Bitva o měsíční trůn / Spectra

On this split, Celestia, who are becoming famed for their melodic and yet utterly ripping take on the French black metal sound, turn the rippage up a notch. The guitars are a blur of furious tremolo riffing, and the blastbeats last the entire length of the songs. It's almost as if someone built a grindcore-izing machine and fed a Celestia record through it. The vocals almost seem grind-ish in their repetitive structure as well (or maybe just reminiscent of that silly Nargaroth song where he repeats "I am a man" about twenty times). The usual melodic backdrops are here as well, but on "Spectra pt. II" they suddenly turn towards speed/thrash metal style crazy soloing, with some lightning-fast slide. Has to be heard to be believed, and this record just makes me more impressed with the breadth of Celestia's work. They've got the ideas *and* the technical mastery to make them work.

Inferno pay similar attention to background melody and guitar tone, but their style seems more derived from Darkthrone or Immortal--less complexity in the blastbeats, and hoarse, shouty Norwegian-style vocals. There's a touch of American doom metal in the slow parts, too, but that could be my imagination, because there are hardly any slow parts. The guitars, while obviously inspired by the Norwegian classics, are competent and fit well with the other elements of the music. There's also a nice little 46-second outro in case you hadn't got your horn fix today.

I'd give the Celestia part of this at least a 95 just for innovation, and while Inferno is good at what they do, I've just heard it all before, so they'd get about an 85. Definitely worth picking up, though, and for once the bands aren't drastically different--Celestia (and associated bands like Mortifera and Alcest) just happen to be travelling on a unique road these days.