I just hope that people who tend to enjoy AGATHODAIMON’s debut will not necessarily ignore the band these days because of the fact that their second full length “Higher Art Of Rebellion” didn’t exactly fulfill the high expectations set by its predecessor. If so, all those ignorant fools will definitely miss out on the very convincing new offering by these lads. “Chapter III” has all the strong trademarks of 1998’s “Blacken The Angel” again and is destined to (re-)establish AGATHODAIMON within the scene pretty easily. Of course die hard underground maniacs, who exclusively connect the term Black Metal with raw, uncompromising bands like DARKTHRONE and the likes, obviously won’t get a kick out of this, as it’s still way to polished sounding. But everyone else who enjoys a good production, very matured songwriting, with lots of strong melody lines and a big musical variety, should add AGATHODAIMON to the list of bands to purchase on the next CD shopping day. The combination of clean and grim vocals in connection with furious Black Metal outbursts and powerful Thrash was furthermore mixed with the melancholy and dark atmosphere of Gothic music… And all that ended up in a very exciting, approx. 43 minutes roller coaster ride you can hardly escape. As a reference a band like DIMMU BORGIR easily comes to mind, but only because of a similar musical direction and professionalism, and certainly not because AGATHODAIMON try to copy the Norwegian shooting stars in any way. This is a far too dedicated record with the possibility to set new standards in a rather stagnating genre, so don’t judge these Germans by their recently published, rather stupid promotional pictures and don’t hesitate to give them a(nother) listen. I bet you will be positively surprised about the quality delivered here. All further info: www.agathodaimon.de.