The Satanist

I’d like to begin this review with a disclaimer – The Satanist’s unholy combination of black and death metal is not easy listening. It does not evoke positive emotions or make you want to dance, and you won’t be hearing any of its nine tracks on Radio 1 any time soon. Nonetheless, this album signals a breakthrough for Poland’s Behemoth. The band have managed to simultaneously strip their music down and evoke a more powerful form of the enormous, apocalyptic sound that has become their trademark. In other words, they have somehow become both more extreme and more accessible at the same time.

It’s become somewhat cliché for albums released by bands after long periods of inactivity to be lauded as “comebacks”, but Behemoth have earned the right to describe The Satanist as such, and then some. Since 2009’s Evangelion, the band have experienced a string of setbacks, both health-related and legal, the most notable of which being frontman Adam “Nergal” Darski’s battle with leukaemia.  Whether Nergal’s illness was a prominent cause or not, it’s clear that the band’s musical outlook has changed markedly over the last five years. Atmosphere and emotion are the driving forces for this record, rather than technicality and precision; the result is something much more visceral in nature than many of the band’s contemporaries.

Album opener ‘Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel’ provides a solid indication of the overall direction of The Satanist. A plodding, moody first half gives way to a noisy, frantic second, which soon comes to a sudden halt.  ‘Furor Divinus’ and ‘Messe Noire’ each kick off in a similarly rapid fashion. As two of the shortest tracks on the album, they again emphasise the creation of a bleak atmosphere over anything else, with the latter concluding to the tune of a particularly emotive guitar solo. ‘Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer’ is uncharacteristically catchy for a Behemoth track and settles into a pronounced groove towards the end, demonstrating well the more accessible side of the group.

The result is something much more visceral in nature than many of the band’s contemporaries

‘Amen’ perhaps most prominently recaptures the death metal element that gave rise to fan-favourite songs like ‘Slaves Shall Serve’, before the title track takes listeners down a different path altogether. It’s both utterly miserable and totally melodic, with vocals that wouldn’t sound too out of place on a Gojira record. ‘Ben Sahar’ and ‘In the Absence ov Light’ relentlessly continue with the album’s bleak theme, pausing for a breather during the second of the two tracks for some spoken-word Polish set to the backdrop of acoustic guitars. ‘O Father O Satan O Sun’ is the longest song on The Satanist and naturally therefore the most epic, bringing together the album’s anthemic-yet-brutal concept nicely before fading out slowly.

If you’re used to upbeat pop or indie, this LP probably isn’t for you. However, if you have even a passing in interest in the heavy and extreme end of the musical spectrum, or are at least open to it, this album comes highly recommended. If you’re already into Behemoth, whether or not you’ll enjoy this record will depend on what you like about the band; it’s certainly a new direction for them, and the more accessible, less death metal-influenced nature of it may put some fans off. On the contrary, the Behemoth sound is still unmistakably present and correct; it’s just been refined. The best metal album of 2014 so far.

Similar To: Gojira, Watain

MP3: The Satanist