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Sacramentum > The Coming of Chaos > Reviews
Sacramentum - The Coming of Chaos

Massive downgrade, fuck off - 22%

Mikesch Lord, December 1st, 2023

Yay, Sacramentum! I am so ready to be enchanted again, to fly through moonlight and snowstorms and ancient caverns with the... wait a second... what the fuck is this? Ouch. This hurt. My heart hurts. My head hurts. I can't feel my legs. Somebody got some ice for me? Cursed be the hand that made thee, you poor and cheap artistic insult. After releasing one of the best Swedish melodic black metal albums of all time, Sacramentum must have gotten pretty tired of being absolute geniuses with a throne in the heavens and delivered a pretty mediocre and boring second album that offered some thrash and melodic death metal sections that should have never seen the light of day. According to the liner notes of a re-release, they were very tired of what the black metal scene had become with all the cheesy keyboards and vampire capes and decided to deliver a more straight to the point death metal album as sort of a rebellious statement.

Fuck you and fuck your statement. This album is underwhelming, predictable, crippled, uninspired and produced by someone that hates this music more than my mother. What kind of a snare sound is that supposed to be? Clean, disinfected, disciplined, out of touch with dynamics and atmospheres of any sort. Do you like your riffs watered down and versed in all the wrong aspects of fake coolness? Absolutely disgusting. The compositions themselves are drowning on too long without getting to the point. If there had never been a "Far away from the sun" and this was inspected like a debut album, it would still suck so much ass.

Do I smell some Dark Tranquility in this? Could be, although it's better to stick to the original than to believe anything these vulgar and stale knock off riffs have to say. It's hard to grasp how little this albums matters to me. I gave this thing more chances than it deserved because of its magnificent predecessor but we both failed to connect. It's pretty frightening how unspeakably UGLY melodic death metal can be when it is worked over by the wrong hands. And don't get me started on the thrash aspect of things. Most of the time, whenever an extreme metal band returns to their thrash roots, they ran out of ideas. Sacramentum most certainly did.

The flow and the stream of the debut was replaced by a hacked up presentation of forced aggression, even the rasped echoy vocals don't seem to be themselves anymore. I am all for reinventing yourself when you played yourself into a corner. But I am also in favor of calling out a bad record. This is bad. It is not engaging, passionate or wild. Congratulations, Sacramentum. You made your statement. But I'm not sure if folks heard it the same way you did. I wish I could vomit and shit the memories of this album out like a disease.

The absence of chaos - 56%

Felix 1666, September 11th, 2020
Written based on this version: 1997, CD, Century Media Records

The chaos theory says that smallest changes of the initial conditions can lead to very big impacts on the whole system. It is a fact that the wing-beat of a butterfly is able to cause a hurricane. “The Coming of Chaos”, released by Sweden’s Sacramentum in 1997, confirms the theory, but unfortunately exactly the other way round. The entire work sounds as if slight changes during the song-writing process could have resulted in a much better full-length.

Sacramentum’s album shares the destiny of a couple of outputs of Lord Belial. On the one hand, it does not appeal to the mainstream. On the other hand, it cannot really suppress its weakness for melodies that take a lot of the otherwise attainable vehemence of the material. Admittedly, from time to time the more or less melodic touch of the compositions helps them to develop a powerful yet catchy appearance. “Portal of Blood” combines the melodic side and the general force of the Scandinavians in an exciting manner. Nevertheless, it happens too often that the band stops fighting when the battle is only half won. Murderous riffs are missing and unforced errors add insult to injury. It’s actually no big deal that “Abyss of Time” is nothing else but a useless intermezzo. But located on the fifth of nine positions, it hurts the flow of “The Coming of Chaos” significantly. Moreover, the title track with a playtime of more than 13 minutes is rather a waste of time than a regular song. It seems as if the band wants to teach us that the chaos has arrived. Thus, the dudes pressed it into the strangest available tones. Honestly, this sound collage just sucks and generally speaking, there are no chaotic elements in Sacramentum's sound.

The vocals are raw, of course, but they lack charisma and any kind of individuality. In addition, the material is characterised by an almost complete absence of atmospheric elements. I know this is not a pure black metal work. It connects elements of the unholy trinity thrash, death and black metal. Nonetheless, I miss a spooky, infernal, nightly or whatever aura. Sacramentum’s songs appear to me like songs of a rock band that have accidentally become too harsh. There is no outburst of energy, no true devotion to the darkest side of metal and no compositional shrewdness.

Yes, the more or less conventionally designed songs (number 1 to 4 and 6 to 8) do not suffer from major defects, but they also fail to whet the appetite for more. Especially Sweden has so many bands that are able to link the sonic form of Armageddon with the most bizarre, most monumental or most morbid melodies - Dissection, Necrophobic and so on. Sacramentum follow these legends with a considerable gap. Perhaps they did so because they had remarkable clairvoyant powers and intended to avoid the Covid 19 shit already at the end of the 20th century? Who knows? The only thing I know is that Sacramentum published an under-average work in 1997. So now it’s time for my personal interpretation of the chaos theory. It does not need more than “Mirror Black”, Necrophobic’s advance track of their new album, to listen to brilliant music again.

Blackened stars of a dying sky - 72%

MarbhDamhsa, March 20th, 2011

At times, this is almost up to the caliber of Far Away from the Sun...It's all there, the purposeful sense of melody, the flowing, almost ambient, melodies wielded with technical precision, and the ever-so-subtle Iron Maiden influence. Not nearly as much as, oh say, Dissection, but it was there on the debut and slightly more so here (more on that in a bit).

In ways, this has a leg up on it's predecessor with something that took me by complete surprise -- THRASH RIFFS! Yup in adding slightly more death metal to their sound, they threw in a few awesome counterpoint riffs that complement the tremolo riffs very nicely like in the first two songs. Now, this isn't to be confused with a Desaster; there aren't that many riffs as to classify this as black/thrash. However, enough of these counterpoint riffs were used as to keep the album (relatively) interesting.

But that brings me to the other end of the praise. There are some ideas that don't make a whole lot of sense, especially in the context of Black/Death metal. The pseudo-whispering/muttering passages in "Dreamdeath" come to mind. They seem to dominate the soundscape instead of incorporating with the music, which doesn't work too well and thankfully doesn't occur too frequently. I also don't get a whole lot of enjoyment out of the title track. Yeah there are riffs and all, but not enough to sustain a song for 13 minutes. Focus is sorely lacking.

I mentioned an Iron Maiden influence. This crops up from time to time as the (mercifully) rare gothenburg riff. It's not done the best, but at least it isn't sonic abuse. There are good melodies at work here, and there's still a pretty solid backbone under these riffs. More so than Arch Enemy, but this is still sort of a musical regression. Sorry, kids...Dissection has you beat here.

Highlights...Despite the previously mentioned gripe, "Dreamdeath" and "...As Obsidian" have the strongest riff base - including well timed pauses a la Watchtower after the aforementioned spoken parts in the former. "Abyss of Time" sounds like it could have been on the last album...the blast beats are well placed and don't threaten to overpower everything. The choir in "Black Destiny" manages to work well too.

Overall, this is a good record, it's just not as enjoyable as what came before. Storm of the Light's Bane does this better in the same way that Far Away from the Sun did The Somberlain better. This is still worth looking into, just prepare to be slightly let down.

Improved from the debut...Organized chaos! - 85%

natrix, March 14th, 2004

With Andy Larocque producing, I feel he's brought the best out of Sacramentum and helped them further develop their trademark sound. Whereas the blasting on the first album really lost my attention, on here it's more controlled, and the guitars sound more powerful. Every element on here is the same as on the debut, just the music has changed a little.
For highlights, I'd have to pick "As Obsidian" and "To the Sound of Storms." "As Obsidian" has their frantic riffing and use of strange chords further magnified, and a nice little thrash riff played before the chorus. "To the Sound of Storms" is massive, especially the riff over the blast beats. The midsection is very well placed, and one of the best parts of the album.
The closer "The Coming of Chaos" is basically some weird chords played over and over again, with a strange clean riff popping up in the middle, then it all melts into the backdrop of wind and shit crashing around. Fitting for the title, but this noise goes on far too long. If it would have faded out after a while, it would have been great, but it goes on for over 13 minutes. This is too much.
Some parts still blur together, but they really cleaned up their act for this album. I love Far Away From The Sun, but I don't think I could sit through part two. Oh, and nice lyrics!