THE BLACK SORCERY – …And The Beast Spake Death From Above
July 26, 2018, 5 years ago
(Krucyator Productions)
Canada has a rich, pioneering history in war metal and bestial death metal, and the path laid and torched and annihilated by bands like Blasphemy and Revenge is still being torn apart in 2018 by The Black Sorcery. On And The Beast Spake Death From Above, this five-piece get positively grimy (check the nasty and horrible production qualities) and cult (I think these are songs, but I’ll have to get back to you on that), and even inject a bit of their own style into things, a tough thing to do in this particular subgenre. They do it with vocals that are more shrieking-black than Cookie Monster-death; while I prefer a lower register with this sort of music, it works just fine, the vocals more or less sounding like another instrument soon enough once you start to wade into these eight great tracks.
It’s not all high-pitched vocals, though: a song like “Frost Veined” indeed plummets to the depths, both vocally and musically, exploring the caverns of horror that bands like Immolation prepared and The Ominous Circle continue to mine to this day, The Black Sorcery proving themselves more than adept at a couple different sounds on this great album, which cements the band as instant contenders in the Canadian war metal scene.