[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/01-Black-Winds-Victoryant.mp3|titles=Vassafor – Black Winds Victoryant]
2007 Asphyxiate Recordings
A soft yet surging chorus of cold, ethereal wind chants, swelling into a vortex of dark and fathomless harmony, sets the stage for “Black Winds Victoriant.” An ominously rhythymed kick and bass intro patiently harbingers to an imperially blackened septonic guitar progression, conjuring aural hallucinations of unfamiliar demons who have possessed the souls of men far from western lands. A maniacal, torturous cry is heard, and the voice of one who dwells deep within this abyss begins to recite hymns of madness that carry off beyond the sonisphere, into the unknown depths of the listener’s mind.
Read the rest the review after the jump!
“From a darkened star
Hole in the sky
Metamorpheles awaits
the 7th dawn that will never come…”
Percussion finally takes hold, at first doomed and deliberate and, once sufficiently oriented, proceeds to drive the riff from thrash to blast, leaving only the most inured of veterans with any reliable sense of sanity by the time landing is made and the march begins at 3:33.
“Revelations of celestial will
Black Winds Victoriant, Kommander of all sin
Devil’s hammer, recreate through destruction…”
The second track, “Vassafor”, commences a poisoning of the intolerant ear with a derangingly dissonant arpeggio, played percussionless and in staggered measure, beneath a haunting choir of sub-sapien moans. Should the listener be able to endure to the three-minute mark they will have earned the privilege of a rather fascinating composition – a series of crushing and blackened incarnations of movements admirably reminiscent of the alloys forged by the great alchemical metal acts who experimented with progressive doom (Eric Forrest-era Voivod, Confessor), executed competently and still true to the band’s own stated genre.
“strike! the left hand path is…Vassafor
666…”
A woman’s sorrowful and haunting mezzo-soprano over a despondent piano is the preamble to “Dreadnaught”, soon succumbing to an 8-minute doom ritual so vengefully slow-paced as to let every shard of static-filth tone take it’s time tearing through the aural nerves.
“Dreadnaught, spectre of the tombless dead
Ghastly countenance austere in the flames…”
Merciful Fate’s “Black Funeral” receives proper treatment, played varying from ¼ to ½ slower tempo, with blast beats, and in two steps lower key. The dual, overlaid vocals put a compounded, twice-as-sickening twist on King Diamond’s original rendition. Mutual respect is demanded and is received. [CD version only – vinyl version includes a cover of Bethlehem’s “Dorn Meiner Allmacht”]
Vassafor deserves accolades for pushing the boundaries and provoking the evolution of cult black metal necessarily and properly.
– jxiii
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