ALBUM REVIEW: Behemoth, "Messe Noire"

 By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length (Live)

Date Released: 13/04/2018

Label: Nuclear Blast

The group's performances are frenzied, the production is sterling and with a crystal clear sound thoughout, this makes “Messe Noire” a real pleasure to experience

“Messe Noise”CD//DD//2LP track listing:

1. Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel (6:33)

2. Furor Divinus (3:21)

3. Messe Noire (4:41)

4. Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer (6:20)

5. Amen (3:54)

6. The Satanist (6:35)

7. Ben Sahar (5:32)

8. In The Absence Ov Light (4:54)

9. O Father O Satan O Sun! (8:45)

The Review:

Now playing dates as part of Slayer's farewell tour, Poland's Behemoth could well be argued to be the heir apparent to the thrash kings' crown. While clearly the music is different, Behemoth's infernal songsmithing makes it a better fit than most. Paired with a long, ignoble history and you have a strong case to be made.

Although Behemoth has many touchstone albums to its credit, its tenth release, 2014's “The Satanist”, is easily near the top of its discography. It is the release from whence classics like "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" and "O Father, O Satan, O Sun" came. Moreover it was regarded by critics as a return to form after potentially uneven works just before. Behemoth'snew album, “Messe Noire”, is, in fact, a live concert recording of “The Satanist” in full.

If you have never caught Behemoth live, do yourself a favor and watch some of the concerts – especially those in its native land – on YouTube. The group's frenzied performances are only matched by their enthusiastic audiences. “Messe Noire” captures Behemoth exceptionally well, even without the visuals.

From "Gabriel," the album's open, into the buzzsaw guitars of "Furor Divinus" and the title track, it is evident Behemothis all in on the live aspect. The additional singers, symphonic elements and builds presented on “The Satanist”are replicated live and do not lose much luster on the audio version ("Messe Noire" has also been released on video format).

Since 1995's "Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic)," Behemoth has cultivated a rabid fan base, one enthralled by its colorful imagery and history as well as its sound. Indeed, as the band's focal point, Adam "Nergal" Darski has a connection to these supporters that is uncommon even within metal. From his health difficulties – including a brief hiatus due to leukemia – and outspoken advocacy of Satanism, Nergal's intensely personal story is hewn from the cloth from which all the great rock music histories are cut. Where some bands prefer complete anonymity, Behemoth and Nergal's openness has proven the old maxim: people want something with which they can identify. You feel identification through "Messe Noire." The live version of "Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer" has such weight, as you hear the crowd toward its close on into "Amen."

The production on "Messe Noire"is sterling throughout. The sound quality is crystal clear and the audience noise never overwhelms the stage show. This makes songs like "The Satanist" and "O Father" a real pleasure to experience.  Chances are, Behemoth fans have already picked up this April release. However, if you're a metal devotee who has dug Behemothfor any length of time, you'll be well served to pick up "Messe Noire" in its audio or video formats.

“Messe Noise” is available here

Band info: facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: God Dethroned - ‘The World Ablaze’

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 5/5/2017

Label: Metal Blade

If you’re a longtime fan like me, this album is everything you’d want and then some. ‘The World Ablaze’ is all of the best elements of the God Dethroned’s entire discography amalgamated into a single album.

‘The World Ablaze’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. A Call to Arms

2. Annihilation Crusade

3. The World Ablaze

4. On the Wrong Side of the Wire

5. Close to Victory

6. Konigsberg

7. Escape Across the Ice (The White Army)

8. Breathing Through Blood

9. Messina Ridge

10. The 11th Hour

The Review:

Please bear with me as I do this. I know reviews should never center around the person writing them, and as such, this won’t be a proper review. I will definitely get to the music, but with the album having already been out for more than a month now, and given other circumstances I’ll get into shortly; I want to explain why this album has the deep resonance with me that it does.

For metal fans over a certain age, getting turned on to a band via compilations was a pretty common occurrence. In this case, the compilation in question ‘Metal Blade’s ‘Deathmeister’ compilation, released in 1998. This comp was my first exposure to bands like Dark Funeral, Defleshed, Lord Belialand more, and all are bands I still listen to regularly.

The God Dethroned song featured on that comp was the title track from 1997’s classic ‘The Grand Grimoire’. It was absolutely ferocious. Combining Floridian death metal’s love for blazing, Slayer-loving tremolo with European death metal’s remarkable knack for melody, God Dethroned had a depth and range that I hadn’t really heard from a death metal band at that point. Before too long, the cassette I’d used to dub the comp for my Walkman was worn and warped from overuse, and God Dethroned was a big part of why that happened.

I’m grateful to have seen God Dethroned liveon the ‘Death Metal Massacre 2000’tour with Cannibal Corpse. Their set included songs from ‘The Grand Grimoire’ as well as their then new album ‘Bloody Blasphemy’. But it’s what happened prior to this show that leads me to essentially make this review about my experience and history with the band.

At the time of the show, I hadn’t yet turned 18 and didn’t have a car. My dad took me to the show and, as he often did, made sure to threaten my utter embarrassment at every turn by sticking around after dropping me off. He liked some metal, but only at a very surface, mainstream level. While I was waiting in line, he went to walk around and have a smoke. When he returned he explained that he’d happened to have a very quick chat with someone from one of the bands. That person turned out to be Henri from God Dethroned.

I can’t remember exactly what he said or what they talked about, other than him asking about what the name meant, and I remember feeling the earth crumbling beneath me and dread pounding through every vein in my body. But, to my surprise, my dad seemed to be happy with how the conversation went and even opted to stick around and listen to what he could from outside once the show started. From that point forward, God Dethronedwas sort of his reference point for anything else I listened to:

“Oh, these guys aren’t as fast as God Dethroned.”

“This singer doesn’t have a powerful scream like the guy in God Dethroned.”

Every once in a while, even more than 15 years later, he’d ask about the band and what they were up to. He’d always bring them up as a way to mention him getting to talk to Henri. He was never one to pass up an opportunity to talk about something that made him sound cool, even if he’d talked about it before. As luck would have it, Dad had asked about God Dethroned in April, and I told him about the upcoming album, ‘The World Ablaze’, which was all he needed to launch into a conversation we’ve had dozens of times over the last 17 years.

At the end of May, my dad died of a heart attack brought on by long term health problems at the age of 64. At first, I was hesitant to listen to this album, for obvious reasons. But as time passed my apprehension gave way to something like warm nostalgia. As I went back and listened to the band’s earlier albums, I smiled to myself. I imagined the site of my painfully uncool dad talking to Henri, one of the great death metal vocalists of all time. What an absurd couple of minutes that must have been.

I know nothing about the afterlife, and I doubt there’s one at all. But if there is, I’ll be glad to tell him how good this album was, just to give him a reason to tell that old story again.

When I finally listened to ‘The World Ablaze’ for the first time since my dad’s death, that warm feeling washed over me, just as it had with the early albums. While I’ve enjoyed everything the band have put out—to varying degrees—the albums released after ‘Into The Lungs Of Hell’ felt like they were missing something. A minor “something”, but something nonetheless. With this album, they’ve gained all of it back in a big fucking way.

God Dethroned is at their best when they keep a balance between riveting viciousness and gut-wrenching melody, and this album hits both of these touchstones as well as one could hope. ‘The World Ablaze’ is an inspired work from a band at a new creative peak. All of the raw emotional energy of ‘The Grand Grimoire’ and ‘Bloody Blasphemy’ are present and strong. The infernal catchiness of ‘Ravenous’ and the added heft and sonic power of the band’s mid 2000s material is here as well, and it’s been improved after the band’s long break between albums.

If you’re a longtime fan like me, this album is everything you’d want and then some. ‘The World Ablaze’ is all of the best elements of the God Dethroned’sentire discography amalgamated into a single album. There’s a personal connection I have to this album that probably won’t exist for other people, but this is an album that stands proudly on its own musical merits.

“The World Ablaze’ is available digitally hereand a CD/LP copy here.

Band info: Facebook|| bandcamp

FFO: Necrophobic, Behemoth, Hail of Bullets, Unleashed

REVIEW: Schammasch - “The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite” (EP)

By: Conor O’Dea

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 09/06/2017

Label: Prosthetic Records

Schammasch have created something remarkable with this most recent artistic expression, sophisticated, complex and yet somehow, eminently accessible.  Get lost. It is worth your time to find a way out.

“The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). “Prologue”
2). “The Weighty Burden Of An Eternal Secret”
3). “Along The Road That Leads To Bedlam”
4). “These Tresses Are Sacred”
5). “May His Illusion Last Until Dawn’s Awakening”
6). “Chimerical Hope”
7). “Do Not Open Your Eyes”

The Review:

"May it please heaven that the reader, emboldened and having for the time being become as fierce as what he is reading, should, without being led astray, find his rugged and treacherous way across the desolate swamps of these sombre and poison-filled pages; for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and a tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar. It is not right that everyone should savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands." Comte de Lautréamont, “Les Chants de Maldoror”

There can be only deep silence after the invocation of the triune. It is time to pause. An initiate, waiting, in the shadows, barely breathes, as the adept brings one deeply important ritual to a close. You know where you were left, but are unclear where the way could possibly open again. Ab initio, ab vacuo, a ritual begins, revitalized, innovative, and redacted: but only in the paths it wanders, not in the powers it invokes. Thunder, perfect mind.

Schammasch have created something remarkable with this most recent artistic expression, something that draws deeply and effectively on both the painterly and writerly roots of its inspiration. It is sophisticated, complex and yet it, somehow, it is eminently accessible. It is a sort of roman-de-clef, but it does not seek to intimidate, browbeat or baffle the listener with fabricated dissonance or obfuscatory elitism. It invites the listener to enter its mysteries and get profoundly lost within them. Schammaschhere effectively create auditory and lyrical topographies that bend the common conventions of compositional and narrative structure in surreal ways. I am using surreal here in the sense of Magritte and Dali, both of whom illustrated Lautreamont's “The Lay of Maldoror”; it is a bending of reality, a reconfiguration of the real through symbolic interpolation. The six songs following the prologue mirror the Canto division of Lautreamont'spoetic novel, a glimpse into the fin-de-siecle madness that performed this superlative Dada-like twist on both the” Divine Comedy” and “Paradise Lost”.

“May His Illusion Last until Dawn's Awakening” and “Chimerical Hope”are perhaps the most immediately 'moving' of these tracks, but as with all things Schammasch, this album should be taken as a whole: in contemplation, in mindful inebriety. Get lost. It is worth your time to find a way out.

"I am the silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name"The Thunder, Perfect Mind

“The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite” is available here

FFO: Behemoth, Secrets of the Moon, Deathspell Omega, Triptykon

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Vader - "The Empire"

By: Richard Maw

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 04/11/2016

Label: Nuclear Blast

Death metal with a hefty dose of thrash sums up what Vader were and are about. This album has moments of steady rolling, thrash pacing and blast beats. Quite simply, this is an excellent Vader album.

“The Empire” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Angels of Steel (2:16)

2. Tempest (2:41)

3. Prayer to the God of War (2:47)

4. Iron Reign (4:37)

5. No Gravity (4:08)

6. Genocidius (2:59)

7. The Army-Geddon (4:10)

8. Feel My Pain (3:24)

9. Parabellum (2:28)

10. Send Me Back to Hell (3:32)

The Review:

Polish veterans Vaderfollow up the excellent “Tibi Et Igni”with this; “The Empire”. Death metal with a hefty dose of thrash sums up what Vader were and are about. This album has moments of steady rolling, thrash pacing and blast beats. Quite simply, this is an excellent Vaderalbum. We all have our favourites, “De Profundis” or “Black to the Blind”... even the aforementioned last record they put out (mine, as it goes!). Rest assured, this album is up there with their best work.

The production is crystal clear and very precise. The drums in particular are superb; punchy and with a fine balance of high and low end. The vocal performance of Piotr throughout is excellent but to be fair, all band members are on top form here.

From the off, you know what you are getting. Stand outs? Well, opener “Angels of Steel” and “Iron Reign” really stand out for me, but you cannot argue with any of the ten tracks offered up to the gods of war here. I can see all of the tracks standing up well in the live arena (I saw them earlier this year with Overkill- they slayed). The songs are reassuringly concise- no fifteen minute epics here; you get short sharp shocks aplenty. Riffs, solos, leads... chugging passages. This is proper metal.

The album is strong from front to back with “Send Me Back to Hell” being every bit as immediate as the opener. Vaderhave created a very strong record here. If you like Vader, you will like this album. If you haven't heard them and are considering doing so, starting with this album and working backwards would be a fine move. If the later person is you, I envy you; I wish I was discovering this band again.

Vader have been in the game since the early eighties, they know how to deliver high quality metal and they do so by the (tank) shell full here. A tour de force of a modern death/thrash album. Buy it and then bang your head!

“The Empire” is available now

Band info: facebook

FFO: Morbid Angel, Slayer, Decapitated, Behemoth