Sabbat of Behezaël

The debut LP from Belgium’s Perverted Ceremony is a rare thing in this day and age; no gimmicks, no excess of surplus ideas, and no gratuitous aping of an older school tradition. In fact, they are so confident with the material on ‘Sabbat of Behezael’ that they tried to supress our ability to hear it beneath demo quality production. And I’m afraid it’s there that we must start when dissecting this specimen. Recording and producing a halfway decent sounding album is easier than ever in this day and age. But it has led to an unremarkable uniformity across many different styles, with little to no consideration given for the kind of mix that would suit the music itself. Instead everyone seems fixated on what a wider audience expects a heavy guitar based album to sound like and mixes accordingly.

One way around this for budding young artists is to once again trawl the past for clues as to how the future could be shaped. And that’s precisely what Perverted Ceremony have done here, with a demo quality mix reminiscent of Emperor’s early material. But this somehow manages to avoid sounding ‘like’ your standard black metal fudge. The reason is – of course – the music that lurks beneath the static. Rather than these pronounced aesthetic choices being a distraction (or a cover for lack of character) as they so often are, it’s as if Perverted Ceremony wanted to test the metal of ‘Sabbat of Behezael’ by holding it beneath a four-track mix to see if the material would still stand up regardless.

And stand up it does. ‘Sabbat of Behezael’ sits within that dark and primal tradition of American black metal of Demoncy and to a lesser extent Profanatica. Simple evil sounding riffs are worked through variations of speed and rhythm, layered with lead guitar harmonies. Although this album does not lack in rhythmic diversity, it really shines when a trance like chord sequence is picked up and run with, sometimes complemented by subtle low-end synths, other times by simple guitar leads. The repetition allows the listener to catch up with the music, and orientate their mind in the face of all the static.

Someone definitely sat in front of a drumkit during the recording of this album. They may have even played it for a bit in a way that connects up with the rest of the music. But it’s really more a suggestion of percussion than a dominant feature. In this sense the mix presents an interesting challenge for any competent drummer (as…ahem *checks notes* Morbid Messiah clearly is). Play too many complex fills and intricate rhythms and it gets lost in the fudge, but play too simplistically and the music loses all dynamism and drive. The result is a modestly balanced drum track that bolsters the riffs without outshining them; one that is only occasionally lost in the fray.

I’d stop short of saying Perverted Ceremony is bucking the trend or breathing fresh air all over my day. But they have reminded me of some underutilised virtues from black metal’s long dark past. Letting the lo-fi production qualities go some way to dictating the shape and form of the music sometimes yields interesting results. This self-imposed limitation that Perverted Ceremony have applied to themselves has resulted in some interesting and novel ideas that are sorely lacking on many of their more polished contemporaries. From the obscurity of the void, new life takes route.

Originally published at Hate Meditations