Sic Semper Tyrannis / Dhärnürgh ‎"Split CD"

Another slab of pretty conventional yet highly entertaining black metal comes in form of the split between Sic Semper Tyrannis and Dhärnügh. While the former include members form a bunch of other interesting bands there is no page or other information available when it comes to Dhänürgh. As it is anyway the music which should do the talking let’s go on and get into it. Overall this is a really neat package, presenting 9 songs and nearly 47 minutes of playing time. There is an instrumental and a Pink Floyd (!) cover among those, so this leaves us with 7 “real” tracks.
Sic Semper Tyrannis are starting off the show. After the mentioned instrumental piece there is no holding back in the first official song “In Singularity”. On the surface there is nothing really new or groundbreaking to be found on this album. Each song has trademark chords that are hitting hard and which are presented with just enough variation to keep things fresh enough over the course of the record. While old-school black metal is always fun, it can sometimes be a little trite, since the throwback thing is done so much. That being said Sic Semper Tyrannis always pack an awesome punch that leaves nothing to be desired. Their style is simple but effective, straight to the point but with enough variation, a few memorable melodic harmonies and some clever placed solos and tempo changes to keep the flow over the whole playing time.
Dhärnürgh have a bit more of an unorthodox attitude to their music. Their style is a bit rawer, with the tempo often slowed down and the music crawling out of the speaker with the goal to terrify the listener. The tempo is upped a bit every once in a while, with some stunning and disturbing lead harmonies being introduced in the background, and a thick atmosphere starts building up. This dense atmosphere will not diminish before the album fades out after nearly an hour of playing time. There is a full body of work, moving up and down, back and forth across the annuals of emotive black and stoic doom metal. The use of some spooky effect adds another layer to the music, making their side of the split especially interesting for fans of the more obscure stuff.
The different feeling created by these two bands is further underlined by the production choices, with Sic Semper Tyrannis going for a dynamic, cleaner and quite straightforward sound, while Dhärnürgh have put a lot of distortion effects on top of their music, lending it a very distant character. In the end both bands act as a side of one coin, giving curios black metal fans a lot to discover over the 47 minutes running time and offering a taste of two promising bands.

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