Jewelcase CD
– 8 page Booklet on 170gsm Art Paper
– Limited to 300 copies
Oh wow, this album sounds like Burzum, but with symphonics. Hopefully there isn't anything NS or racist about these guys...
Deogen is a relatively new black metal band from the United States. They play a style of black metal that is yet unheard of, and that is "symphonic raw black metal," which is pretty surprising because both genres have been around for a long time, but no one thought that they should experiment with both together until Deogen released this full length.
The album begins with an ambient symphonic intro with some spoken word for a few minutes before the second track comes in blasting black metal. It quickly becomes clear that this album is not your typical Emperor/Dimmu Borgir album. The symphonics and keyboards are never too overbearing to the point of overpowering the regular black metal instruments like the guitars, providing a backdrop while the guitars/bass/vocals/drums sit front and centre of the auditory experience. The keyboards themselves have a more gothic sound to them, with church organs and choir which makes them simultaneously beautiful and haunting at the same time, and reminds me a lot of Obtained Enslavement and Limbonic Art where they sounded dense and grounded instead of being grandiose and maximalist. With the guitars having a noisy, buzzsaw tone, the bass and occasionally pianos are now the leading melodies of the album. The bass has a low and unique hum to it which makes it stand out to most black metal basslines and thus more audible. Although there are still some really good riffs that come from the wall of noise created by the guitars, even if they are pretty repetitive. The drums are still your typical black metal drumming, it is either droning blast beats or slowed-down D-beats.
If there is one thing I have to complain about, it would be the short run time, and two of the six songs are ambient in nature. They would be the first and last songs, which form the intro and outro. The middle four songs are actual symphonic black metal, and they only take up 21 minutes and 40 seconds, which is too woefully short for me to enjoy. Yeah, I'm a sucker for albums over an hour long.
This album is a breath of fresh air in the symphonic black metal genre. Despite its short length, I hope they create a followup that is longer and better than this album. We can only wait...
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=3Q10YQVq3YU
