I Loved You at Your Darkest

The name Behemoth is tightly associated with Blackened Death Metal and with anti-Christian motifs, as well as shockingly contentious music videos. The front man and the mastermind, Adam Michał Darski (also and more recognizably known as Nergal), has made sure that the image we get from the band concurs with this association. However, behind this evil and vile projection, there is another side, the more down-to-earth side, where Ryan Gosling is as influential in making an album as is Satan.

The new output by this Polish extreme metal trio, I Loved You at Your Darkest, is partly old-school, signature Behemoth that we have known for long and partly the new, more rock-influenced trend the band wishes to seek. Nonetheless, the dominant sound of the album is the looming, ferocious and macabre ambience, with several ritualistic sections and dark, sacrilegious, myth-imbued lyrics.

The album opens with a choir of (church) children, singing in unison and depriving gods from their forgiveness. This choir, which will be infused on another track (God=Dog) later on, is where Ryan Gosling kicks in, not himself of course, but his footprint. As Nergal mentioned in an interview with exclaim!, he got this idea from Gosling’s musical project Dead Man's Bones and then he “decided to bring it even further … to extremity”.

This might be seen as a drawback for such an album and within such a morbid genre; but considering the fact that the band intends to signpost their shift towards a more rock-ish sound, this frequent integration of children’s choir, along with other factors, such as drumming, implies this new tendency.

Other than this slight yet noteworthy alteration which can be observed on a track like God=Dog (especially its opening), everything else remains just as epic and monumental as it was. Different songs have their musical nuances, from more raw black metal (Wolves Ov Siberaia) to post-metal / post-black metal (Havohej Pantocrator) to atmospheric/ambient black metal (We Are the Next 1000 Years) and everything in between. We have machine-gun drumming (e.g. Angelvs XIII), ritualistic sections (Bartzabel), fast paced riffing (Wolves Ov Siberia) and guitar solos too (Sabbath Mater).

Lyrics-wise, the same-old imagery of demon-angel dichotomy, profanity and demonological figures permeate the album with influences from mythologies of around the globe, and there is even one particular song with a demonic invocation chorus (Bartzabel). Not that this thematic sameness is a disadvantage, no, not in the least bit; quite contrary, these are the themes that suit the image and the music of the band, and this is what most fans admire them for. Even some seemingly arbitrary Latin phrases or Old English words here and there (e.g. Ecclesia Diabolica Catholica) can add to the richness of this auditory experience and are more than a show-off of Nergal’s one-year course in Latin in the University of Gdańsk.

At the end of the day, this album is a full-flavored extreme metal dish that can reach out to fans of all inclinations and can satisfy their need for a well-produced major album and at the same time, tempt some new listeners with its new, more accessible sound into giving it a try.


Rating:
Lyrics: 8.0
Artwork: 8.0
Musicianship: 8.5
Vocals: 8.5
Overall: 8.5