In preparation for its upcoming tour, A Plea for Purging has released its first album.

Listeners beware: playing this album is like detonating a stick of dynamite in your CD player. From the moment you hit play, you’re hit with an avalanche of music and screams. And based on the opening line“There is blood on our hands tonight” – you can rest assured that this is one intense album.

That’s probably the best one-word description for this album: intense.

Each of the five songs is jam-packed with soaring guitars and machine gun drums. The vocals come at you like battle cries, and a lyric sheet is certainly required to realize what is being shouted at you.

If you’re like me and insist on reading the lyrics as you listen to an album, you’ll realize this album deals with some heavy spiritual issues.

“Turn it Down or You’ll Lose Your Salvation” deals with idol worship. “I have invented angels of my own/they are false and untrue,” this song says.

In “Omar Gooding is a Fine Gentleman” Plea explores the depravity of man – “This is imperfection at its finest.” In “Slaying of the Serpentine Dragon” is the issue of how God loves mankind despite our resistance?“I chose to wave black flags/but you love me/ I know you love me.”

Not that you need to understand the lyrics on this CD to enjoy it. The music, fast and loud, is what will certainly grab your attention. And it’s Aaron Eckerman’s double bass skills, far more than the lyrics, that cause me to play the first minute of “Turn it Down or You’ll Lose Your Salvation” over and over again. That and the guitars, the insanely fast guitars.

In fear of showing my ignorance of metal, I have a question that I cannot hold in. Is it a requirement for the titles of metal songs to have nothing to do with the lyrics of said song? Perhaps I’m simply used to listening to music where the song title comes up in the chorus, and metal often does not confine itself to the verse/chorus/verse

/chorus/bridge/chorus format. But now as I sit here in my underwear, typing on my couch I am wondering who Omar Gooding is and why he is such a fine gentleman (see track 2).

Confusing song titles aside, this album contains some of the hardest rocking music you’ll find here in Murfreesboro. This is an album that is guaranteed to get the kids hardcore dancing.