Behemoth. The last time I checked, this was a raw, primitive, Polish old-school black metal band. I own the first two Behemoth albums and unfortunately missed everything after them, until now. To my shocking astonishment, what do I find?? Total, raging death metal! But you know what? This description is mostly limited to the first song, "Decade of Oepion". The rest of the album doesn’t measure up whatsoever. I first heard this in my brother’s car and asked what it was, he said it was the new Behemoth. I said, "What???" It was just a CDR copy at the time, so when the real CD arrived in the mail, sure enough, it was definitely Behemoth!! The latest interviews I read online confirmed this as well. I was totally blown away by the amazing diversity I witnessed this band (i.e. Nergal) encompass since the beginning. They have armed themselves with a rich, heavy guitar tone and the same drum triggers Pete Sandoval used on Formulas… and created an album of Morbid Angel / Vader style riffing and old Swedish death metal on speed. Actually, that was perhaps the intention, but again, successful only for the first song. "Decade of Oepion" is a short, 3 minute masterpiece of brutality, violence and aggression combined with melody and downright scary vocals. The album is almost worth it for this song alone, it would make Vader jealous. The rest of the album sounds like Nergal fell in love with the guitar sound (which is perfectly understandable) and had a hard time throwing away riffs. The music is pretty one-dimensional, he could have used the second guitar track for much more. "Ceremony Of Shiva", "Starspawn" and "The Alchemist’s Dream" are noteworthy for some of the better, stronger ideas, but there’s still something lacking to give it that extra punch. Vocals sound like later Nocturnus (on the last 7"), and for the most part tend to be much more aggressive than the music (with the exception of "Decade…"). Drummer Inferno.666.com knows how to blast, play double-bass and do some fills, and that’s about all he shares. Triggers help stress this quite well, though I didn’t care for them on Formulas… and they lack personality here as well. After the last song, we are blessed with a couple interludes buried deep down under tracks 33 and 93. Track 33 is about one minute of keyboards with some tribal beat under them. I fail to see the point here, but I’m sure track 93 will scare you if you leave this playing unsuspectingly (though it doesn’t compare in the slightest to the end of Lord Belial’s "Enter The Moonlight Gate"). I still give praise Behemoth for being able to do whatever they want. They’ve got a great sounding album with one really powerful song and some other neat parts scattered throughout the rest of it. It’s very solid at doing really basic shit, if this is your thing then this album will suit you quite well.

Written By: Abbas