Published: January 12, 2025

When Hypnotic Dirge sent me a rather large pile of CD’s to review, I didn’t know the vast number of quality albums they have released. After this album I only have three CD’s left from them to review, and all of them have been great. Such is the case with “A Soul Purged”, the one and only output thus far from Houston, Texas-based Urbain. Looking at the cover, I thought for sure this was going to be an Industrial album. Nope! I’m wrong, almost all of the time. Lol.

While the band claims they are “Urban Black Metal”, at its core, “A Soul Purged” is Black Metal. Super-fast, well played and catchy as hell, the band manages to create a sound within the realm of Black Metal that is so unique that no other band immediately pops into my head while listening to this. The music breaks down at times into more of a Post-Black Metal, kind of acoustic sound and the transition between the three styles are executed flawlessly. There are sound effects from urban environments like the sound of traffic. The keyboards are done well and not only accompany the other instruments musically, but they also become almost experimental at times, and you’ll hear some crazy sound effects. I love the guitars on the album. Both the Metal and acoustic guitars simply rule, and the album is full of great melodies, impressive solos and leads.

The vocals are a highlight of “A Soul Purges”. Most of the album the vocal style is a total “true” Black Metal style which is great, but there are moments when the band sings in a clean “group/choir” style that is hauntingly beautiful. The vocalist has a great low end Death growl, but it’s not used often. The lyrics are interesting, and they weave tales of death, suffering and life and death in a big city.

The production is far above average, and I have no issues with this at all. The album sounds great.

The cover is what threw me for a loop, making me think it was going to be an industrial album. It looks like it! It is a dark, eerie photo of a large city… maybe Houston, since the band is from there. The sky in the photo is dark, the city is dark and looks like a wealthy part of the business district and the foreground of the photo looks like a part of the city where urban decay has taken its toll. Inside of the digipak you will find all of the lyrics, a fancy photo of the band looking all dapper in nice clothing and album and band information. The album says Rick Custer took the band photo, but it gives no credit for the cover photo. Maybe Rick took that too.

Well, this was a pleasant surprise and “A Soul Purged” reminded me to not judge a book by its cover. This was an unbelievable experience I won’t soon forget, and I will come back to this album often when I need to hear something both sinister sounding and beautiful. I can’t recommend this enough if you are into Black Metal at all. If you want it, you better hurry as the physical version is limited to 300 copies.