Sabbat of Behezaël

Perverted Ceremony is a black metal band out of Belgium. Their debut full-length is called “Sabbat of Behezaël”, and it is completely rotten. This is “Drawing Down the Moon” worship at its best, and similar to what Void Meditation Cult did with “Utter the Tongue of the Dead”.

The first track, entitled “Intro”, is a slow buildup of swirling winds/noise and creepy organ. Also, the first thing we are ever introduced to is the unavoidable production fuzziness (more on this later). While, an almost drastically different style of track (no vocals/guitar/bass/drums) than every other track on the album, this track is incredible when it comes to foreshadowing the rest of the record. “Sabbat of Behezaël” is evil, and the band (a two-piece) wants you to know it immediately.

Nothing here is super complex or is overly impressive in a technicality sense. This album is focused on creating a mood/feeling, and that’s where this album succeeds. The guitars are super grimy. They are low and distorted. They pick along abrasively. This coupled with the Pulsing deep ditch digging bass is a dramatic force. The guitars also accentuate this low-end riffing with high-pitched wailing guitar leads (like 2:10-2:34 in “Black Fur Demoniac”) and bleating guitar noodling with a focus more on chaos rather than technical virtuosity (like 2:39-2:59 in “Whips of Impurity”). Sometimes there are also some keyboard strings or organ in the background (or like in the intro to “Crypt of Behezaël”), nothing overly prominent, but sauntering about in the background. This does nothing more than enhance the overall sound. The vocals are a mixture of low bestial warnings and loud-whisper caustic hissing. All of the songs are an amalgam of those various things, while being very adept at playing both fast and aggressively as well as slow and mesmerizing, and switching to and from those. Everything molds together perfectly. Everything is evil.

The production is a real winner here for me. I don’t know if this is a bad production on purpose (my guess) or just bad production. Regardless, this is bad production done right. Seeing as the album isn’t relying on catchy riffs or neo-classical soloing, but instead attempting to create the soundtrack to an evil ritualistic black mass sacrifice, the overarching fuzz and just general muddiness only seeks to enhance the overall muffled subterranean sound. I like how low the drums are in the mix. They’re not doing much more than pumping the music forward (an important ingredient though), so their placement in the mix helps you focus on everything that’s happening around them, as opposed to sounding like an offensive pummeling bantering ram - which lets the guitar and bass do that.

“Sabbat of Behezaël” is 9 tracks of candlelight, cold concrete, blood, and and vile nastiness. It wants to be Beherit, but it wants to be a little more barbaric, and maybe a little more messy. I think it does a pretty good job of getting there. None of the songs are especially memorable by themselves, but the album as a whole is dire journey into the depths.