Hosts of Lord are an interesting curiosity, a Christian Black metal band hailing from the USA but rather than taking standard Noregian second wave and adding Christian lyrics, sole member Μαθθίας takes influence from the short lived and for the most part left alone French scene. While current the French Black metal scene has discarded its greats in favour of more commercial strands or Deathspell Omega like dissonance, Hosts of Lord attempt to channel the self-destructive and truly misanthropic tendencies of their influences into eschatological predictions of the future.
Riffs are exclusively within the harmonic minor style that defined Mütiilation but informed by other styles of Extreme metal. The jangly strummed chords of many “Les Légions Noires” bands has been replaced with held chords by properly tuned guitars. The slow, picked melodies are taken almost verbatim from the LLN scene and are either used on top of tremolo picked melodies or as idiosyncratic tools. “Scourged Venemous Creatures” slowly builds up with some chords to the short picked arpeggios before exploding on a similar pattern that is tremolo picked. “Tormenting Anguish of Distant Ancestors” indulges in those long passages of lazy melodies that was emblematic of many of those bands but without any of the development and cling on to them until transitioning to another idea.
Most of the songs here feature no more than three or four riffs that are very well arranged as each riff is adequately utilized multiple times in varying contexts. On “A Haze of Prophetic Ecstasy” which is the best song of the album it uses the predefined style as a base to explore other types of melodies in its climax and conclusion. Ultimately this is an enjoyable record that showcases some of the best from “Les légions Noires” and flirts with expanding on those ideas but it lacks depravity and hopelessness due to the lack of mastery in regards to the slower parts. A combination with other strains of Black metal while exploring the idea of prophets would create some interesting results as Christianity can’t substitute welfare, a case of “Amsterdam Maximator” and injecting heroin in squats.