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Decem Maleficium > Motivatio intrinseca > Reviews
Decem Maleficium - Motivatio intrinseca

Decem Maleficivm - Motivatio Intrinseca - 85%

KULTRUN, April 19th, 2006

Decem Maleficivm can be classified as a symphonic black/doom band with a progressive touch. I can name as references of their sound bands such Arcturus, Ved Buens Ende (maybe a risky comparison from my part...)... even Borknagar, with the doomish sound included (classic doom metal sound on the beginning of the third track, and more contemporary doom on diverse passages of the demo). Said that, you may think ”well, they are not very original, they didn’t invented anything new”, BUT this is a very well composed work with highlights that grabs the listener, provoke emotions, and makes you want to listen to this recording repeated times.

The opening track (Under the Earth) has a beginning with a pretty epic and majestic feeling, with march – style drumming, (a great choice for an opening track), giving pass to a more melancholic passage with clean guitars and clean vocals (the clean voice of Daniel sounds to me like a mix of Garm and a bit of Ihsahn on “Anthems...”, keeping the proper distances with this two genius, obviously ;)), then fast black metallic parts with a lot of time changes.

The second track (The Survivor) follows with a more depressive feeling, a guitar solo accompanied by piano sounding keyboards that gives pass to a part that reminds me the also Chileans Poema Arcanvs just for a second (in fact, all the clean guitars reminds me them a little bit, but here are two guitars blended creating melodies), then exploding to fast parts and time changes where the intervention of the clean voice is precise to give the more grandiloquent feeling.

The final track (Mercy) has an Arabic opening sound, with a more classic doom influence (80’s doom). A song with a more “folk” sound created by the intervention of nature sounds and medieval-ish keyboard melodies and more atmospheric passages, the longest composition of “Motivatio Intrinseca”.

On this recording the guitars have a more doomish tuning, not the expected “standard” black metal high tuned guitar sound, also after all the influences I mentioned, one may think this is a band with a Nordic sound, but that’s not true at all, they have a distinctive sound that I think the Chilean bands are achieving, no Nordics wannabes playing with swords and horned helmets in the woods (hahaha). A great demo that doesn’t get boring, I’m just expecting an awesome and even more original full length after hearing this EP.