Last year I realized this gem of a record had finally been properly released on CD, instead of the very limited CD-R like in 2008. I jumped at the opportunity and got myself a copy. The CD is made in Colombia, and sports beautiful artwork and a thick, lavishly laid-out booklet, printed in black, white, and something that imitates embossed gold.
The first thing to get my attention was the very slight middle-eastern influence on the guitar work. The overall atmosphere is of permanent ceremonial satanic invocation -for these people are true Satanists- punctuated with grating, ultra-trebly riffing and tremolo picking, piercing shouted vocals, audible bass work, which is a rare -and welcome- occurrence on this music style, and drumming heavy on the toms to emphasize the quasi-tribal/ritualistic/ceremonial aspects of the music, with sparse use of the double kick drums (as opposed to the usual, annoying abuse). Vocals are not sung, but recited in a scary manner, and there are even several spoken-word passages on some songs.
The CD is a generous 65' offering concept album dealing with mainly Satanism and deity Sasstia in particular. Despite the lenghty playing time, and contrary to what I had feared, there is little repetition, and when there is such a thing, it is so good I barely noticed, let alone got bored with it. Now the absolute highlight , the strongest song on the album in my opinion is the mesmerizing ¨Teofobia¨ , which features one of the most tasteful and original lead-guitar panning these seasoned pair of ears have had the pleasure of listening to, making it the explosive, absolute climax of this song collection, and I rarely have favorites upon first listenings. This album has a quality I find invaluable : it is original, and not just another norse clone. It is incredibly dark black metal, not icy but fiery and passionate. In-between songs there are superb instrumental keyboard-only interludes, lasting usually just a couple of minutes each, which provide a respite from the fierce assault on the senses every song inflicts, and are gloomy, atmospheric, and -Satan forbid- almost new age in style. Sounds as if that would not work ? Wrong ! The weird thing is I could not detect any keyboards during the actual songs, exception made of a long outro for one of them.
My main gripe is the production; it is flat, dry, wire-thin and raw, devoid of dynamics and bottom and upper end, which makes the rhythm section and the cymbals very hard to hear unless a good deal of signal processing is applied, like cranking up the bass control on your amplifier all the way and reinforcing the extremes of the spectrum with an equalizer. Only then the album leaps to life, and for your throat for that matter. The nature of these songs strike more as the kind that would benefit from a more polished production, say like that found on an MGLA album. I really hope the band take a more different recording/mixing approach for their next release. Of course it is only my humble opinion, for I do enjoy a raw production when it suits the music; I am not one to pass up on a good record due to a raw mix, mind you. On the very contrary actually.
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
