Shoah

Catenatam Lucem are an obscure Finnish Black Metal group, here with their first official release. The album kicks off with an intro of industrial sounding noises for 39 seconds. It feels longer. After that we get a jerky start with the first song "Wounds", literally, as the tempo twitches and turns nervously, accompanied by shredding of the almost choked buzzsaw guitars and raspy, slightly strangled voice. Technically solid playing no doubt, but not really my thing. A pretty annoying track. It is very hectic and might go well for Enochian Crescent fans, maybe.

The next song "Delirium" surprises with an upgrade to the general volume and sound, beginning right in your face without much ado. The instruments sound better balanced with the drums rattling a bit more to the back than before. The song itself is catchier, still raw and quite technical, but not annoying like the previous one. The voice has a little more echo, which is good. I like the way the song plunges into a straight forward, atmospheric charge at 3:07.

Again the sound shifts with the following track, now a little more muffled and less boisterous as on the previous one. The voice sounds very high-pitched, little dry and a bit strangled, remainds me actually of Mayhemic Truth at times. There follow more vocal experimentations later on the track, taking a few pages from Attila Csihar's book. I like the feeling of the track especially when they do the slower, heavier parts. Which could sound a bit heavier, mind you.

"Orgiasm" comes next, sounding yet again subtly different. The guitar sounds more grating now. This alternates between heavy, doomy parts and faster bursts, before making a compromise towards the midpart. Not bad at all, but just somehow doesn't connect 100%. The slow, pounding part towards the end reminds me of Mysticum, which again makes me nod approvingly. A bit uneven performance.

The longest track of the lot, "Ultima Thule" clocks a respectable 9:40 minutes and sounds predictably epic... until 2:07 where they go showing off again. That bit makes me recall some of the more recent Enslaved stuff. It just fits Enslaved's sound better. I guess I'll grow to not frown it in a few listens. There's a spoken word part later in the song, followed by clean singing, it sounds all great and very epic and yet leave me wish the sound was heavier so it'd really crush!

Last song "Charger" is faster again for most of the time, going slower at times and generally showing the versatility of the song writers. Alas, it also breaks the mood set by the preceeding epic. They should've put that last and this earlier. Oh well.

All said, this is definitely worth checking out. The band has tremendous potential and I'm looking forward to hear more from them.