Galy Records, 2004
Genre: Black Metal
1. Souldrilled to Infernal Martyrism
2. The Stone has Spoken...
3. Rebellion of the Unholy Mindfucked
4. The Hunchback
5. Hyldeon's Destiny (The Curse of Azagath Pt. V)
6. The Mitgon Race (The Curse of Azagath Pt. VI)
7. Civilizations of the New Days
8. Join the Circle of Eternal Thoughts
Well this year I have thoroughly enjoyed
most of the music coming out of France
Musically these guys are splendid. They really want to have parts of their songs
be reminiscent of Emperor, except this band is a lot more chaotic in
structure. They switch between the usual
harsh Black Metal vocals and clean vocals.
This is okay, I usually don’t enjoy clean vocals, but they sounded fine
this band. Unfortunately, at certain
times the clean vocals just sound off from the music and probably shouldn’t even
be there. The guitar work is phenomenal
and reminds me quite a bit of The Ancient’s Rebirth. If anyone remembers who they are, they are a
Black Metal band that is unnecessarily complex in it’s arrangements and
Magister Dixit do them some serious justice if they were influenced by them. There is a lot to take in on this album; they
mix up the raging Black Metal songs with some excellent acoustic
atmosphere. Some of the guitar riffs are
incredibly catchy and fit so perfectly with the song and vocals. The vocal performance is nothing to really
brag about. Most of the time they sound
great, but some tracks like “Civilizations of the New Days” have a horrible
vocal performance. The production on
some tracks is markedly different from others because they recorded it at
different intervals. It’s a shame they
couldn’t keep the vocals the same, because otherwise the songs sound decently
similar. Finally, the drumming is
superb, but for some reason I can’t help but get the feeling that it’s a little
out of whack at some sections. Not that
it’s off time by any means, just it feels a little wrong. Such as the drummer should have chosen a
different arrangement, however, the overall performance is decently impressive.
Now where Magister Dixit completely
falls apart for me is when I looked over their lyrics. These have to be some of the most ridiculous
and inconsequential lyrics for a Black Metal band I have ever seen. Forget the broken English, that’s not their
native language and that’s perfectly fine.
Their lyrical concepts simply take the cake. Starting off with “The Stone has Spoken”
throughout the song no one ever learns what in the world the stone actually is
or what has been spoken. Alas we never
learn what the stone has to say about this baffling concept. Now the winner of dumbest Black Metal lyrics
so far to my eyes is “Rebellion of the Unholy Mindfucked.” Now, is it just me or do these seem vaguely reminiscent
of something I heard off the debut Slipknot album? Mostly I gather this song is discussing how
they think overall the people in society are idiots. Well thank you Captain Obvious for that
amazing realization. I had no
idea the general public was fucking stupid!
It took your inspiring words for me to see the light… obviously you are
the messengers. Shut up. The reason I’m getting angry about this song
is that “Rebellion of the Unholy Mindfucked” is by far the best song musically
on this album. It’s catchy, it’s
technical, and it has riffs that remind me of Satyricon… thus brilliance from a
musical perspective. Moving on to an
equally horrible song is “The Hunchback.”
This reminds me more of an Emo song lyrically. I suppose they could save some face that they
were trying to think from the hunchback’s perspective. However, it seemed to allude how society
would judge the clothes a Black Metal fan would wear. It reminds me of
something I would hear about by a depressed High School student. I’m probably wrong, whatever, the song was
terribly written. The final point we get
to is the continuation of their story line from their debut album called “The
Curse of Azagath.” I’m thoroughly
convinced after reading these lyrics that this is based on a Dungeons and
Dragons game the band played together. I
mean I have nothing against D&D, I play it myself, but this game must’ve
been rather boring honestly. It seemed
like only one guy in the band wanted to play the heroic Paladin. And they sort of made a mistake at this
point, they said something about how the Mitgon race and their endless war
didn’t seem so bad. I believe this was
from the Paladin’s point of view; anyway, a Paladin would have been disgusted
by a race like this. Paladins by nature
believe that there are the embodiment of goodness for their good aligned
god. Just to give you guys a hint for
when you write more parts for another Magister Dixit album or finish off your
D&D game.
Suffice to say, I thought this album was
a worthy listen overall. Just stay away
from the lyrics book and you as a listener will remain very happy with the
album. It took them four years to get
this album together for their debut and needless to say I think they could have
spent some extra time putting thought into their lyrics. They kind of broke two of my Cardinal Laws of
Black Metal lyrics. First off they
discussed how the general public acts and how the band is smarter and therefore
the public doesn’t understand them as people.
This is reminiscent of teenage drivel.
Black Metal is supposed to be above this kind of crap lyrically. Second they discussed how they are
“different” and how they feel sad about being judged in the “The
Hunchback.” Okay, you’re supposed to be
warriors here. Black Metal is supposed
to be a war oriented musical genre, be proud of that. Anyway, most of the other lyrics are strong
and talk about war and conquering, which are very usual topics. If you’re looking for some highly technical
musicianship that is put together fairly well, this is a band to watch in the
future.
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