War is Imminent, 2000
Genre: Black Metal
1. Intro
2. Nocturnal
3. Those Chaos from the Giants
4. The Dark Eyes of Satan
5. Ethereozol
6. Where the Ancient Thoughts Pass the Dead Sky
7. Moongrinder
8. Holocaust from the Blazed Lands
9. In Satan We Trust
10. Vers la Nit
I have to squash the rumors
now; I know they’ve been circulating since the release of this album. This album actually manages to invade nothing
at all.
Well… I’ve already conveyed
all relevant information regarding this release. Yet, if you insist, I shall force myself to
do a slightly more in-depth analysis, punctuated by three main points:
- The vocalist is bad.
I’m
not talking about Arioch trying to be Legion bad either. I’m speaking of “had the vocalist ever spoken
prior to recording this album?” then it would be known he should have never
opened his mouth. The kindest assessment
of the vocal performance is, laughable.
Nothing says Black Metal like “HAHAHAHA” to start off a song and then
about several more times per song. The
vocal pitch is apt to change without warning, instantly switching from bad to
terrible without preamble. This, above
all, probably creates a far more terrifying effect to the listener than is
customary when being exposed to a Black Metal vocal performance. The worst part is in the first song
“Nocturnal” when layered under the harsh vocals there is some spoken word
sequence that doesn’t go with the harsh vocals or music at all and actually
leaves the listener terrified at the lack of sense it makes to do something
like that. Absolutely chilling.
- I have no idea what they are talking about
There
is a song on this album called “Those Chaos from the Giants”. You’d be hard pressed to find a more terrible
name for a song. And I must digress; I
barely found those giants the least bit chaotic, to be honest. I felt I had seen giants that have been
capable of far more chaos than is presented here. The chaotic part of the song might have
actually happened when out of nowhere some techno drum beat comes in the middle
making the whole composition far more nonsensical. Regardless, the lyrical content that any
experienced listener can decipher without a lyrics sheet can plainly hear that
the lyrical content makes almost no sense. It is as mindless and trite as the
most basic of thoughts.
- Generic, Generic, Generic
And
naturally we come down to the overall musical composition present throughout
the album. From a musicians stand point
the songs aren’t horribly played by any means, the riffs are actually fairly decent
at times. The problem I run into… this
is by far nothing the least bit new.
This is the kind of Black Metal you hear advertised as “played in the
tried and true vein.” Tried and true sure, but boring as all hell at the same
time. They sacrifice musical ingenuity
for stagnation. I don’t even hear any
new presence in the essence or atmospheres of the song structures. The only thing here that killed the overall
performance is the vocals; the music would have been far more tolerable with a
more sensible vocalist. However, please
note that a different vocalist in no way would make this recording any less
generic. They could have Iblis behind
the microphone for all I care, that wouldn’t make this album anymore exciting,
though I’d probably wonder why Iblis agreed to lay down vocal tracks for this
in the end.
That pretty much sums up this
entire release in three concise points.
I should point out that there might be some confusion about this
Lucifugum and the Lucifugum from the Ukraine.
The Ukrainian group is far superior to this one and should you
accidentally purchase this album in the thoughts that this is the Ukrainian
band then please look further. This is
the only release from the Spanish group so the next Lucifugum you acquire
should be from the Ukraine
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