Grim Satanic Blessing

Being a fan of black metal is tough when you're picky. There are a shit-ton of bands out there who would fit better as tribute bands rather than actual bands wasting valuable CD's by releasing mediocre, half-assed rip-offs, and this is exactly what Amystery is.

I wasn't familiar with Amystery until recently that I had a hype for raw and cold black metal in the vein of LLN, Moonblood and early Graveland, I came across this album and found the cover interesting, a minimal black and white photo of one of the band members, coupled with a simple but effective name. Indeed "Grim Satanic Blessing" speaks much of what you are about to listen, bare bones black metal.

This album begins with a useless and unnecessarily long intro of a storm with wolves howling on the background... after that we hear a few screams and "evil" laughs, then more screams and that's it... The intro is absolutely boring and does nothing at all to add to the general atmosphere. After this terrible intro starts "Nailed" which follows the same old black metal formula that has been recycled at least a million times before: Fast, high-pitched tremolo picked riffs and blast beat drumming, this doesn't means that the music is bad, but the way that Amystery performs said formula is awfully uninspired and lifeless; this same recipe has been used over and over by a thousand other bands ever since the mid nineties.

All of the songs in these album follows the exact same pattern, some of the songs here feature an slower passage which is also painfully generic and soulless. The guitars are highly distorted, making them sound raspy but without any kind of edge or feeling to them, a flaw that can be explained by the absolute overuse of typical black metal riffing patterns. The sound of the guitars in Grim Satanic Blessing reminds me of a rusty, dull knife. The drums have a nicely organic sound to it yet they feel a bit low on the mix which isn't a major flaw since the drums should never be the driving force in black metal, as so many bands out there do.

Vocally speaking, there is nothing new here, just your usual black metal shrieks and rasps that we all know. In fact the vocal performance by Nephesus reminds me a bit of Abbath's vocals in Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism. While the vocals may not be anything new, they still get the job done decently.

Don't take me wrong, I know black metal is all about simplicity and harshness and that's okay, but Amystery takes no risks AT ALL, not even the slightest and most insignificant ones. Whether this was done on purpose or if it was just a lack of inspiration or motivation is beyond me, as is how they have managed to release 3 albums so far.

In conclusion, Grim Satanic Blessing is an album plagued with musical cliches, there is absolutely nothing that makes this album stand out from among the endless sea of black metal, Amystery does nothing to float and in fact prefers to slowly sink into the abyss that is the "underground" sound. There are many other bands that follow the same black metal formula with greater success, as exemplified by early Behexen, Katharsis or even Baptism, which despite not bringing anything new to this musical genre still manage to produce quality, honest music that keeps the black flame burning, avoid this album.