Infernal Dominatio

I personally believe that the title of this album was a typo but the band just decided to roll with it instead of dealing with the embarrassment of a reprint.

This is Ezurate's first album, and it came out in 2000, which is right when this specific breed of uninspired norsecore-cloning crap USBM really came to fruition, much to the displeasure of everyone with 'good taste' in the black metal scene, and much to the pleasure of people like me who love stuff like Dark Funeral. This is completely amazing and I love this album. Even I can't believe that I'm actually saying this, because there's NOTHING really to set this apart from a million other godawful USBM bands who do essentially the same thing. I don't know, but Ezurate just do it BETTER, like how Coke tastes better when you drink it out of a cup with Captain Planet on it.

As you can imagine, this is, like mid-era (let's be honest, all-era) Dark Funeral, all blast beats and tremolo riffs. I'm amazed that the drummer even had a snare and ride cymbal left after the recording of this album. The guitarists' A and D strings must have snapped a thousand times during the guitar tracking. Holy christ is this simple music, but damn if it's not like candy to me. I suppose the reason that I love this album is because Ezurate managed to clone that Swedish sound better than anyone else while adding just enough early Emperor in the melodic department to result in one of my favorite little styles of black metal: hyperspeed norsecore with an epic, melodic touch. The music on this album is essentially what Emperor would sound like if covered by Marduk. I know that sounds like a horrible idea to everyone else but damnit it's just so great for me.

I'd feel worse about liking this if the riffs weren't just so damned MEMORABLE and the vocals and drums weren't so violent and the cover art weren't so cool. You can totally tell that this comes from the US and totally tell all the bands that Ezurate is worshiping, but it just DOESN'T MATTER because you're so caught up in the idiot grandeur of this music. It's right out of a bad fantasy novel: you can see the black dragons flying through the stormy night and the orcs fistfucking a random castle and every other godawful black metal aesthetic stereotype you can think of. And it's utterly great because of how honest this all sounds. Each member of the band sounds seventeen years old and totally obsessed with black metal and Dungeons & Dragons. Everything's played too fast and they all just sound so damned proud and happy to be recording a REAL BLACK METAL ALBUM, and that attitude is infectious and transfers to you, so it makes up for whenever the songwriting slips. But the fact is that the riffs are really good, the vocals are EXCELLENTLY delivered, and the overall atmosphere and attitude is flawlessly lucid. It's what more black metal should sound like: you know, the feeling that the players really like what they're doing and aren't phoning their shit in. Ezurate owns and 'Infernal Dominatio' makes me want to drink chocolate milk and read Tolkien and play air guitar on a rainy night.

To start, this album has riffs that sound just like darkthrone, marduk and dark funeral with no originality what so ever. This is very different from the demos this band released which were actually pretty good. I think this can be due to the fact that tony baron, an ex-member who played on this album who the band despises now, did all the lead guitars on this album. The previous recordings had blackthorn on guitar instead. The snare drum is too loud and sounds like a marching snare, the bass drums sound triggered and sometimes cannot even be heard in the mix. The bass guitar cannot be heard hardly at all, the guitars are too low and the whole production sounds like 4-track work done by a very amateur band. The music it self just does not appeal to me. I'm glad there was only 7 tracks on this album because if there was more i would probably have thrown it out the window because i was getting so annoyed. The music is all over the place and the vocals are sloppy, but are actually the only real decent thing on the album. I hope this band now that has different members will record something with a little originality next time.

Band: Ezurate
Album: Infernal Dominatio
Label: Forever Underground Records
Release Year: 2000

This is a CD demo from the US (Illinois) Black Metal band Ezurate. They play rather straightforward Black Metal - no keyboards or folk elements, just relentless attack. I hear a good deal of Bathory and older Mayhem influence here (not a bad thing by any means), but Ezurate has certainly added some of its own flavor to the mix.

As far as the music goes, it's quite competent. The drums are the standout here - they lead the attack, alternating between blasting and triumphant slower passages. The guitar and bass are good, too, and Ezurate has a lot of unit cohesion, allowing the band to move as one. The only real complaint I have in the music department is the vocals. They're pretty generic overall, and sound a bit disinterested in some places.

The real strength of Ezurate is the songwriting - there are seven songs here, and all of them suggest a high standard of composition. There's a lot of room for improvement, especially in some of the solos which seem a bit immature, but with some work Ezurate will be a truly worthy addition to the USBM hordes.

Standout tracks: "Baptism By Fire", "Season of the Witch".

Review by Vorfeed: http://www.vorfeed.net