Blackened death metal. Lvcifyre's style is by now an old, well-established form of extreme music with its own tropes and series of listener expectations. But somehow, amid all the tremolo picking, growling and blast-beats, Svn Eater sounds surprisingly fresh.
Usually people would associate anything "black metal" with cold, frosty weather. But when I listen to Svn Eater, all I see are flames all around me. And that's a good thing. From the very outset, "Night Seas Sorcery" is incredibly brutal and exhilarating, two things all great metal has in common.
Though the album is very straightforward with a thankful shortage of nonsense, it still manages to be very atmospheric. Most of the songs start with an airy, dark ambiance before breaking into the music itself. If I had to use one word to describe the band's music, "hellish" would have to be it.
Death growls are now a standard part of most extreme metal styles, but on Svn Eater, T. Kaos uses them in the way they were originally intended: to make terrifying, demonic voices that fit perfectly with the overwhelmingly aggressive music. If a band like Drawn and Quartered incorporated some black-metal elements into their music, it would probably sound a lot like this.
To most people, metal has become somewhat innocuous, losing that element of fear and danger that it once regularly invoked. Though none of this is absolutely necessary to make a good metal record, Svn Eater has vast oceans of fear, danger, and especially evil flowing through every track. Through every machine-gun blast-beat, every tortured scream, and every crescendo of riffs, you just feel like you're listening to something profoundly wicked.
Not there isn't anything to quibble with. Some more high-pitched screaming would help to mix things up a bit. This happens at some points on the record, but more would have been nice. And while I know the whole "wall of sound" is what Lvcifyre was going for here, it can make some of the riffs difficult to make out or distinguish. So perhaps a balancing act could be employed on the next record, one which retains the raw feel accomplished here without hiding all the goodies from us.
According to the band's facebook page:
Lvcifyre raise a black flag salute to the ancient powers of Chaos! Our creation is a scream heard in the deep abyss.
Believe me, we hear that scream loud and clear.
9/10
Favorite Songs: "Liber Lilith", "Sun Eater", "The Fiery Spheres of the Seven"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwh6VRpzZ24]
(PS- Though I have to admit, their use of the letter "v" in the place of "u" totally reminded me of this classic Mel Brooks scene!)
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