We Will Be Watching: Les cultes de Satan et les mystères de la mort

Finally, fifteen years after being recorded, Wampyrinacht’s full length debut has been unleashed upon the world. Jumping from ripping speed metal rhythms to more traditional eerie Hellenic black metal to interspersed moments of neoclassical shred, Wampyrinacht have really recorded something special and, at least to my ears, unique. The atmosphere is tremendously Greek in the best of ways despite the regular tempo and sometimes even style shifts within a song, with a doom metal dirge sometimes shifting to a keyboard-laden section of gloom to more neoclassicism to black metal again in a single stupendous long piece. “Ambitious” is probably the best word to describe the album; not content with just rehashing standard Rotting Christ or Necromantia tropes, Wampyrinacht have really shoved enough quality content into each song that attempting to describe it all individually would nearly require a section by section description, and as much as I hate schizophrenic bands that attempt something similar, Necrolord and Mantus really managed to avoid the jammed-together feeling that lesser songwriters evoke when doing something comparable.

Past the songwriting itself, some other things that deserve mention are Necrolord’s fantastic vocals and the solid production that gives the whole mix room to breathe without sounding too clean for comfort. While I don’t generally like the choice to forsake an old logo for text, in this one case it fits the sampled artwork (Luis Falero’s “Witches on the Sabbath”) fantastically, lending a nice touch of good presentation to the overall package. Classic Hellenic sounding stuff is more or less my favorite sort of black metal, and it’s great to hear so many killer additions to it this year (Wampyrinacht, Cult of Eibon, Caedes Cruenta, and more).

Originally written for howlingflesh.com.