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Finnish Black Metallers Enochian Crescent have returned after over a half decade hiatus to give the waiting masses their newest offering "Black Church". Years ago I bought their "Telecvovim" C.D. and their "Babalon Patrale De Telocvovim" Mcd and was quite impressed with their surreal, slightly artistic and slanted take on Black Metal. Does this new album impress me as much as the earlier albums did? Oh yeah. it does. Yes, indeed!
It seems that Enochian Crescent has seen a lineup change on this new album since the older days when I was more into them, and along with the lineup change is quite a change in sound as well. At it's base, the music is still artfully constructed Black Metal full of clever hooks and bizarre time changes, but now more than ever they perfected the Bizarro World styled Black Metal more than they ever have. The music is dirty and raw, yet atonal and melodic at the same time. Those time changes I mentioned above about their earlier albums are back, but man... they have never did time changes so great before! They are simply amazing and catchy as fuck! They use a "stop and go" technique quite often on "Black Church" as well that compliments those time changes perfectly. The bass is an instrument that takes the center stage quite a bit on this album, and bassist Cantor Dr. Von Pfosforus impressed me with his diabolical skills from the beginning to the end of the album! The album sometimes breaks down to an almost acoustical bass sound, and it's truly amazing to listen to. Drummer Bishop B. Bolton also delivers a very fine performance here giving us a drumming performance that somehow crosses the boundaries of Black Metal and technical drumming. "Black Church" is one of those Black Metal albums that is so varied in sound from one minute to the next that the best thing to do is to call it Black Metal Art. True to the albums' name, the sound the band came up with for this album sounds exactly like what you'd expect to hear coming from tormented and demonic members of a dark and evil church band. While each and every track on "Black Church" is great, the two standout tracks are easily "Thousand Shadows" and "Hendekagrammaton". These two tracks are so great that they alone are worth the purchase price of the album! Well done, Enochian Crescent! It's nice too see Finland represented with quality music again after a few years of downtime from you and the other great Finnish bands! The vocals simply kickass and are so varied that I lost count of how many styles are represented on here after a dozen came and went within the first five minutes of the album. There's Black vocals, a deep raspy narrated/spoken style that sounds like a long dead corpse that is eerie as fuck to listen to, incantations that are chanted, clean vocals, clean group vocals sung in unison and a ton more. My favorite vocals on the album are when the clean vocals are meandering in and out of the Blackened vocals. This style really reminds me of Solefald for some reason. The album is a concept album of sorts, but I'll be damned if I can follow the storyline. The lyrics are in English, but they're written like they are in code, like ancient text about death and their twisted little religion or something. It's quite an interesting read, even if I have no clue as to what is going on. Enochian Crescent's older albums had a great sound, so I'd expect this one to deliver in that department as well, and indeed it did. The drums and bass really come through warmly and there's no tinniness or distortion at all. The promo I got for "Black Church" didn't come with any original cover art, just the lyrical booklet, so I can't comment on the packaging entirely. I did look up the cover art online and saw it's a simple black and white affair with not much else going on. The booklet itself is also pretty sparse, but at least all of the lyrics are faithfully printed within. It's been a five year wait, but hey... it's been well worth it, folks! "Black Church" simply rules, and as good as their earlier albums were, they can't touch the greatness contained within this new disc. Great musicianship, superb songwriting and interesting lyrics rarely come together this well on the same album. "Black Church" is one of my favorite albums of 2006 so far. It's a damn near perfect album in every aspect, and these Finns should feel proud of what they accomplished here. | |
