Band:	Crowned By Fire
Album:	Prone To Destroy
Style:	Heavy metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	July 2011

01. I Spit On Your Curse
02. Sex With A Ghost
03. Witch In The Window
04. Get Under The Dirt
05. Black Moon Shine
06. Shake The Bag
07. I Am The Crime
08. Tombs Ov Oblivion
09. As Above, So Below
10. Vulture With A Rifle
11. Prone To Destroy

Amalgamation does not mean groundbreaking. Sometimes, combining two juxtaposed genres does actually sound really forward thinking, but that is when the band manages to throw their own spice in. Crowned By Fire is a group that plays like an over-skilled tribute band. It's impossible to state that they're bad by any stretch, because they clearly have a solid grasp on their sound, too bad the sound is carbon-copied from 4 other bands.

Testament, Down, Black Label Society, Cathedral. That's the blueprint for Prone To Destroy. The exact blueprint. Actually, come to think of it, using the word "amalgamation" at the beginning of this review was a bit misleading. "Amalgamation" gives the impression that this band has somehow blended these styles together. Well, they haven't. One song sounds like Cathedral, the next like Black Label Society. At their most aggressive they tend to sound like Testament. The only real mixing to be heard is how the production quality of the whole thing sounds fitting for some old Down songs. Hell, all those bands do have some pretty awesome aspects about them, if Crowned By Fire actually did blend them together into a sound of their own, it would have been a beautiful thing.

That being said, it's not absolute shit. If you like those previously listed bands, and you can stomach a little bit lot of blatant derivation, you might actually dig this. These guys do have some good songs, played extremely well, it just sounds like they were already written years ago by other bands. Toss this one onto the "meh" pile.