Satanic Ceremony

How the fuck did this band go from blood-curdling death metal to some wimpy-ass black metal with toy keyboards? God damnit, they should have stuck to this style, even if it wasn’t entirely original. This demo alone obliterates everything I’ve heard by them thus far. It has the best production, the best riffs, the best atmosphere, the best vocals, and the best everything… simply put, it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. This is the reason why anyone should give two shits about this band. So yeah, those brightly-bolded full-lengths may look tempting, but no, stay away from those and go only for this.

Instead of sapping up the music with gimmicky keys, the band chose to lower the volume of them and use synths strictly as atmospheric backing. This is the way they should have kept doing it, because it adds a chilling otherworldly tone to the cavernous music at hand. These synths will make the night sky eclipse in crimson flames – so cryptic, so sinister, and so vintage. The guitars are on the opposite end bringing down the cave with a deafening guitar tone; the earth itself trembles in fear. Not only that, but the thick riffs protruded by the guitarists are actually addicting and well structured, if not simple and diabolical. Bass support is idly audible, but it blends in on the edge of the guitar distortion.

The real menace is the singer, and I knew this mother fucker always had some badass growls. Even on the debut full-length he let loose some growls that ended up being the best part of that album. On here, he growls like a demon – thickly and sickly – like he’s in the back of a cave roaring incomprehensibly. With this, the atmosphere is all set to make you increasingly uncomfortable. While the singer is the clearest aspect, the drummer is right behind him, and this is probably the only non-threatening piece of the music. With all the evil living everywhere else, the drumming here is stale, redundant, and doesn’t fit with the production at all. Everything is thick, but the drum kit sounds cold and frail, which makes me want to break it to pieces.

WHAT THE FUCK!? Why would the band change their sound from this? I’m still astounded how such quality could be denied and dismissed in favor of the juvenile black metal crap they began putting out after this. This is one of the worst upsets in metal history that I’ve ever witnessed – there is no logic involved. Anyone who thinks this band isn’t worth jack, please check out this demo. Everything else, just tell it to fuck off.