Belphegor - Conjuring the Dead (2014)

Country: Austria
Genre: Death/Black Metal

The band itself needs no introduction. A 20+ year career, 10 LP's under their belt, worldwide recognised evilness, nothing else to add. But when it comes to introduce you to the music, it becomes somehow tricky. These guys have managed to turn from a very straight-forward black metal band in the Marduk/Dark Funeral fashion, to a death/black metal combo with many eclectic elements. To be honest, I wasn't expecting this type of music when I first played this album. Is rich in sound, it's rarely melodic, it has many black metal sounds, but the musical structures and the main skeleton of this output is purely death metal. Maybe this is good or bad, but I'm still biased to think that Belphegor remained frozen in time and they still sound like they used to do back in their Lucifer Incestus LP, which is not the case. The drums are dynamic, lyrics are intense (and sometimes silly) and the guitar tone is... decent. But when you hear it as a "whole" and not trying to isolate the elements, the final result is worth listening and quite enjoyable. Production and mix-wise, this record is not even close to perfection, but these failures in production give you a different listening experience. For example, the drums are sunk under the guitars which try to invade as a wall of sound, but there are small gaps in which you can clearly hear more of the cymbals, which for me, is good. Some blast beats are so deeply sunk under the guitars that, for example, it becomes a pleasure to hear when the mix allows the ride bell to emerge from the cacophonous mass. There's another element that I somehow enjoyed, which is the incorporation of thrashy riffs which eventually turned into death metal maelstrom. This is by no means a ground-breaking release but is still enjoyable. Nevertheless, this is one of those examples in which production mistakes and mixing deficiencies result in a decent musical experience. I'm just wondering when is Belphegor going to use less pompous cover arts and not try to put a whole farm in it. One day...

ngx981