with a clean slate. My initial impression is that the technical death metal tag is a little bit misleading as it doesn't exhibit too much of the chop-and-change, staccato style I assosciate with a lot of tech-death. Although I understand that style is incredibly well thought-of, it actually does very little for me (except in rare cases) so Devotion's technically very sound, but fairly conventionally-structured style of death metal is much more palatable to me.

The production is excellent and the sound is crunchy and thick, investing the riffs with a huge amount of heft that is perfectly suited to their brutality. Giacomo Torti's skinswork deserves praise, being precise, powerful and tireless in it's thunderous supporting role, driving the riffs along at pace and displaying mastery of the kit without resorting to excessive showiness. This lack of showiness seems to be the band's whole ethos, illustrated admirably by the tightly-played and effective guitar solos which display impressive technical skill without resorting to any kind of showboating and imbue the tracks with a keen cutting edge. There is very little let-up in the album's pacing, with most of the ten tracks fair hurtling along, yet always in a controlled manner with the band never letting their need for speed get the better of them. Paolo Pieri's bellowing roars are the focal point for the band's rage, sounding supremely aggressive and imtimidating for the entire runtime, he sounds like a man barely able to contain his fury at the world.

The thing is, though, impressive though the individual tracks and the musicianship is, they do tend to blur into one a little bit, with only the occasional hymnal motif providing anything like a variation to the blistering brutality. I found plenty to enjoy here, but if I were being hyper-critical, I would say that, as a whole and under repeated listens, the album starts to sound a bit sterile and doesn't really impart too much atmosphere or emotion other than an unchanging inherent violence. I know, it's f---ing death metal, what do you want, right? Well I think I prefer it a bit sloppier but more engaging to be honest.