At first these guys seemed to me like your average black metal that evolved to blackened death metal, you know, growling, blast beats etc.
Then I copied three songs to my iPod - Blackest ov the Black, Horns ov Baphomet, and Ov Fire and The Void... I gave them a "Jackie thorough listen", and I found that I really dig Nergal's vocals and phrase delivery. He has this special tone of growl that makes it not only sound powerful and beastly as the genre "demands", but it seems so natural, especially on Apostasy and Zos Kia Cvltvs, I kinda have mixed feelings about the Demigod vocals though, they are brutal but the constant double-layer is just too much and diction suffers a little. I was able to figure out his technique though and I FINALLY found a growl I can throw into our songs just as spice that sounds and feels right to me. It's a very energy-demanding vocal style though so I have to work on it, trouble is it's loud and I don't really feel like shouting in my house while mom sleeps and dad's recording xD
The tone is cool too, though I don't like the new one's tones on some songs. As far as tone is concerned, I found best results with either my MESA Recto preset or slaving the JVM OD2 Red into the 2:90. Nergal uses a Laboga Mr. Hector, a Polish amp maker's boutique-ish metal beast. Nice stuff.
The drumming surprised me too, despite the blasting, Inferno knows how to use his raw speed and slow bombing in a nice atmospheric way and to build/maintain tension and aggression and not just mindlessly blast away.
Last thing I want to mention, the lyrics... these took the most time to grow on me. They are mostly written in an old-English kind of "medieval" style and tone, so I had to get used to the "HARK!"s and "thou art" and stuff, but I think it adds to their "sounds like Nebuchadnezzar II wrote it" kind of sound. I like that despite the fact that he likes to shout "Satan, brothers" and other nonsense live, the lyrics paint a nice mysterious image of the occult and magick (Thelema, Zos Kia Cultus, Egyptians etc., early stuff was paganism too) and forgotten rather than just gore (stereotypical death metal) or cheesy satanistic wannabe epic and sometimes "lets burn churches" shit (stereotypical black metal). They're pretty majestic, some songs.
I really let the keyboard rip on this one... I just felt like sharing, that's what this place is for right?
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Anyway... Oh, Serpent and Lion!
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My favorite song right now is Horns ov Baphomet, don't ask me why it's not anything special, but I just love the way the vocals burst over the droning drop B riff, and that little harmonic melody at the end, that's my kinda scale.