Pastdespairfuture

Dark metal is a term about as nebulous and vacuous as it gets. While there does seem to be a bit of an overlap in terms of influences, mainly black, death and gothic metal, being allowed to use the same descriptor on Dimmu Borgir, Katatonia and Rotting Christ does feel weird. And yet the term is still being used by bands and zines alike, at least here in Germany. Named after Bethlehem's album Dark Metal, the term is often used to describe extreme metal bands with gothic influences, often with a more melodic and gloomy approach. And sometimes, it's used by bands to set themselves apart from the pack, which brings us to today's band: Sakramortem.

Brought to life in 2003, it took them 3 years, a demo and a few line-up changes before releasing their first and only album Pastdespairfuture. This album, intended or not, is actually doing a lot of groundwork for a completely different project. After Ben joining on vocals and bass, Sakramortem had quite a bit of influence on his solo project Fäulnis. Not only did they share members later on, the music is also very similar, which is why I consider this record to be the first Fäulnis album.

But enough of my nerdy fanboy-ism. Sakramorte is a really intense and emotional take on melodic black metal. The music is filled to the brim with nihilism, mental decay and despair, resulting in a very dark and possessive atmosphere. Right in the centre of the band's sound are Ben's vocals, which already offer the same hatred and desperation as found on any of the Fäulnis albums. While he sometimes attempts to actually scream his lungs out, he's fully aware that he doesn't really have a clue about singing techniques. Therefore him trying to actually do proper guttural vocals sounds quite nasty and unhinged. Luckily, he's also starting to develop his signature vocal style on this record, and is already delivering hard. Fuck technique, fuck singing, this guy's way better off just yelling at you with a passion that is yet to be met by someone else. In a way, it feels a lot like hardcore or punk yelling but with a blackened twist to it.

The music backing him up is quite interesting, as well. While the rare prog rock riffs are a fair bit out-of-place, everything else is blending together pretty nicely, forming a melodic, gloomy blend of melodic black and doom metal. Be it furious rage with blast beats and tremolos or slow, heavy meandering, the guys at the instruments can pull it off. Sure, the thing does sound like the home-recorded album of an amateur black metal band, but they do manage to capture my mind in their depressive, lethargic soundscape. Their mix of energetic, extroverted hatred and fragile, introverted moments of self-reflection come in such harmony that I simply can't stop admiring their efforts. I also admire that they didn't go the simple route. They could've gone with one riff and call it a day, but instead they are constantly fluctuating between tremolos, melodic black metal riffing and proggy experimentation that sometimes works nicely, sometimes breaks up the atmosphere a bit too much.

Sakramortem might've been a bit over-ambitious on their first album. They wanted to show all their ideas and skills in one go, so the musical basis ends up being fairly cluttered. They still manage to craft a very unsettling and somber atmosphere of depression and lethargy that I can get lost in and most of the other influences do make sense within the context of this release. A few acoustic guitars, gothic-esque clean vocals and other bits and bytes never hurt anybody, even though they should maybe leave that to Nocte Obducta, as they can make it work a lot better. There's also enough straight-forward melodic black metal to make up for the couple of failed experiments and if you're into Fäulnis, you will be very pleased to hear that Ben's vocals are very much the key aspect of a lot of the songs. His frantic yelling is hammering the nasty, nihilistic lyrics right into your skull. And I have to admit, I have a massive soft spot for that.