Ekpyrosis

I’ve heard many things about this here SETHERIAL band, both positivism and negatory. Everything from “unoriginal, norsecore crap” to “‘Nord’ is the end-all-be-all Swedish black metal record!”, but in the end I know the only way I can find out for sure is to partake in their wicked wares on my own. Problem is, much of SETHERIAL’s material is damn hard to find here in the Divided States of American’t, so I put it in the back of my mind until the day came when I could check out this here “Ekpyrosis” album, to finally put an end to all this speculation once and for all.

So what does SETHERIAL have to say in this day and age?

It’s brutal…it’s fast…it’s impurely evil…and it’s EXPERIMENTAL??? Uh oh…seems the claws of potential maturity has overtaken these corpse-painted instigators. All that is MARDUK-y and more Swedish than blond supermodels in the buff is in full swing in this foray into head-crushing blasphemy, showing at least to this listener that a good portion of the bally-hooing at the group’s expense up ‘til “Hell Eternal” is rather spot on. There’s a lot to behold in this clusterfuck of a disc, where raw and violent BLACK FUCKING METAL takes on progressive arrangements, slower cruises through the underworld, and a sense of differentiation so noticeable that it’s all the more enjoyable on my end. There’s a time and place for mindless blasting, and while that’s all well and good, it would help to be able to do so without resorting to unintentional aping and mimery. That’s not to say that every inch of this album is strange meanderings; there are plenty of moments where blindingly savage guitars, speed-of-sound blast beats and demonic shrieks take on otherworldly coalescent means that definitely puts them head and shoulders about the other wannabe blasters that have been appearing ad nauseum the past few years. This will more than quench one’s hunger for Satanic destruction, where the likes of the mind-fucky “A World in Hell”, the monstrous “The Mournful Sunset of the Forsaken” and the pitch black “The Devouring Eye” bash you over the head in that patented Nordic fashion. And dammit if you don’t want it to happen.

So in the end I really liked this disc. Leave it up to one of the masters to put my faith in black metal back into as full a swing as possible. Two horns up.