Satanica

"Satanica," or more specifically its opening track, "Decade of Therion," was what introduced me to Behemoth. Initially I greatly enjoyed the album, but after listening to newer Behemoth albums like "The Apostasy," "Demigod," and "Evangelion," "Satanica" isn't so great. In fact, it’s my least favorite album by Behemoth and of the ones I've heard, probably their worst. But it's by no means a bad album and is still good to listen to.

On "Satanica," the guitars still have trace elements of black metal that later in their career would almost completely vanish. The guitars play a style that for the most part sounds like early death/thrash albums with hints of black metal sewn into the riffs. As far as the riffs go, I almost want to say that they all sound the same but I can't do that. They do sound similar to a certain degree, but for the most part they're fairly memorable. As usual, the guitar solos that Nergal plays are good, most notably on tracks such as "Lam," and Starspawn."

Inferno's drumming has become one of my favorite things about Behemoth and I wasn't disappointed on Satanica. The drums at the beginning of "Ceremony of Shiva" sound excellent as usual and are phenomenal throughout the album and add to Behemoth's blasphemous brutality.

Nergal's vocals are good as well, but not as good as they would later become. They sound much more black metal oriented than the style he would use on later albums such as "Demigod" for example. Altough I prefer his later style, his vocal performance on "Satanica" suits the music better.

My big problem with "Satanica" is the production quality. The entire album sounds a bit "fuzzy. The production isn't bad but I would've preferred it be a tad bit cleaner. The only other problem is that there are several songs that are incredibly average sounding. "Ceremony of Shiva," "The Sermon to the Hypocrites," "Starspawn," and "The Alchemists Dream," are anywhere between average to good and drag the album down.

Other than that this is a good album to listen to and I still enjoy listening back to Behemoth's earlier days.