Invocatum Furae Diabolis

This kind of reminds me of a band like One Master in that Teratism heartily embraces all the stereotypes of USBM but really manages to make it their own through a great sense of songwriting, pacing, and individual style that elevates them above rather bland contemporaries like Kult Ov Azazel and Legions Of Astaroth. There's very little that Teratism does which is wholly new, but the way they arrange and rearrange conventional black metal elements makes 'Invocatum Furae Diabolis' a really interesting listen. I'm not about to suggest that this is essential, but it's certainly a very worthwhile CD to come out of such a generally plain style.

There's a certain daring to this CD that I appreciate; there's a lot of riffs per song, tempo, rhythm, and key changes are dramatic and abrupt, and even the shortest tracks feel very well developed and whole. This is essentially traditional USBM filtered through a prism of somewhat more progressive songwriting than usual; you have the general Swedish derived riffing patterns with some extra Krieg-style rawness and aggression thrown on top, but this isn't nearly as binary and straightforward as a lot of USBM. The tracks on this album are generally quite varied, both within themselves and between each other; the band never drills the same idea into the ground too long. The tracks feel very heavily composed even though they're made up of relatively simple riffs; the structures are intricate and fairly linear a lot of the time and the overall aesthetic, while still well within the confines of traditional black metal, is well executed and clearly a big concern to the band.

A lot of the quality of this album arises from a sort of Dark Angel-style unwillingness to repeat something exactly the same way twice; there's a lot of dynamic stuff going on in this record, particularly in the deft, natural drum performance which is very willing to switch things up to provide variation. While the riffs are rarely absolute killers, they're all at least good, and more importantly, well placed in the songs and aligned in a way which drives to a very logical and precise conclusion. I like how organically the songs develop; they rarely end in the same place they began and really have a narrative feel which is appealing to me. Yeah, this isn't incredibly sophisticated stuff from a stylistic standpoint, but the band's quirky delivery and undeniably solid writing really takes it above and beyond similar artists.

This does not reinvent the wheel in any way but it's a very good album from a band that does deserve more attention than they get from the metal scene. It's really solid shit which should appeal to any underground black metal fan. Like One Master, this is the sort of album which isn't easily described, so give it a listen and try for yourself.