Review: Tempel – On The Steps Of The Temple

I’m not usually a fan of instrumental metal and most post-metal gives me rage-induced symptoms resembling a mix of dengue and dysentery. On The Steps Of The Temple has more heaviness to it than its brothers in the genre and on the first track, “Mountain,” I caught my head doing something resembling banging along to the death-metally riffs and double bass grooves on the drums. The individual songs serve as pieces for the album as a whole, which exhibits recurring musical themes. “Rising From The Abyss” slowly builds itself up into to a tremendous finale and I’m reminded of Panopticon by Isis. “Final Years” is a little more on the soft side, but “Avaritia” returns to their signature doomy, vast sound while the title track has a blast beat to even out the sludgy parts. Tempel managed to take a stale genre, strain out some of the boring and craft a neat album. It’s kind of like pre-sucking-shit-era Opeth without the vocals. –Alex Coulombe