BLAZE OF PERDITION: "The Hierophant"

On matter of last year's Blaze of Perdition EP, The Burning Will of Expansion, I criticized the band for staying in too familiar and safe waters of Watain esque religious black metal, and now that I have given their sophomore full-length, The Hierophant, more than just a couple of spins, it becomes evident that my previous comments about Blaze of Perdition's unremarkableness apply to this record as well.

I guess that things are a bit better from an overall perspective this time around, but not much has changed. The band still revels in a very traditional orthodox black metal sound initiated by such names as Dissection, Watain and mid-era Deathspell Omega to some extent. The first few tracks, ”The Hierophant” and ”Back to the Womb” are quite tiresome feasts on fast tempos and evil dissonance that never rises over mediocrity, followed by the full-band interlude ”Let There Be Darkness” which is a tad more interesting approach compositionally as it runs for less than a minute and a half. ”Gospel of the Serpent's Kin” is the only proper highlight here with its sweet lead melodies in the latter half of the track, concluding in an acoustic arrangement of the same melody. The rest of the album, still four tracks to go, returns to the way too familiar paradigm of pedestrian orthodox black metal, the kind of stuff every other new black metal group seems to be putting out right now.

There's talent in this band and definitely no shortage of musical skills. The Hierophant is executed tightly and swiftly, and Necromorbus studio assures a firm production. Usually I tend to loathe what comes out of that studio, but this time the sound hasn't been overly polished; it's just about enough harsh and sharp yet far from low fidelity. The Hierophant is an enough pleasurable listen that, however, says pretty much nothing on the first rounds, but at least some of the riffs get better in time. There's too much predictableness in the music that hinders it from rising to better ratings, so that's quite a major glitch I hope the band will be working on on future recordings – unless they deliberately want to keep things at where they are. I personally see no point in that as right now the band is hard to discern from other similar acts – which in number are many. Please do give it a go if you're still up for another dive into regular religious black metal and do not expect heaps of innovation.

3 / 5

MORDHELL: "Suffer in Hell"

Combining black metal with punk / rocking elements is something I’ve grown fond of lately, but such acts have mostly resided in the most filthiest undergrounds on scruffy tape demos. What comes to bands like late Carpathian Forest, Nadiwrath or Mordhell right here, now they’re the kind of punkish black metal bands that seem to try too hard to sound evil, alcoholic, sick and basically anti-everything.

That said, there’s no way of not reading song titles like ”You Are My Fucking Pornostar!!!!” or ”Alcoholic Titfuckblast”  tongue in cheek, and this already reduces the music’s effect on me. Call me too serious or something, but I do require something more from my music than mere ’let’s drink, be evil and hate everything’ which makes also Mordhell’s second album, Suffer in Hell, a hard bite to swallow.

By now, one can probably guess the band’s musical influences. Darkthrone shines through in all departments, but the most I’m reminded of Craft, not only by the instruments but also by the very similar screaming style. Just think of a less-grooving, more straightforward Craft with lame song titles, and there’s Suffer in Hell for you: 13 rather short bursts of simple beats and power chord riffs. The band handles their instruments smoothly and I’m also digging the semi-warm production. There’s surely a fanbase for this kind of black metal, so fans of the bands mentioned in the first paragraph can't go wrong by checking out Suffer in Hell. I personally prefer to just skip these.

2 / 5

BLOODTHIRST: "Żądza Krwi"

Bloodthirst has been churning out new releases - albeit mostly splits or similar ’minor’ outputs - for a decade already, but Żądza Krwi is my first exposure to the band. But who could have heard all these gazillion thrash/black metal bands, anyway? Better later than never, even if I’m not sure would I have missed much if I had not heard Żądza Krwi, a quite traditional blackened thrash metal EP.

The ingredients are simple: take the drum beats, guitar solos and overall attitude of thrash metal and mix it with menacing tremolo guitars, high-pitched screams and general harshness of black metal and there you have Żądza Krwi and its four tracks clocking at fifteen minutes at total, a fitting time for a musical experience so familiar already. And while a good release does not require originality, there’s not enough hooks on the EP to trigger my interest entirely. Bloodthirst plays well and is convincingly evil and rapid, but real masterpiece compositions are evidently missing.

An interesting feature are the vocals sung in Polish for the first time - apparently - in Bloodthirst’s history. I’d consider this as a definite plus, as the harsh sounding language adds to the atmosphere probably much better than the so often heard and harmless English. Production-wise, Żądza Krwi is quite bright but luckily with mandatory rawness. Composition-wise, as said, there’s not much to find from the EP, but the most hardcore followers of the Polish scene might want to look into the record, a record of solidly played black / thrash that does kick ass but also could have provided much more.

2.5 / 5

HELLVETO: "Wiara, nadzieja..., potepienie"

It makes me feel bad to discover bands like Hellveto this late, now knowing that he has released a million albums already. Wiara, nadzieja..., potepienie - the third and final part of an album trilogy from recent years - is a true monster of epic folk black metal à la Summoning and latter era Graveland.

And how well is this done! Even if influences can be heard, Hellveto has its own aura, bringing magical orchestral melodies from behind every corner. Metal is not much audible, the focus is on creating glorious landscapes of nature and battlegrounds where metal instrumentation has more of a backing role to the melody heavy music. There’s a ton of layers on the album: something new is always there to be heard, including even bass guitar. Drums are played on a real kit and, if I’m not totally wrong, this is a rather new feature on Hellveto.

Albums that amaze me are always hard to review because I’m having a lack of words trying to explain why something is so good, so I’ll end up saying that there’s just something in this record that has personally moved me, and that doesn’t happen too often, especially with promo albums received for review purposes (which means heavy exposure to mediocre music). Wiara, nadzieja..., potepienie covers a lot of moods from anger to sadness, always keeping a unique, obscure atmosphere within. All this is executed well with a plethora of different instruments.

So if you’re up for a journey through beautiful and almost surreal landscapes, then do yourself a favour and pick up Wiara, nadzieja..., potepienie. In addition to the 7-song main album, a second disc of material related to the trilogy theme is attached to the package as well, making sure you won’t get tired anytime soon: in total, there’s almost two hours of material, much thanks to the second disc comprising over 20-minute songs. And, as usual, only time will tell if this is worth even a higher score: right now I must settle to a close to perfect rating.

4.0 / 5

BLAZE OF PERDITION: "The Burning Will of Expansion"

Religious devil worship is always welcome to my black metal - as long as it’s done tastefully and not following too closely the footsteps of Deathspell Omega, Watain, Funeral Mist and the likes. Since last year’s split and EP releases, Blaze of Perdition has offered its take on the aforementioned subgenre (if that's an apt term already) and to this date has remained above the average, but only slightly. This applies to their most recent release, The Burning Will of Expansion (which is to be released tomorrow on grey seven inch), as well.

When I first heard Blaze of Perdition’s major debut Towards the Blaze of Perdition, I couldn’t help thinking about Behexen’s most recent works, at least aesthetically. On The Burning Will of Expansion, I am more reminded of Watain with all the dissonance, subtle thrash riffage flirts and Sonneillon’s surprisingly similar screaming style therein. Or more fittingly, this could be said to be a mixture of Massemord and Watain. A good dose of furious blast beats is to be found from here but the band also knows how to slow down yet retaining the evil spirit within. Production-wise, the EP is crispy and professional, yet not as polished as the full-length.

The Burning Will of Expansion ventures convincingly onwards through the two tracks but, as easily can happen, I fail to hear how this really differs from many other releases in the field. I would so love to hear Blaze of Perdition being more daring and not limiting their potential to these compositions that are decent and far from bad, but nothing out of the ordinary. Here’s to hoping that one day Blaze of Perdition will surprise. Additional points for the well-done cover art, however.

2,5 / 5

BLASPHEMY RITES: "Hideous Lord"

Blasphemy Rites has been in existence for the last 13 years but has kept relatively low profile, not until this year releasing their major debut, entitled as Hideous Lord that offers a violent, uncompromising blast of blackened death metal in the spirit of Blasphemy and Sarcófago, and somehow this also reminds me strongly of Blasphemophagher. So, absolutely nothing refreshing or innovative is to be expected of Hideous Lord but, of course, that is not necessarily a requirement in making a crushing album.

Comprising fifteen tracks of which mere two cross the three-minute mark, Hideous Lord is evidently one swift monster. The only occasional breathing breaks are given in the form of short ambient interludes between some songs, but other than that, the music demolishes everything on its way. Old school spirit, some chuggy riffage in the middle of tremolo, beats shifting from blast beats to only fairly slower ones, high-range screaming. All is done with professional spirit and there’s no question of the players’ technical abilities. The crispy production works perfectly here, something that albums like Diocletian’s muffled Doom Cult definitely miss.

But how memorable, then, Hideous Lord is? Not much, I must confess, as it’s a real pain in the ass to distinguish the songs from each other: occasional guitar solos are a nice feature and so are the three cover tracks in the end of the album but other than that the songs don’t have much grabbing elements in them. Surely the point of Hideous Lord is to create old school black/death but I wouldn’t mind hearing some innovation here either, because as it is, the 32-minute death manifest becomes a bit dull after the first few tracks. Not to undermine the overall devastating power of the album, however. 

2,5 / 5

FURIA: "Halny"

Even as a newbie to Furia’s music and hearing their recent EP, Halny, for the first time, it didn’t take many seconds to realize why this material isn’t released under the name of its big brother, Massemord: Furia’s approach is evidently more experimental, albeit black metal is still the backbone to the psychedelic, jazzy, nocturnal music.

Halny is a one big song clocking at twenty minutes, consisting of a plethora of interesting breakdown moments until building up to more paced sections: the song keeps fluctuating between the rather quiet parts - comprising electric and occasionally acoustic guitar - and more active, hypnotic moments of ’shoegazey’ black metal. The overall mood is somewhat obscure and mysterious, but it certainly possesses lots of hopelessness and yearning in it - even the most dissonant riffs on the song have that feeling of dim sadness. This atmosphere is the driving force here, and it’s not common to come across something quite like it in black metal: this is like jazz gone demented black metal.

I always find myself absorbed in the music: twenty minutes go by surprisingly fast and it even leaves me a bit hungry. The professional and detailed production ensures an enjoyable listening experience, and the fairly unique vocal delivery - semi-clean, mid-range utterance - works well, too. Halny might not be the most goosebumps-inducing record I’ve heard lately, but its nocturnal aura is still something that makes me revisit the EP frequently. Do not miss this if looking for some innovation inside the borders of black metal. 

3,5 / 5

MASSEMORD: "The Madness Tongue Devouring Juices of Livid Hope"

While I wasn’t so stoked about Massemord’s earlier release, namely the short EP Notes of Antihate Profound, this latest output, a true name monster for sure, grabs my interest on a totally different level. As soon as the first sounds of the fading-in instruments are heard on The Madness Tongue Devouring Juices of Livid Hope, the listener is in for a 35-minute hypnotizing ride.

A down-tuned guitar rhythm pattern is the basis behind the droning, rather slow-tempo, long song. It’s menacing, simple and indeed repetitive, but never boring - much thanks to the intricate yet not too technical drumming and, most importantly, the melodic ideas that are brought on top of the pulsing rhythm section. A lot of interesting guitarwork is provided by the other guitarist while the other keeps going on with the heavy main rhythm. Occasional ethereal synth sounds are presented and at times the atmosphere builds up to semi-fast blastbeats. The singer Namtar’s convincing masculine low-range screams are similar to Mgła’s, and even generally the album reminds me surprisingly much of the aforementioned band.

The brooding atmosphere that possesses The Madness Tongue Devouring Juices of Livid Hope is impressive: the journey is quite an experience. Production-wise, the album is very well done with a professional, full and rough sound with many detailed levels. Musically, the album might not be the most original one but surely a real treat anyways. Just ignore the rather bad looking cover art and invest into this record if you are a fan of, say, Mgła that is this time stretched into an atmospheric, half an hour piece. 

3,5 / 5

MASSEMORD: "Notes of Antihate Profound"

Rapid, relentless black metal is the name of the game on Massemord’s ten minute EP consisting of two tracks of which the other - ”Masskilling Masshealing” - is an old composition now appearing here again, though this isn’t a problem for me as I don’t have previous knowledge of Massemord with the exception of the most recent full-length released just a couple of days ago.

So, compared to the brooding, droning style that The Madness Tongue Devouring Juices of Livid Hope offered, Notes of Antihate Profound is ten times faster and clearly more in-your-face. Blast beats dominate as do the evil riffs - that unfortunately kind of lack personal touch - and Namtar’s convincingly delivered mid-range screams. ”Cognition of Fear” is at best when given a little space for slower tempo and an interesting lead guitar melody. ”Masskilling Masshealing” starts with an almost punky riff but soon after builds up to the general style of 1349 esque speed chaos with occasional technical elements.

Although in general I enjoy the furiousness that Notes of Antihate Profound provides, and production-wise it all sounds perfectly balanced between full yet rough sound where all the instruments are audible, I can’t say I find anything enough gripping from the two songs; hence I was much more impressed by the innovative ideas that the recent full-length offered. I could assume, though, that this is a must-buy for Massemord fans and most certainly the band seems to know what they are doing. Notes of Antihate Profound is not a bad EP at all - just fairly unsurprising. 

2,5 / 5