Rating: It's certainly not going to be the black metal crossover hit that Sunbather was, but it's a fucking amazing black metal album. If you enjoy black metal, or really any extreme music, this album is a must buy.
Behemoth may be the most commercially successful metal band that the basement dwellers and kvltists can still admire. Mastodon officially became lame after The Hunter, Deafheaven is too hipster to be real metal, Metallica lost their cred, ironically, after they sold their souls to Satan in exchange for the Black Album and a string of shit Cliff Burton clones (note: only one of these things is true). Behemoth, however, remains within the affections of their core audience. According to Blabbermouth, this album is in the US Top 40, which impress for any metal album, when it happens to a black metal album it's a fucking miracle. This may have something to do with the fact that this is the band's first album in five years due to the fact that the singer, Nergal, was diagnosed with fucking leukemia. But God or Satan or science intervened and Nergal kicked cancer in the teeth and made a new album.
This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best album Behemoth has ever released. Behemoth has always been a reliably good band and their past four albums have all been well above average. This album, however, seems to have a greater focus on orchestration. The first song "Blow Your Horn Gabriel" is a particular standout since it features horns and a choir in addition to the always stunning skill of the individual band members. The track really helps set a melancholy tone (at least, a little more so than normally in a black metal song) and really seems to appropriately frame the album in it's attempt to detail the struggle between God and Satan.
The whole album is highly symphonic, I get a really positive Emperor vibe from songs like "Messe Noire" (which is admittedly killed by the guitar solo, but Bathory did guitar solos in black metal songs so fuck you if you don't like them) and "Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer" and the final two tracks feature spoken word segments from Nergal (one in Polish!) which really give the album a satisfying conclusion since the final spoken piece really seems to outline the general theme of the album and, to a certain extent, Behemoth's satanic message.
I really have very little to criticize. Nergal sounds great despite his health troubles and his guitar playing is still top notch, once again Inferno proves himself to be one of the most proficient metal drummers alive, and even Orion shines on the bass (although being able to hear the bass at all on a Behemoth record is sort of a miracle). The band is back, and better than ever and the Satanist is out now on Metal Blade Records.
No comments:
Post a Comment