End of Catastrophe

With the first riffs you get a feeling that this is classic black metal. European black metal, maybe in the vein of Dark Funeral. Then it becomes clear that something is going wrong. Like the musicians try to stay within the limits of orthodoxy, but cannot withstand long. Well, it's not exactly black/death metal, as the band article says. Even though most of the riffs sound like typical black metal ones (for example, one riff from "Stained with Deepred" almost duplicates one from "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas"), Basilisk's music has a lot influences from technical thrash metal too, sometimes you can even draw a parallel with Sadus. By the way, the album layout is more suited for a thrash metal band with social theme: it is designed in shrilly green color — variations on a theme of environmental pollution, I suppose.

Basilisk practices frequent and sudden changes of tempo. And style. For example, a lyrical insertion with a guitar fingering interrupts a relentless clatter of blast beat (songs "Suffer from Hallucination", "Bethel Bleed") — ok, it's within the black metal genre. But it's another thing when the musicians go off at a tangent often: jump from gloomy black metal riffs to thrash metal fervor (this fervor is felt mostly in "Bethel Bleed") and so on. It's like they say, "Guys, let's not go to the Dark Side." And the bass player is the most zealous of all: often there is a feeling that he wants to play with Yngwie Malmsteen but not in some black metal band — with his very technical play he completely destroys the monotonous atmosphere, proper to sombre black metal. In the last song "Black Storm" he really relieve his feelings. Well, at least he's not using slap and pop.

Black metal laws definitely overpower thrash metal ones on "End of Catastrophe" on only one point: there's not a lot of guitar solos on the album. Of course, this is not evidence that the guitarist has a poor technique. In the song "Nosferatu", with his solo he lets Yngwie Malmsteen (well, this name is used for the sake of contrast only) know, that he also knows how. Yes, the solos here are not typical for black metal. While in the ninth song "Lost Dimension", solo corresponds more or less to the declared genre of black/death metal.

Perhaps alone the vocalist remains faithful to the Dark Side throughout the entire album. Hard and sharp vocals, pretty typical for the genre. Except that he sings in Japanese — that gives special originality to his vocals. And, yes, even short intros ("Sign of Baptism" and "Fathomless Depth Crimson Dawn") perfectly correspond to the canons of black metal.

Anyway, it's a very interesting work. It should be recognized, even if you prefer classic black metal. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Basilisk: none of the links are valid. Maybe the band no longer exists.