Satanized (A Journey Through Cosmic Infinity)

If you thought your view of Satan as the earth's monarch of evil was already huge, think again. Imagine the Dark Lord of chaos and evil waging war against planets throughout the cosmos, enslaving one world after another to add to his galaxies of war prizes. Such was the imagination of Abigor in 2001, but as much as the idea was grandiose and epic, the execution was far less incredible. Awesome ideas deflated by poor implementation is the most glaring problem with Satanized. Yet despite that, I still believe it's criminally overlooked. Both Channeling the Quintessence of Satan and Fractal Possession surrounding it are immensely superior, but somehow, I find myself coming back to this album, even more than Channeling the Quintessence of Satan.

One thing that makes Satanized stand out immediately over Channeling is the production. Each instrument is completely audible in its allotted sonic space. Rather than bashfully burying all their talent in the mix, they really tried to bring their technicality to light with a cleaner production

Most notably different about the mix, the bass guitar is back! Also, the guitars no longer sound like buzzsaws screaming through layers of fuzz. Instead, I'd describe the guitar tone as piercing. Additionally, it seems like the bit rate has been reduced in the guitar tracks, so in a way, it sounds like they're coming from cheesy toy speakers. As a result of this mixing, you can hear the guitar melodies sharp as needles. Channeling takes far more concentration or beating my EQ settings to death to be able to decipher the contents of the guitar tracks. So in that sense, Satanized may be slightly more "accessible," but as with many Abigor albums, Satanized is still a journey of acquired taste.

The thing that really tarnishes this album is the vocals, especially the cleans. They're awkward and just badly done. According to Wikipedia, the gentleman who that did the vocals for Abigor at that time is known as Thurisaz. Make careful note: Thurisaz cannot sing cleans vocals on pitch. His delivery is like pitched shouting, which is not a bad vocal style by any means. At certain moments, it sounds like Korn's Jonathan Davis showed up singing Here To Stay. But Jonathan Davis can actually make comprehensible melody this way, and Thurisaz cannot. There some moments that are less cringy like on "The Legacy" and "Luminescence of Darkness," where his deaf shouting adds more to the atmosphere. But mostly, you don't want to hear him sing cleans.

Thurisaz is not great at harsh vocals either. They sound hoarse, and I think he's pushing himself too hard to have the vocal strength that Silenius had. Thurisaz's attempt to mimic him falls flat, and Silenius is superior in every respect. Channeling worked with the Thurisaz's limitations a lot better, pushing him to fringes of the mix rather than putting him front and center.

The last significant problem is that the recording was lazy. There are some really sloppy takes that made it to the final release. Guitar and drums aren't always in sync, and that sounds a lot worse on a cleaner production than their usual fuzzy production. It's obvious that T.T. and P.K. were running out of steam, but the ideas they did squeeze out were... actually pretty good, which brings me to the positive aspects of this album.

The strongest element of Satanized is its composition. Each track stays pretty coherent within a few musical ideas. Abigor generally has a bad case of ADHD riffing, and they don't like staying within the bounds of a few main ideas. In contrast, everything in Satanized flows and stays unified, which is really great to hear from them. Now some of those musical ideas didn't work, namely the strange carnival music in the middle of "The Redeemer's Return." But each track has its own compositional identity, and I appreciate that.

I also love it when things get thrashy. There are some awesome rhythmic riffs that gets my head banging in "Battlestar Abigor," "Galaxies and Long Decline," "Nocturnal Stardust," and "Satan's Galaxy," which is something that most Abigor records don't usually do. The drums having simple snare hits on beats 2 and 4 is a nice break from the frantic blast beats you would usually hear from them. Also, the comeback of keys as an instrument instead of an effect or for transitions is really nice. It contributes loads more depth to the atmosphere that guitar, bass, and drums cannot do alone. The track that really brandishes the synths is "The Legacy," which is one of my favorite openers from Abigor ever.

The concept of Satan as a galactic ruler was imaginative and new at the time. I only wish it could have been done better. If Abigor ever considers re-working an album, Satanized would be my first choice.

Highlights: "The Legacy," "Battlestar Abigor," "Galaxies and Long Decline," "Luminescence of Darkness"