A few weeks ago, Black Crucifixion’s music was still an unexplored territory for me, from the earliest and ugliest black metal recordings to Hope of Retaliation, their newest offering after a long silence. While The Fallen One of Flames / Satanic Zeitgeist taught me a lesson on primitive, early Finnish black metal, the cover art that adorns Hope of Retaliation does confuse. Is this some poppy industrial metal, or what exactly?
Not at all, though we’re clearly dealing with a record that doesn’t exactly try to avoid mainstream popularity as the polished, crystal clear production and chorus-based progression of the first track ”Retaliation” nod towards a general metal audience instead of any underground black metal cultism. Hope of Retaliation brings to the game four new songs (of which one is a brief interlude) and five live tracks, so calling this album a brand new full-length seems a little off.
Musically, we’re not entirely away from the band’s earlier material as the whispery, Beherit esque vocals imply. A bunch of blast beats can be spotted from here as well, though for the most part the pace is kept a quite slow levels, and the guitars comprise a lot more melody than before. Thus said, a more proper genre tag for Hope of Retaliation would be dark metal, I guess. The most I’m impressed of the 9-minute ”Bitten by the Long Frosts of Life” that wanders in both brooding and epic landscapes to a great success, and the weakest link of the new songs is definitely ”Night Birds Sing Your Demise” which is a short, droning interlude that doesn’t bring much to the table, except irritation by the fact that it takes one slot of the very few new songs on the album.
The second half of the disc, consisting solely of live tracks, showcases material from the whole career of Black Crucifixion: ”Master Spirit” from The Fallen One of Flames, ”Promethean Gift” and ”Serpent of Your Holy Garden” from Promethean Gift, and ”Where Will You Hide” and ”Winterkill” from Faustian Dream. While on the actual records one can notice the band’s clear evolution from simple black metal to more experimental approach, here the songs fit seamlessly together, forming a good 18-minute whole of its own. Heck, in a way these songs fit together with Hope of Retaliation’s new material as well, so from that perspective you could call this a proper full-length album.
I can’t say that Hope of Retaliation is hundred percent my thing. The dark metalish approach does work and the live takes are solid pieces, but then what? The material isn’t anything out of the ordinary, as the first side of the album is quite basic metal of nowadays and live songs don’t offer much pleasure to anyone but the hardcore fans of the band and those who are new to the band and hence get a compact view into the band’s whole career. These things added to the cover art that I really do not dig makes a record worth of a moderate, goodish score. Would be lovely to hear a true full-length next time, but knowing how slowly Black Crucifixion crafts material, it might take a while.
Not at all, though we’re clearly dealing with a record that doesn’t exactly try to avoid mainstream popularity as the polished, crystal clear production and chorus-based progression of the first track ”Retaliation” nod towards a general metal audience instead of any underground black metal cultism. Hope of Retaliation brings to the game four new songs (of which one is a brief interlude) and five live tracks, so calling this album a brand new full-length seems a little off.
Musically, we’re not entirely away from the band’s earlier material as the whispery, Beherit esque vocals imply. A bunch of blast beats can be spotted from here as well, though for the most part the pace is kept a quite slow levels, and the guitars comprise a lot more melody than before. Thus said, a more proper genre tag for Hope of Retaliation would be dark metal, I guess. The most I’m impressed of the 9-minute ”Bitten by the Long Frosts of Life” that wanders in both brooding and epic landscapes to a great success, and the weakest link of the new songs is definitely ”Night Birds Sing Your Demise” which is a short, droning interlude that doesn’t bring much to the table, except irritation by the fact that it takes one slot of the very few new songs on the album.
The second half of the disc, consisting solely of live tracks, showcases material from the whole career of Black Crucifixion: ”Master Spirit” from The Fallen One of Flames, ”Promethean Gift” and ”Serpent of Your Holy Garden” from Promethean Gift, and ”Where Will You Hide” and ”Winterkill” from Faustian Dream. While on the actual records one can notice the band’s clear evolution from simple black metal to more experimental approach, here the songs fit seamlessly together, forming a good 18-minute whole of its own. Heck, in a way these songs fit together with Hope of Retaliation’s new material as well, so from that perspective you could call this a proper full-length album.
I can’t say that Hope of Retaliation is hundred percent my thing. The dark metalish approach does work and the live takes are solid pieces, but then what? The material isn’t anything out of the ordinary, as the first side of the album is quite basic metal of nowadays and live songs don’t offer much pleasure to anyone but the hardcore fans of the band and those who are new to the band and hence get a compact view into the band’s whole career. These things added to the cover art that I really do not dig makes a record worth of a moderate, goodish score. Would be lovely to hear a true full-length next time, but knowing how slowly Black Crucifixion crafts material, it might take a while.
2.5 / 5
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