Death Triumphant

With this album Setherial made an important realisation, they brought some variety back into their music. In my opinion, the other albums that came after the classic debut “Nord...” all suffered from too much monotony and Dark Funeral copying. Despite all my negative expectations, I decided to check out “Death Triumphant” and I sure am glad I did. The production is very good, a very thick and powerful sound with plenty of pressure to it. Sounds really good when you play it at high volume. Keyboards are used occasionally but they have been mixed very low and therefore drown almost completely behind the massive guitar wall, one hardly notices them.

On “Death Triumphant” Setherial do not deviate from their standard Swedish melodic black metal sound but they’ve managed two crucial things: cutting down on the blast parts in favour of more varied song writing and adding more riffs to the songs than before. Not only does the added variety make the songs better, you can actually tell one song from another on this album. A third, and perhaps the most important aspect, is that the other the aforementioned factors make the listener come back for more. “Death Triumphant” is also Setherial’s shortest full-length (excluding the bonus track) and these shorter songs pack considerably more punch than many of the band’s earlier longer tracks.

Tracks like “The Limbo of Insanity”, “With Veins Wide Open”, “Relinquishment from the Unlighted Chambers” and the memorable chorus of the title track are fine examples of the wonders that holding back on the blast parts and instead emphasising more variety (including slower and heavier parts) can do. It makes the music more dynamic and interesting and this is something Setherial needed badly in order to break out of their tiresome blast-from-start-to-finish-while-copying-Dark-Funeral-as-faithfully-as-possible mould. Having said that, I want to make it clear that there’s still a lot of blasting on this album, the blast beat freaks will absolutely not be disappointed. I repeat, they haven’t forsaken their characteristic sound, there’s just more variety this time and it’s all for the better. “Curse of the Manifest” is the most typical “Setherial” sounding track on this album, almost non-stop blasting form start to finish with those typical high-pitched guitar melodies on top of the riffs. However, this track is under four minutes long, so it ends before it starts to get boring.

I have the digipack version, which contains a re-recording of “För Dem Mitt Blod”, an old track featured both on the band’s ´95 EP and on the “Nord...” album. This version isn’t as cold as the one on “Nord...” and the vocals aren’t as high-pitched either. Still not a bad version, although I think it’s been recorded only in order to let people hear Infaustus sing some old Setherial stuff. “Death Triumphant” is the best Setherial album in years!

The only good thing about the previous album was the cover, "Hell Eternal" had its single bright point in the last song and "Lords of the Nightrealm" was a total mistake. It seems that this awful serie finally stopped with "Death Triumphant" and Setherial is back with some good stuff, though still the musical quality of the first album of the band is out of its range.

Setherial is one of the bands that don't need any change to feel still fresh, though it doesn't mean that the freshness stays in the music. "Death Triumphant" is an usual album, whatever it means, and you should not look for new things in here. Actually, I don't know why this album seems more interesting for me than the previous one - probably it's the effect of better developped atmosphere and some tempo-changes, which are not a common thing in such music. The riffs stay not recognisable and surely not innovative, as if they were pulled out from a trash pile, where all the black metal bands leave what they don't use anymore.

It seems that the only good thing in the album is the specific atmosphere and some variety, which form already a step forward for Setherial. The riffs are still poor and without them the band will never join the best. Still, the album is worth hearing, even though it's not worth spending a fortune on.