Triumph of Evil

Poland's Holy Death seemed to have initially missed their mark here for their release of Triumph of Evil. Even with good releases, timing seems to be a key focus; who, when, where, how, and here: why the hell not? But the ones who did get a chance to listen to their early release should think differently. Apparently they started the studio recordings on June 6th, 1996, so maybe their timing wasn't so off. And then there is a small rant in the booklet re-release about Head Not Found records from Norway releasing this initially on CD, though in unauthorized form as well.

The music presented is a mid-paced and slower form of black metal placed right smack in the middle of a concentration of faster bm. At times they play along the lines of something similar to what Samael did on Blood Ritual and the slower sections on Worship Him for comparative sense, but they definitely have their own identity with this release. Triumph of Evil can lure you with a catchy song writing structure, slower music that requires more introspection, along with some snippets of sounds and some keyboards that are used for the most part sparingly to heighten the atmosphere.

There's only six tracks here, but spanned across forty something minutes of gradual, heightening music. The song writing has a selective simplicity to it. Using basic and sometimes repeated structure to maintain a dark, sinister tone. The vocals stream overtop of the music and can be of the tour-de-rasp type, with some deeper from-the-throat tendencies, and also switch to higher pitched straining-from-pain extensions as well. They include some clean spoken vocals that have an abundance of effects on them, this includes male on their own, and also female vocals in spoken form at another point as well.

The guitars guide Triumph with reckoning force, pitting the music up against slower strumming, catchy qualifiers, and faster strums that can do a lap before you can blink an eye. Maybe not that fast, but the drumming still works with a mid-pace tempo even when the guitarist will use faster notes, and he includes galloping double bass during some of the more mid-paced and catchier tracks as well. There are clean guitars on the beginning of 'The Ultimate Sacrifice' that remind me in similar fashion to some of the acoustic sections of earlier Mortuary Drape. Band member Asphodelus duals as guitarist-bassist, which I think works to the benefit of the album. Like a two-player card game played by yourself: you know all the moves and strategies, making one move at a time yet keeping in mind what your 'other' self is thinking simultaneously. Making them prominent in some areas and working around the guitars, but with the intention to make the guitars win all along and come out with the most decorated hand. 'The Son of the Gloomy Truth' uses bass lines that will finish with a fill instead of the guitar, and 'Without Mercy' has a cool bass part in the beginning, which seems to work more intricately around the strumming guitars, then together as the song goes into its own rhythm.

There are keyboards placed strategically during the evolving time span. The beginning intro to 'The Journey' starts out with church bells, thematic choirs, along with intermittent thunder and lightening and whispered vocals. The second track has a sound bite from a raging battle with clinging swords, rambunctious horses, and warriors heaving and hoeing for their lives, then a big sweaty cheer (the triumph of evil I presume) to open up to metal music. The fourth track starts out with, this time, some harder to guess sounds. It appears to have bubbling water, mixed with quick, fading, echoey female screams and blended, distorted vocalizations in the background. So whether they are adding sound bites or actual keyboard playing, it seems to keep to itself, except when it has something important to say and guides the recording for the majority with a well devised argument.

Triumph of Evil is a great from-start-to-finish black metal album with the same ideologies as its faster bm counterparts. The corpse paint and evil agenda is here, yet with music that plays at more of a mid and slower pace and can get the job done just as well.