Belphegor – Blood Magick Necromance
Release: 2011Jan14 (US)
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Rating: 2.5/5
I’m just going to skip the opening paragraph and jump ahead to track 6, “Impaled Upon the Tongue of Sathan”—not just a shining example of over-production, but also of compromise. It sounds like this type of music Brian Posehn is making fun of in his “Metal By Numbers” song. Granted, most of the song is straightforward black metal, but there are parts that would make me want to pick pennies off the ground (if I was that kind of heavy music fan).
Now Belphegor’s older albums had that perfect balance of death metal, black metal, and blasphemous cheese. I remember hearing them, thinking, “oh man I gotta go worship Satan right NOW”. But not with Blood Magick Necromance. It’s way too clean and sounds like it wants to be post-(good)Dimmu Borgir. In fact, I’ll bet you can buy this album in Hot Topic (no offense to my friends that work at Hot Topic).
Okay, got that off my chest. So if you’re still reading, I will tell you about some of the pros of the album. The musicianship is top notch. There’s some interesting and intricate guitar work. There’s some synthesizer involvement, but it mostly falls to the background. The first track, “In Blood – Devour This Sanctity” is relentless, with lots going on. It’s a good song, but the production ruins what it could be. There are parts in “Rise to Fall and Fall to Rise” that totally and completely riff on Immortal‘s production (Peter Tagtgren may have had something to do with this—he produced this album and most of Immortal‘s studio releases) but other than that, it’s a decent slow anthem of evil. “Discipline Through Punishment” has way too much clean guitar to keep my attention. There’s some fairly technical guitar harmonies in there when it gets heavy, but are again ruined by the commercial-sounding production.
Most of the songs on Blood Magick Necromance are pretty good, but that doesn’t make it a good album. It has lots of potential in many different areas, but none of them quite meet the standards they’ve set in the past. Don’t waste your time with this album unless you’ve exhausted their older releases.
01. In Blood – Devour This Sanctity
02. Rise to Fall and Fall to Rise
03. Blood Magick Necromance
04. Discipline Through Punishment
05. Angeli Mortis de Profundis]
06. Impaled upon the Tongue of Sathan
07. Possessed Burning Eyes
08. Sado Messiah
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