Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan

Inquisition is a band that has released mediocre albums and mediocre songs on good albums and in all of their career they got everything right just once. Sorta like Nile did with "Annihilation of the Wicked". I think I just insulted the fans of Inquisition and Nile at the same time. Keep the hatemail coming, that shit makes me hard. Anyway, this album most certainly is the thing that they got right like winning a goddamn destiny jackpot. It's the perfect mixture of ass kicking, perfectly flowing rock monsters and the famous TWÄNNNNG trademark chord, the drums are not overproduced into the realm of clinical and sterile shittiness and Dagon sounds powerful and mystical enough to get your foot stomping and your passion burning.

As much as I hate to admit it, Inquisition are basically the AC/DC of the black metal world. Sure, their riffs aim at something greater and can be filled with a lot of symbolism, interpretation and downright atmospheric majesty. But they still are simple as fuck and catchy as double fuck and not even their composer can deny that. I don't think that even Manowar have composed a song that was sticking this hard in my ears like the title song of "Invoking...". What I love about this record is its double edged delivery. You can drown in an introverted melancholy while walking through a forest of your choice or just bang your fist on the table in drunken hysteria, this album goes both ways. It's a mass and a party at the same time. I just used the word "party" in an Inquisition review and if Dagon and Incubus ever manage to find me, they will kick the living shit out of my screaming little nerd body until my skull is completely pulverized.

When compared to other works of Inquisition, the songwriting and the production deliver everything that is best for this band. Hit after hit is dancing around in an almost comical show of memorable melodies that never border on parody because powerful and effective riffing still kept its dignity in all of that accessibility. The drums are nothing special because they don't have to be. They are always exactly where the guitars need them to be and that's completely enough. It is not that important if they are blasting or grooving because the full hearted riffs are the stars of the show anyway. Dagon's throaty, shamanistic croaking takes the voice of Abbath into extreme territories until the general idea reaches its logical conclusion. There is not much to praise here because either you "get" it or you don't.

Personally, I don't need another Inquisition album in my life. They said everything they had to say and that is worth hearing with this album, everything else in their big ass repertoire contained some minor or greater flaw and was just not doing it for me. There are no riffs like Inquisition riffs in this universe again and you owe it to yourself to at least check them out. This strange, addictive and highly effective brew of blackened heavy metal riffs or rather heavy metal influenced black metal riffs found its best performance and presentation on this album. Some virgin blood, anyone?

Sophomore albums are weird. The ideal is to refine your style without changing too much, or too little. Too little, and you'll leave the impression that you don't have many ideas. Too much, and it comes across like you don't have an identity, or a "sound." Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan strikes the perfect balance. This is definitely the same band that gave you Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult but it's its own beast entirely.

The album begins similarly to the debut with a fake out. "Embraced by the Unholy Powers of Death and Destruction" begins with a furious whirlwind riff before going into a Beherit-like verse riff. The track screeches to a halt halfway through with the drums cutting out and a nice, squealing lead over top a melody that conjures up images of a room lit only by a single candle, its flame flickering slowly. Such a jarring shift shouldn't work at all, let alone seem so seamless. And yet it does.

Tracks like "Enshrined By Cryptic Temples of the Cult" and "Hail the King of All Heathens" showcase perhaps the biggest Inquisition trademark outside Dagon's croaks: major key riffing. The second riff of the latter is just downright jubilant, highlighting the glory and majesty of Satan's might. The former juxtaposes quite nicely with the dark and morbid opening track.

If the previous album's lo-fi production gave the sense of a fog encroaching, this one sounds as if it's been scorched by Hell's unholy fire. This album sounds HOT. While Immortal may be a big influence, their aesthetic of frosty, frozen grimness certainly isn't.

Every track on here does exactly what it needs to. "Kill With Hate," my least favorite track, in no small part because it sounds the least like Inquisition (foreshadowing what the next album would bring), is utterly brutal and devastating and works so nicely coming after a more triumphant song. Its double-tracked vocals add a flair of Hellish torment. "For Lucifer My Blood" fits its lyrical theme perfectly; it's a slow, deliberate ritual. It also pushes that sweet main riff to the brink with how many times it repeats, but switches at the exact moment before atmospheric repetition becomes tedium.

I feel I should single out "The Realm of Shadows Shall Forever Reign" because it was the first Inquisition song I'd ever heard, and is quite possibly my favorite (insomuch as I am able to choose just one). It begins with a bouncy riff that builds tension for what's to come. The verse riff is pure speed and fury. When you hear a line like "killing feeble Christians all in Master Satan's name," what is really a shlocky dime-a-dozen black metal lyric feels real. The bridge riff (right after Dagon says "PRAISE!" instead of just going "BLEUGH!") is the darkest thing I've ever heard. It sounds like all light being extinguished and I still get goosebumps no matter how many times I hear it.

And while Dagon is the attention-grabbing member, Incubus is anything but a weak link. He plays exactly the right beat for each riff and his little double bass flourishes are unparalleled. "For Lucifer My Blood" features what sounds like both bass pedals hitting at the same time for a huge BOOM effect in a rhythm that enhances the tension and atmosphere so much. The drum fills in the latter part of the opening song (right after Dagon says "like the black winds") sound like Heaven crumbling, ablaze with Satan's might.

This album is absolutely essential. If you care about black metal in any way, this is a no-brainer must-hear. It may not be as atmospherically driven as the debut, but this is still an album very much steeped in an obscure aura of darkness and blasphemy. If by some slight chance you've never heard this undeniable classic, do so immediately. Skip school, call off work, stand up your significant other and spend the next 46 minutes or and enter this world of cryptic death.

Caught halfway between the realms of thrash and black metal, most metal fans would expect to encounter Sodom, Destruction and perhaps Venom. Further towards the black metal we’d maybe find Immortal, and straying towards thrash we’d come up against Toxic Holocaust and Kreator. However, there exists a world inbetween these two realms that serves as the abode of one band alone: the world of Inquisition.

Comparable to - but still completely different from – Immortal, this American/Colombian duo has become the favourite band of a lot of “trendy” and more mainstream black metallers based upon their recent efforts. However, their best album of all time is largely overlooked, despite the fact it contains some of the best musicianship outside of the mainstream black metal scene and the most innovation on a black metal album since Strid’s self-titled EP.

“Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan” showcases the dirtiest and strangest guitar timbre on any album ever too. It works well, perhaps too well, but it’s a lot to digest at first; more overdriven and thick than distorted and treble based, though this is perhaps to compensate for the lack of a bass guitar. One would not expect such a tone to allow the riffage to shine through (see Revenge), yet the riffs are not only distinguishable but immensely pleasing. Some songs are based on all-out fury (such as “Kill with Hate”) whereas others take a more melancholic approach (“Hail the King of all Heathens”). Both styles are undertaken with the utmost talent and skill, and are accompanied by a plethora of drum beats. Incubus really shows his talent here, be it in the form of the violent blasts on the aforementioned third track or the spontaneous fills and double bass work on “For Lucifer My Blood”.

Dagon’s vocals are another pleasing oddity on this album. Were they used in any other band or atop any other music, I’d smite the shit out of them. However, the low guttural voice that sounds strangely similar to what Spanish, ex-crack addicted Jango Fett might sound like works beautifully, allowing the lyrical themes to be conveyed with the perfect balance between annunciation and rasping.

The guitar work is extremely skillful throughout too. Though the melodies do not at first strike the listener as particularly technical or impressive, one later remembers that they are played on one guitar alone. Be it the stretched chords on “The Realm of Shadows…” or the venomous tremolo picking and solo on “Embraced by the Unholy Powers…”, Dagon’s axe-work is undeniably top-notch.

A near-perfect album. Nothing is left untouched here; no musical stone is left unturned. In fact, even every pebble within a 100-mile radius is utterly blasted away by the musical force that is Inquisition.

It is probably ironic that my favorite black metal album, Transilvanian Hunger, which utterly captivated me on first listen, is responsible for all that is terrible in black metal for the past 15 years. Darkthrone themselves understood this, that nothing "more" could be done in that direction, which they promptly turned their backs upon (with what results, one has seen).

Transilvanian Hunger, because it is so "minimalist," *appears* to have thrown out the metal tradition and to be in-itself an entire style. The result of its influence has been a disastrous paint-by-numbers of 4,000 bands that "sound like Transilvanian Hunger." Inquisition is NOT one of those bands, for the precise reason that they are thoroughly a metal band. Let's see what that means.

Inquisition basically operates in two modes--ugly, ugly, and simple grinding/blasting, with basic riffs and vocals in the barked/croaked Von style; and on the other hand, slow and meditative passages with long and "pretty" riffs, but which remain absolutely integrated into the rhythm of the song and are a kind of commentary on the condensed blasting parts.

What's interesting about this band is that they began as an extremely riffy, complicated death-thrash band in the style of early Sepultura. The first demos are absolutely bursting with semi-technical and furious stringwork. Now Inquisition make two-piece (guitar and drums) black metal cut from the simplest material, but every second of the song is still supposed to "count." That is, while other bands will bore me with long ambient or noise pieces in the illusion that I will find this to be "evil," Inquisition give even their most boneheaded and primitive riffs an intensity of performance and conviction, so that one is not waiting around for the "pretty" riffs exclusively. In fact, one of the best moments on the album is the switch from an unaccompanied, swirling guitar part into a blunt and idiotic mosh part ("Rituals of Human Sacrifice for Lord Baal"). I believe it is their emergence from an extremely riff-oriented style which makes this simpler music so entertaining, and belies its "ritualistic" pretensions.

In songs like the title track, one can hear (in contrast) what went wrong with newer Graveland. Mid-tempo, croaked vocals, cycling short riffs... on the surface, the sound is the same, but the whole *point* is different here. In Graveland, I'm not sure why all this is being thrown at me, but in Inquisition, the beat and alternating of melody with micro-riffs are not just layers of digitalia; the point is to get the listener headbanging!

This music shouldn't work at all, and the way it is put together is an acquired taste for sure, but the best Inquisition songs really put to shame all recent black metal that is too little creative to forge its own style. Inquisition's "style" is so offputting that it is only here at all because it *does* work phenomenally well.

Released on Warhammer Records in 2002, this is the bands second full length album, and one killer fucking record of unholy hatred, cult pagan desecrations, and goat worshiping misanthropy. Musically there isnt much technicality, but a strong direction, and individual sound is displayed very well, and keeps to a Thrashy Death Metal influenced Blackend sound. Like the second song (Enshrouded by the Cryptic Temples of the Cult) which has a variety of guitar styles, played and written well I should add, that shows an elevated level of musicianship from the bands previous albums, while retaining similiar elements to the bands previous full length, or the 5th song (the title track) which really just puts forth all the sounds this band has to offer in one fluid, powerfull, old school Black Metal track.

This album has a great feel, and a very individualistic sound that varies between militaristic, slightly melodic, raw blasting metal, and a near ambient quality in the repetition of certain songs great chord progressions. The vocals are another aspect that really gives the band its own sound. Its hard to desrcibe what style the vocals are, or even what they sound like, since the vocals overall keep to one voice that speaks slow, and has a droneing quality reminiscent of none. Odd, creative, and fucking unholy the vocals fit the music extremely well, and give to it more reasons why this band kicks as much ass they do.

The druming is executed well, and comes off sounding quite tight. Not a whole lot of rolls, or fills, but what is present on the recording perfectly fits, and enhances the sound with its pounding rythms which are in the least better then most bands.

So in all, this is one awesome cult album that blends third generation black metal with old shool Metal worship, and the creativity of two good song writers. Two devil horns raised in blasphemy to this one...