Compendium Infernus

These guys get an unnecessarily bad rap, I think- yeah, Diabolical Breed would never at any point have been a first-tier band, but I still find their style of low-budget symphonic black metal a lot more pleasing than similar entries by bigger bands, for some reason. They feel more genuinely black metal than nearly anything on Nuclear Blast or Century Media, for one, and there's enough idiosyncrasies in their style to make 'Compendium Infernus' worth at least a casual look.

Granted, many of the quirks in this are due to the very questionable production choices; namely, the vocals and guitars. The former are very oddly quiet, like this was supposed to be a funeral doom album, and I have no idea what's going on with the tone on the latter- it feels like the synths are a sonically bigger presence than the guitars in a lot of cases on this album, which is something of a shame as there are some neat riffs here and there. Definitely, though, this is a synth-based album; Diabolical Breed is heavily symphonic to the point where guitars are really just a supporting instrument. I'd be more annoyed by this if the songs weren't actually pretty good.

The basic style is old Dimmu Borgir meets old Emperor and not much else apart from some modern polish owing to the album's '04 release date. The tracks are pretty straightforward: various synths form the bulk of the melodic interplay while guitars are more of a supporting instrument, bulking up the root notes of the melodies but generally staying out of the way. It's pretty fast, direct music; while the tracks are long, they don't really feel interminable and Diabolical Breed is smart enough to put some tried-and-true rhythm and tempo variations in basically every song to keep the listener interested. There's no unnecessary lingering on any one passage in this, which I appreciate in what's typically a pretty long-winded style of extreme metal. I mean, it's mostly tremolo riffs and blasts, but were you expecting something else?

I would never say that this is high on my list, but it's a more decent album than most give it credit for and is a worthwhile item for symphonic black metal fans to look at. It's $5 basically everywhere now, so there's no reason not to at least try it. Entertaining if not exactly an artistic triumph.