Lucifer Master

This album destroys any false belief that black metal can’t be pummeling and heavy while still remaining grimy and blasphemous. Some may mistake this as black/death metal, bestial metal, or black/thrash metal. Every second on this album is pure filthy black metal. There is simply no other way to classify such droning, sacrilegious riffing.

Despite what the purists will tell you, the fact that this fucking thing is tuned to C means nothing in determining its classification. However, this album does display how tuning affects the character of the riffs. This fat sound adds disgusting atmosphere, and allows the repetitive riffs to carry weight even when they are played a third or fourth time. While there are black metal albums tuned to E that also repeat riffs endlessly without losing steam, these riffs are destined for the tuning of C, and it is clear that they, in particular, were successfully beckoned forth due to this choice. Rhythmically, while there are tempo changes, there are no traditional breaks or breakdowns here, and so any thrash or thrash hybrid is almost fully ruled out. The sparing use of the South American blast beat variations (the straight blast and the snare-first blast), coupled with the lack of rapid and jerky riff variations, further distances this monster from any claims of bestial lineage. (All worship and praise to these subgenres).

Any type of lengthy breakdown of individual songs or segments would be disrespectful to this album. Even giving it such a high rating makes me feel I am disrespecting its purity. The songs are simply repetitive in a way that must be described as barbaric. It’s a mind numbing formula, pick 2 eviscerating riffs, and play them back to back with no sign of variation or any intention to indicate that variation is or was a possibility. There is not one time where this lack of variation causes staleness to these songs (In the Sign of Evil delivers the same repetitive structure in E standard, and not a second of that is boring, either.) Some riffs, even those that are actually phenomenal and bring blissful joy, are not meant to be repeated throughout a song, but the riffs on this album have been summoned forth for that specific purpose. The drums are exactly as they should be, endless abuse for the player and listener. I can’t insist these aren’t triggered drums (my guess is they're not), but the variation in individual strikes of the drums (the snare and ride in particular) allows you to hear the primal nature of the very intention of the drummer to destroy the drum kit. Any lack of razor-sharp-ness in the drumming or drum recording could not be less relevant (they’re pretty damn tight, though).

Discovering albums like this gives me faith in the true nature of listening. There is always a fear of “am I only liking this album because of the year it was released/it’s the band’s first release/I listened to this early in the personal discovering of a particular genre,” or other placebo effect reasons. Randomly discovering an underground monstrosity released after 2000 (beyond the peak of any particular sacred subgenre) that isn’t the band’s first album reassures the true belief that the music itself is either devastating or it’s not (and in turn, reassures us that the classics really are just better on average). This volume of scripture leaves nothing to be desired.