Never have I been the best friend of anything that (in Metal) carries the word “progressive” as a prefix or suffix. I like Progressive Rock, but not anything that (in Metal) incorporates progressive elements. In fact, I am not very fond of anything that (in Metal) sounds too technical or “virtuoso”. I must be part of that group of square-minded people who got the idea that Metal should sound like that, like Metal. And of course, one would have to include in this “reflection” I make about “sounding like Metal” something basic: Heavy Metal is inherently virtuoso already, right? But I know you understand what I mean. Things that are too technical or virtuoso (I insist) seem to me more appropriate for Jazz, Classical music and, yes, Heavy Metal, where a higher virtuosity makes sense to me without falling into that boring “mathematical Metal”. But, if we are going to talk about a genre like Death Metal, I am one of those who prefer the more “conservative” Death Metal, if you will. Therefore, when I read the description of ORDH and found that it was related to the band BARISHI (Progressive band) from where several of the members of ORDH come, my alarms went off immediately. However, I did my homework and listened to BARISHI a little bit, to try to understand better and to have more context. And, indeed, BARISHI is too progressive for my tastes. So, when I jumped to ORDH, I was already forewarned and with three stones in my hand, because I assumed that ORDH would be a sort of extension of BARISHI. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And how good to have been. First of all, ORDH is a very Death Metal band. With a dark voice, just how I like it. Very Death Metal, just how I like it. With a lot of reverb, just how I like it. It has always seemed to me that Death Metal is by definition a type of music where the voice has to be like that, like Jonathan Hébert’s here in ORDH. And yes, as you listen to it, ORDH has many “progressive” elements, many more than I imagined, but it doesn’t seem to me that they overshadow the density and the cavernous sound of the album. “Blind In Abyssal Realms”, forged in the Pulverised Records boilers, is an album full of many passages. Of dark alleys. Mysterious. Oblique. Juxtaposed. But all of them, yes, always pointing to the same thing: to an album full of darkness, myth and mysticism. It is interesting to hear them come and go around those sonorities so complex, beautiful, deep. Full of evocations of mythology. That aspect fascinated me. And although there is a lot of “progressive” here, I must be fair: this “Blind In Abyssal Realms” is a mas-ter-piece. I want to highlight two songs: ‘Moon Of Urd’. Perhaps the one I liked the most on the album. It is an exquisite song that maintains the atmosphere on that mythical and somber moon and of a fairly high technical richness (like the whole album), but here it seems to me to be the epicenter. ‘Phlegraean Fields’, a song that, although it is (paradoxically) one of the most progressive on the album, very well exposes the character and identity of the band and the entire album. It is too complex and is full of many transitions that managed to catch me. In general, this is a record that projects a great band that came to sound like itself. More information here: www.facebook.com/ordhmetal, www.facebook.com/pulverisedrecords