Symphony Satanikka

This is one of the best fusions of black/death metal I have ever heard. Totally evil sounding, totally heavy, with great head-banging riffs, awesome solos, DEEP death metal growls to rival Incantation and awesome dual vocals. I am extremely hard to please with metal but this album is such a breath of fresh air that I am honestly astounded it hasn't received a better reception. ATMOSPHERE is the name of the game here, so often lacking in extreme metal these days that this is a rare gem. They have achieved such a brilliant dark, evil, horror type sound to this album like Abruptum and Burzum did, albeit this is very different to those bands.


the opening track Infernal Necromancy starts off with kinda typical thunder/rain/bells sound effects, but they set the mood well and they don't go on for too long. The song then goes into some blisteringly heavy, down-tuned-to-buggery death metal that is as good as the masters. It integrates black metal styled riffing and keyboards perfectly and I'm not usually a fan of keyboards in metal. The tapping solo in this song is perfect and the rest of the solo's sound totally awesome. towards the end is this stripped back death metal riff that if you don't start banging your head, you're not into metal.


The rest of the album is in similar style to this song but different enough to never get boring. It's just consistency. They perfected their formula and stuck with it, executing it in perfection.


I'd say this is for fans of early Deicide, early Mayhem, Abruptum, early Incantation, early Immortal, Blasphemy, early(!!) Impaled Nazarene and maybe some other brutal Aussie bands like Bestial Warlust, Destroyer 666, Nazxul etc.

It’s hard to speak intelligently about such an unintelligible release, and even harder to separate into distinct components such a disjointed and chimeral frankenstein’s monster of conflicting and unequal parts. Darklord is a very strange hybrid of raw black metal and gutteral death metal, with some blisteringly fast and technical leads thrown in to completely confuse genre purists.

The black metal elements here include all the cheesy idioms of the genre that make people laugh when they hear agonizingly typical attempts at being “evil” brought to (un)light such as distant tolling bell sounds, thunder and rain samples, and buzzing simple minor guitar riffs played right into the ground as they become weighed down by their complete lack of originality. Just when you reach for the stop button and sharpen your axe to destroy the cd, a chugging detuned death metal riff will come along, complete with gurgling obtuse death metal vocals. Minutes later, the black metal sound comes back, this time with well-played but silly keyboards mirroring the guitar riff, and suddenly a jubilantly thrashing balls-to-the-wall guitar lead whirls out of left field.

Confused yet? The songs stay at level of disjointed style. Unlike bands like Diabolical Masquerade, Bethlehem, Abigor, or some Emperor or Satyricon, the clashing of styles here doesn’t serve to create a new or original mood, nor does the construction of the songs and their disparate elements mould something intriguingly strange, as is the case with bands like Fantomas or Mr. Bungle.

Despite the varying styles, jarring changes in mood and sound, and faltering approach to songwriting, by about 1/3 of the way through the album, you know all the ingredients used to create this sound. It becomes strangely boring, and quickly predictable as riffs and styles wash against each other with no new ideas to set one song apart from any other.

I give this points for trying to be original: all the elements here could have been handled differently to create something possibly akin to early Arcturus. The musicians here are talented, especially the flashy lead guitarist, but they are not inspired. Skip this unless you want it as a conversation piece or a ‘guide to how not to try something new.’