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One of the more well known Black Metal acts today would be Belgium's Enthroned, who, since their debut in 1995, have released seven full-length albums and a few EPs, a slip, and a live CD. Pentagrammaton marks the band's eight full-length effort, and in traditional Enthroned fashion, the album is simply filled with raw Black Metal fury that comes at you through fast paced music with enough changes that it doesn't become a now standard rage soaked CD that utilizes only blast beats to get the point across. However, the drumming does still play a bit of a factor with this release, both in positive and negative lights. The album starts with your typical haunting introductory track, "In Missi Solemnbibvs", which isn't anything all too spectacular, but sets the dark and dismal atmosphere for the album nicely through white noise produced by guitars, chanting, some ritualistic drums thrown in, and some odd special effects one would see in a modern horror film to depict a demon possibly possessing a human and the body shakes at an inhuman, blurred fashion. After that, the real music starts and never really lets up from intensity. At first, the vocal approach to Pentagrammaton may throw you off, as it's really not what you would expect for this type of recording, but when you become accustomed to the vocalist's higher pitched screaming approach, it really does work well with the album in the long run, fueling the Black Metal tenacity behind each song on this release, and without it the album would not have the same impact that it has. Much of the time, the guitars are basically your traditional second wave chords and bridges, nothing all too fancy behind them to push the album along. The real draw of this release, both good and bad, happens to be the drumming. While the guitars are often loud enough to be heard, if more attention is paid to the cymbols of the drum kit, the guitars can often feel drowned out into just sounding like noise that sometimes goes up or down in volume. The best place to observe this in action is the track "Ornament of Grace" due to the fact that the song goes between faster and slower moments with plenty of attention paid to the cymbols, as well as elsewhere when need be, whereas a good majority of the other tracks really focus moreso on the snares and bass kicks, which are also elements of the drumming to be admired and loathed. While these elements don't drown out the rest of the music like the cymbols do, they are typically a faster pace and really where much of the intensity of the album stems from. The double bass kicks sound amazing here, and the snares work well with them to create a new layer for the music. However, sometimes the snares simply do not keep up with the music, which is evendenced in "The Vitalized Shell", where the music goes really fast and the snare drums are keeping the beat, but at a slightly slower pace then the guitars are being played, causing the music to sound a little off. This can also be noticed slightly at the end of "Magnvs Princeps Leopardi", but it's only for a matter of seconds. There's plenty of great songs to be found on this release, most of which are simply heavy and intense, while there exists the title track, "Pentagrammaton", which is still a heavy track, but leans more towards being a song that focuses it's attention at casting a very haunting atmosphere behind it then just sounding generally pissed off. This song, by far, stands out the most due to the change of approach without really violating the overall flow of the album, while incorporating some harmonized hymn-like singing in the background near the end to cause the song to end on such a high note that it will make you want to go back immediately and listen to it again. Luckily, this isn't the only song to bring this sort of atmosphere into play, as "Nehas't" slows the pace of the album down a bit and continues to usher in that same kind of atmosphere, which in a sense is what you would expect since "Pentagrammaton" bleeds into that song. While this song does continue this style for the album, it's just not as well done, and is one of the shortest songs on the album, perhaps for good reason. After a few listens, this one will wind up just not being as entertaining as the rest of the album in a rather short amount of time. The ending of Pentagrammaton will have the listener at a loss though. While everything up to "Nehas't" is superb angst ridden Black Metal, things start to go downhill when "Nehas't" kicks in with a track that doesn't match the rest of the album, seeming like it was just a filler track feeding off of the atmosphere the title track before it created. After that, "The Essential Chaos" just slams in with pure intensity, only to take a backseat with "Ad Te Clamamvs Exsvles Morvua Liberi", which is a very ambient instrumental that goes into the slower paced generic "Unconscious Minds". "Unconscious Minds" winds up feeling the most like a filler track and ends Pentagrammaton on a rather bleak note, not in atmosphere, but in your heart. Overall, the s ong is very weak and insanely drawn out after the first four minutes. Pentagrammaton is a superb album that has plenty of intense tracks, but ultimately closes on some filler material, which half of it is still an alright listen with some future replay value, and one songs that sounds insanely generic and proves the band should not try to create long artsy-like Black Metal tracks. Either way, whether or not you know who Enthroned is, Pentagrammaton is a superb Black Metal release that you need to hear. Even though this method of musical composition and performance isn't really anything too new to the field, it's an album that is just full of energy fromt he band, and all the aspects that make up a good majority of the album simply work together to make this a release you will come back to time and time again. |
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