Shockwave 666

This 7" was meant to come out when Abigor still existed as a band. The release came finally out after a year or so, but how is it as a swan-song for the Austrian elite black metal band?

Nothing special, I am afraid. Featuring a remix of 'Dawn of Human Dust', the song which originally appeared on 'Channeling the Quintessence of Satan' (1999). The original intro part is now on the end of the new version, but I can't tell how much the new version is really worked on, mainly thanks to not very good vinyl press quality. This quite inferior sound quality affect on 'Repulsor (Pulsar 2003)' a lot. Another remix with a lot of lower end sound added and effect-boosted vocals. The original Abigor sound is very trebly, but these remixes have more lower end. The music itself is very good and unique black metal. Everyone yearning for darkness should check out Abigor!

This 7" has confusing cover art (a face of a woman, a crucifix and errrrmmmm something in it!), created by fetishist queen Anastasia. No lyrics printed, but some words from Peter K. on the demise of the band.

I'm not impressed by this release. The music would score high, but with this kind of execution, 'Shockwave 666' is cursed to score way more less. Only for Abigor completists who want all the band's releases and remixes! Others, buy the albums, now.

(originally written for ArchaicMetallurgy.com in 2004)

So, another EP release from Abigor. Is this one essential? Absolutely not. However, if you want to check out alternate versions of two previously released Abigor tracks “Shockwave 666” will be of interest. “Dawn of Human Dust (2002 Version)” is a new version of the opening track from the “Channelling the Quintessence of Satan” album. This new version is a bit faster (sounds like they just altered the pitch though) and the drums are more prominent in the mix than they were on the original version. Stefan Fiori doesn’t manage to add anything spectacular to this track vocal wise (originally the vocals were sung by Thurisaz). I also have to add that to these ears Fiori sounds like Thurisaz with a higher pitch, so I’m really wondering whether the vocals have actually been re-recorded or not. Anyway, the vocals are higher in the mix on this version than on the original. Also the guitar mix for this version differs a bit from the original, you can hear some melodies and riffs better while others have been mixed lower. They’ve also added a speech sample to the calm middle part of the song and left out the keyboard sample that was in the beginning of the original version. I my opinion this 2002 version really doesn’t add anything to the original version, it’s basically just a remix.

The second track on this EP is a new version of “Repulsor” from the “Satanized” album. According to some info I saw, this is “the strangest track the band ever made”. I agree that it’s strange and it’s also much more different from the original than the new version of “Dawn of Human Dust” is. The problem is that I don’t like it that much. OK, it’s meant to be some kind of cyber/robotic version and I’m fine with that but the production really sucks shit. It’s much worse than on the original, very muffled somehow, as if the music would be coming though a filter. During the first part of the song it sounds like the muffled sound “swallows” the music, making everything very unclear. What I think has happened, is that the low frequencies of the keyboards have been boosted too much. They’ve deleted the guitars from many parts of the first half of the song and a robotic delay effect has been added to the main vocal track. All clean vocal parts of the original version have been removed. It’s sad that this track is killed completely by the production, since they’ve taken the time out to make it really different from the original version. I think this EP is pretty useless and basically for collectors only.