Author: Primož Novak
Artist: Behemoth
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release date: February 3, 2014
Length: 44:17
Rating: 3.5/5
A lot has changed in the Behemoth camp over the past five years. The lineup stayed the same, but the health of the band’s leader, Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski, made much bigger headlines. In August 2010 he was diagnosed with leukemia, and the band’s very fate hung by a thread because of the complications with his illness. Luckily, a bone marrow donor turned up and saved Nergal from the worst, and he slowly got back on his feet.
First came a run of tours, where Nergal proved he was back in better shape. Then came a long process of writing the new album, which was supposed to define the essence of Behemoth. Fittingly, Nergal went with a simple title: The Satanist. When the band dropped the single Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel, it made clear they’d started flirting with black metal again and had more or less ditched death metal. Still, Behemoth kept the epic flavor by bringing in all sorts of other instruments, like the French horn, which is hardly anything new either. Classical instruments were part of Behemoth’s sound before.
The tracks that follow also show which direction the band has taken this time. Nergal no longer wanted to stress the technical side of the band, so Nile-style riffs and the like are simply gone. What you get is mostly black metal guitars, which will be music to old fans’ ears, but this is where the whole thing gets stuck. In their black metal era (the first three albums), Behemoth brought plenty of innovation to black metal itself, with riffs and an approach that weren’t typical of the black metal that developed in Norway. The closer the album gets to the end, the more it feels like Nergal went for too tried-and-true a formula, and the spark of experimentation and uniqueness is lost.
What bugs me are the associations with so many black metal bands. The fast tracks bring to mind the likes of Marduk or even Dark Funeral, thanks to cheap single-string riffs. The slightly slower tracks, which thanks to the massive production definitely have an epic element, come across like a copy of the giants Bathory. Nergal and company do close the album out brilliantly with the slow-burner O Father O Satan O Sun!, but that doesn’t make the rest of the record any more interesting. In some songs Behemoth feel stretched too thin, and a good example is In The Absence ov Light, which features a quote from the Polish film Ślub that’s just plain unnecessary.
When it comes to the sound, you can tell the band didn’t want to sound like all those polished bands of today, so it’s a bit dirtier. Behemoth gained some authenticity that way: the orchestrations, the undistorted parts and of course Nergal’s angry vocals all feel more genuine alongside black metal guitars. Certain things on the album are well crafted, like the solos. The bass guitar is also easier to hear than before. Extreme-metal beast Inferno’s drumming is still top-notch, even though it’s not as imaginative this time, and the drum sound itself is at times muddy. Considering how many people were involved in producing this album, I definitely expected more.
With The Satanist, Behemoth have clearly taken a step back, which may suit old-school fans better, but by copying the patterns of established black metal bands, Behemoth are losing their identity. Even so, the band reaped plenty of success with this album, so you can expect them to keep going in this style.
Lineup
Adam “Nergal” Darski – vocals, guitar, lyrics
Tomasz “Orion” Wróblewski – bass
Zbigniew Robert “Inferno” Promiński – drums
Production
Daniel Bergstrand, Matt Hyde, Wojciech Wiesławski, Sławomir Wiesławski
Tracklist
01. Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel
02. Furor Divinus
03. Messe Noire
04. Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer
05. Amen
06. The Satanist
07. Ben Sahar
08. In the Absence ov Light
09. O Father O Satan O Sun!
