Album traces a journey through a Satanic hierarchy – 80%
NausikaDalazBlindaz, October 8th, 2007
Lyrically this album seems to be about the making of a demon who, in order to reach its full potential, must conduct a ritual invoking the names and attributes of various fallen angels and other personages of the Satanic hierarchy which according to the CD booklet is arranged in the form of a blasphemous inverse Qabalah (the Tree of Life found in mystical Judaism) with Satan and Moloch up at the top (or down in the deepest hell) and Nahema or Nehemoth at the bottom level (top level?) which corresponds to Malkuth (“Kingdom”) or Earth. The demon carrying out the ritual proceeds from Malkuth and makes its way through the album to the top / bottom Kether “(“Crown”) and each track more or less corresponds to the level or vessel on the Qabalah where sits a demon that our demon must pay homage to as it works its way up / down. Track titles themselves refer to the various vessels and name the demons that sit on them. Listeners need a fairly basic understanding of the Qabalah and how it is organised to be able to make head and tail of the track titles (they’re not easy to read) and get some idea of the thinking behind this recording.
Fortunately the music itself is rather easier to understand as it is mostly melodic black metal with slight industrial influences. Also as the album progresses the music becomes more varied in pace and rhythm as the demon makes its way through the system. I’m not familiar with Black Funeral as this is the first CD of theirs I have come across so I can’t tell if the band has always had an industrial-tinged style of BM but the musicians combine the two genres well for their own purposes. The intro in particular is very cold, alien and harsh ambience but the bulk of the album is song-based to suit its theme. A lot of the early songs here reminds me of the French BM band Spektr: both bands’ music features heavy showers of corrosive needle-sharp BM guitar noise which in Black Funeral’s case gives a free-flowing quality to the rhythms and melodies. Individual songs don’t stand out for any distinctive riffs or tunes as they represent stages the demon has to reach so obviously none can stand out more than the rest; the music though does divide into three sections as the demon goes from a lower level of vessels to a middle level and then to a higher level. At the beginner level (tracks 1 to 4) the music is fast and smooth; at the middle level (tracks 5 to 7) where things start getting a bit more difficult for the demon, the music slows down, the drumming is harder and louder, the pace becomes quite ponderous and the music goes downright weird and approaches minimalist noise.
In the last section (tracks 8 to 11) as the demon comes closer to its goal, the music speeds up and becomes more typrically BM with less of the industrial influence; some of the earlier cold atmosphere seems to disappear. As a group these songs have a bit more individuality than the other two groups of songs; track 10 especially features different melodies for rhythm guitar and bass guitar and the drumming is at once jaunty and partly machine-like. The final track is a surprisingly calm, cold and forbidding ambient affair.
While the songs might not boast any particularly memorable riffs and the percussion can bog down around the halfway point of the recording, this is an enjoyable album with a cold clear atmosphere and a sharp sound. Some people might expect a cloudy ambience throughout the recording but I don’t think it’s necessary and it would have obscured the singing which can be surprisingly clean for this kind of music and subject matter. The album isn’t at all demonic in sound and ambience – the guys don’t sound like demons and there’s not that feeling of evil that some people might expect for a recording like this – but there’s a case for arguing that the lyrics and the subject matter are sufficient in themselves and don’t need any fancy melodramatic dressing-up which would make the music kitschy and dated.
rafazardly 