Helvetin yhdeksän piiriä

Since roughly two decades, Azaghal are torturing successfully their surrounding. Their understanding of black metal has always brought nasty compositions to light. "The Nine Circles of Hell", to use the English translation, houses more or less logically nine songs that reflect the misanthropic attitude of the Finnish brigade very well. Yet it cannot be overlooked that the here presented material remains on a rather average level. The production is one of the reasons why this album fails to enthuse me. Sharp but simultaneously thin guitars meet rattling drums and the vocals, equipped with an overdose of reverb, are very dominant. Vice versa, the bass guitar is notable for its absence. I am not speaking of a totally bad sound, yet there exist thousands of albums with a better production.

Despite a surprisingly high number of fairly unnecessary calm intermezzos, the record does not lack fury and anger. Azaghal catapult their raw hymns into the audience without mincing their words. We are entering a closed black metal cosmos where Azaghal operate. External influences are not identifiable. Pure blackness is mostly a good thing, but Azaghal have forgotten to write some memorable, concise riffs. Or to express it more generally, outstanding characteristics are missing more or less completely. One needs patience to find some parts that have the quality to pull the album on a higher level. The slowly growing beginning of "Kohti uuden aikakauden alkua" has the potential to give the album a certain kick, but compared with their later feats ("Omega" or "Nemesis"), the here reviewed work tastes vapid. Even the aforementioned track with its promising beginning lacks intensity and inter alia due to the missing compactness its impact is rather small. The furious ending indicates the strengths of the group, but the whole middle section of "Kohti uuden aikakauden alkua" appears pretty harmless.

What remains is a pretty good, partly blast beats driven shocker called "Hän joka on tuleval". To be honest, the song lasts a minute too long. Nevertheless, it mixes brutality and insanity in a fierce way. But too many sections are going nowhere. The band makes some noise that does not lack structure, but compositional excellence is missing. The result is that all songs somehow form a lump of black metal, an attack of half an hour which seems to bow down to the dogma "full dedication is more important than well-designed tracks". On the one hand, this mirrors a good mindset, on the other hand one might ask whether the Northern Europeans have set the right priorities. Despite the fact that I really like this band in general, I tend to the latter.

This is the second album by one of the craziest bands in black metal and surely one of the most important too in the modern scene. I always felt fascinated towards the Azaghal way of doing black. Maybe it’s because you cannot label this music only as the common black metal or because they always conserved that spontaneity and rawness this music deserves.

Their style is a mixture of cold, raw guitars parts with thrash and death influences in some riffs, with hyper evil but always so funny, screamed vocals and restless drumming. It’s good to notice some more acoustic parts spread in various songs like in “Han Joka On Tuleval” or Harmagedon” for example. The violence is not the only important thing here. On the other hand we have some frontal assaults like the opener track or the “Lailla Tuhannen Talvimyrskyn”.

The drummer is always on blast beats in these songs and the guitars draw landscapes of pure coldness and ice with different patterns and techniques that can embrace the classic palm muting, the power chords fast shredding or the cold single chords parts. These ones in particular are excellent to break the sound, filling it with colder elements.

The arpeggios are really weird in their sound and seem so cold and artificial. Well, they are real, don’t worry but the clean sound is just strange. Maybe it’s the production or the tune. The production is a bit cleaner than in their debut but it’s always perfect for this genre, with an even more apocalyptic touch in it. The band itself grew in song writing and technique, so we can find more mature and better structured songs like for example “Kun Aurinko Kuoli” or Kohty Auden Aikakauden Alkua”, where we can find some more depressive and sad riffs.

Overall, Azaghal with their second album confirm the beauty of their sound. A sound that is never boring or derivative, but always quite personal. This is a very hard thing to do in a field always full of new bands. Still walking tall.

Azaghals "The Nine Circles of Hell" has all the frostygrimness you blackmetallers need to start your day. This album has all your daily required blast beats, screams and darkthrone worshiped riffting.

Okay, I'll stop with the breakfast cereal thing. In all seriousness this album is fairly standard blackmetal, almost no originality whatsoever. Something only to be enjoyed by those who are all ready into blackmetal, and are simply searching for another album to run around burning churches and descrating gravesites to.

The songs are standardly structured, the riffting average while not being too sloppy.
The bass seems to be non-existent in the blur of grimrifting that assails throughout this album. The only thing that really gives this album any points is the fact the vocal lines seem to have some format, giving you the feeling it actually took about 45 mins to write these songs, instead of 10.

In short, you can do better than this album, get yourself some Countess, Beherit, Darkthrone, Deathspell Omega, Shining, Silencer. Too much good music out there to spend much time listening to this.

I'd recommend this album to any one who is grim, bored shitless, oh so very, very bored.

From the first track of this CD you can tell it is something special, amazing guitar and drum work and good harsh vocals await, I had been waiting for this CD for a long time, I was not dissapointed.

Track one is full on black metal but quite short, I guess in order to wet your appitite, and it does just that! Harsh vocals are superb!

The next track starts suddenlly with what sounds like a pained scream, leading into another with heavy guitar and drums, my only problem here is how hard it is to hear the bass. After these screams some melody comes into it playing in the background and giving it an edge.

Track three starts with a great bass line, soon being joined by drums then vocals and guitar, with many tempo changes, stops and starts this is a varied but none-the-less enjoyable track.

Track four starts very quikly and continues this way. A true onslaught which only slows for what sounds like a small guitar solo, however it is very soft compared to the rest, the song starts again though and continues with such momentum that you wonder how they an top it.

And with the arrival of trak five you find out how they can, very fast shrieking vocals alternate with harsh vocals and beautifull drum work to create a very memorable listen.

Track six rolls in with a nice little fill straight into fast, finger slashing guitar work and ear drum bursting vocals, (All in a good way of course), this track gets most of its power from a melody which acts as a counter melody to the fast, screaming black metal.

Track seven starts with what may be a synth intro, but soons screams into medium paced black metal, however soon the tempo rises as do the vocalists screams, one of the less enjoyable tracks, but still quite well placed.

The next track starts with almost the same synth part, it sinks into quite medium paced black metal again this time it stays at this pace only speeding up slightly for drum fills.

Now unfortunatly we come to the end of our journy, this tracks starts with a low sound like a war horn or many tubas, lightning an be heard striking then several samples play and the process repeats, and repeats again, then it goes silent the last track was simply samples, but it was haunting and fit the bill.

Overall although this album is relativly fast blak metal it manages to keep all songs sounding different and has much appeal, well recomended.