Occulte fantastique

Briton Rites' debut offering, 2010's For Mircalla, has remained one of my absolute favorite doom metal albums - its amalgamation of catchy riffs, crushing guitar tone, and Phil Swanson's inimitable vocal style just scratches an itch very few other things do. Slimy, occult, yet still epic and headbangable - it captures a special sort of magic only a guitar wizard like Howie Bentley could pull off. So when I recently heard about a follow-up album, a decade after the first, I was naturally very surprised and very excited. Since I had a taste of what was to come with the two demo tracks released a few years earlier, I was already very optimistic, and as I strongly suspected, this new Briton Rites endeavor, Occulte Fantastique, has certainly not disappointed.

"In Hell I Will Rule," which was released in demo form way back in 2011, was and still remains my favorite Briton Rites track. I was in high school when I first heard it and I probably played it ten times that first day alone. The majestic, crushing power it delivers in such a sleazy, sinister way just totally clicked with me immediately, and hasn't lessened at all, 10 years and 100+ listens (which is being conservative) later. The lyrics are the icing on top of the cake, with the titular line, "In hell you suffer, in hell I will rule!" being one of the most effective and satisfying lines I've ever heard.

However, there are, of course, 7 other tracks to be dissected here, so I'll cease gushing over "In Hell I Will Rule" and get to the album as a whole. It's pretty consistent, as was For Mircalla, with "The Masque of Satan" and "My Will Be Thine" being the most immediately accessible right out of the gate, which is a good way to introduce the listener to this new collection of tunes. "The Demon Lover" is perhaps a bit denser, but still fairly catchy and immediate, cementing the first half of the album as a midpaced, galloping romp, before getting on to the slower and denser second half. Admittedly, every album Howie Bentley's ever been a part of has taken me a while to fully enjoy, with Cauldron Born's debut taking the longest at around 15-20 listens, and this is no exception. On first listen it felt like the album totally fell off track in the second half and I was disappointed, but I remember having trouble getting into tracks like "The Exorcism of Tanith" and "All-Hallowed Vengeance" on For Mircalla, which was similarly structured, so I was sure to give the album several repeat listens, and like every other release of Howie's, they grew on me to a pretty significant extent.

I do still feel the first half is a bit stronger, as the second half has what I'd consider to be the two worst tracks on the album--in this case, the only ones I wouldn't consider absolutely fantastic, in "The Wizard's Pipe" and "The Witness," and for the fact that there's no analogous track to "Karnstein Castle," which was a really cool departure and probably my second favorite song from the first album, after "A Meeting in the Woods." This disappointment is largely wrapped up in the fact that Howie didn't contribute vocals to any of the songs on this album, as a change in perspective brought a new element to the album that wrapped it up perfectly. However, "Strange, but Beautiful" and the title track are still excellent, particularly the latter, which brings an ominous, Lovecraftian atmosphere on a level I hadn't heard from this project before. Phil's nasal, sorrowful yet sinister and unclean delivery coats everything beautifully throughout the album, of course, just as it did on the debut.

To clarify, even "The Wizard's Pipe" and "The Witness" are still very strong tracks, but the weird, robotic vocals in the verses of "The Wizard's Pipe" have always been off-putting to me (I'd heard the song before as it was the other demo song previously released), though the riffs and overall strong structure have grown on me and it is quite fun at times. "The Witness" is really just an issue with the chorus, where I dislike the stop-start, almost spoken word delivery used.

Anyway, the album is overall not a departure from the debut at all, with the exception of the aforementioned lack of a "Karnstein Castle." This is good and expected, as the project was never intended to really experiment with or expand on the heavy/doom genre, just to do it and to do it well, a goal they've once again passed with flying colors. I'd put it on an almost identical level to the debut in quality, as well, which means we've got another great offering, and essentially double the material to fawn over in this style! I just hope it doesn't take Howie another ten years to make another album, perhaps with another track where he does vocals! Perhaps the best thing I can say in support of this album is that it's a strong contender for my album of the year of 2020, despite an unprecedented inundation of new releases from bands I like having been released that year. Get this, and get this now!