Servum Pecus

This album runs like a soundtrack to a very strange horror movie, perhaps a really old 1930s European art horror flick with strong surrealist influences. Though recorded in 2006, the music sounds quite "aged" and the blurriness of the production adds to the general impression of a swirling, nightmarish chaos. Vibrato guitar chords often seesaw up and down through a number of songs to throw you off balance. Monster voices treated with echo and further distorted and blurred seem to rise out of the murky ambience and fall back. Funnily though, the keyboard and other ambient tones and effects can be amazingly clear, even sharp, compared to the rest of the music.

The rhythms are susually fast, the guitars usually buzz up and down and the singing can be fuzzy and slurpy so most songs aren't very different from one another. "Memonto finis" has some harmonica-like tones that float in repetitive bunches of three above the roar and blastbeat percussion. "Apex of mockery" has a slower, more thumping rhythm with blathering radio voices throughout. The rather alarming-sounding "Phallus absconditus" features screeching wobbly guitar chords that can make you feel sick and sections of really queasy guitar washes: goblin voicers growling and echoing in this track add to the freaky cacophony. "Mankind euthanasia" is more distinctive and self-contained than the other songs as there are combinations of riffs and blast beats that repeat throughout this long piece so it holds together better; halfway through, the song actually slows down for quite a while with clear bass guitar playing and repeating vocals. This is perhaps the most representative track on the CD: the best music is here, there's more variation in pace than on other songs, and the contrast between the distorted fuzzy guitars and some of the more cleanly produced instruments and effects is greatest here.

The last track "Voice of god (Futile conclusion)" is an all-instrumental ambient tone sculpture, amazingly resonant for this CD and actually quite lovely, at least until demented howling werewolf voices and harsh whispers enter and turn the sound poetry into another psycho nightmare.

Overall the music is good. One track "Wormz" suffers filler status mainly because it is sandwiched between "Mankind ..." and "Voice of god ..." which are the most outstanding tracks. Lyrics for the songs can be pretty overwrought and laughable which is a pity although the actual singing is so blurry the voices simply become another element in the music and reinforce the chaos and deranged atmosphere. A case could be made here that Wolok excel more at creating atmosphere and should try writing longer, more soundscape-type music where they can experiment more with the distorted voices, unusual guitar chord sequences and changes in rhythm and pacing, rather than write songs about hatred for humankind, genocide fantasies and pouring scorn on Christianity. Heck, doesn't nearly every French black metal band already do this?

The front cover of the CD sleeve features a reproduction of a black and white drawing by Polish fantasy / horror artist and photographer Zdzislaw Beksinski who was tragically stabbed to death in 2005 by the teenage son of his long-time caretaker and an accomplice, who have since been jailed. The art is appropriate to the swirling music on the CD with the repetition bordering on obsession of the ghostly figures in the swarm.