I’ve found over a number of years of listening to Black Metal that the greater the difficulty and suffering that you put in, the more I’ve got out of it. Then there’s the other sort which is simply loud, violent, occasionally technical but generally bombastic. That’s Ezurate, on the strength of this album. The picture of the band members on the accompany material reminded me of the guys on the excellent YouTube “Black Metal Cookies” spoof – definitely worth watching, if you don’t know about it. I don’t think that the Chicago-based Ezurate were aiming to get laughs out of this album.
This Black Metal assault reminded me very much of the earlier works of Marduk. The humming crescendo of “Rise of the Immortals” took us into “Invocation of the Seven Gates”, an all-round exposé of uncompromising violence. Blastbeats meet sheer ferocity. The track cleverly slows down to what turns out to be a rare moment of subtlety, like a clock ticking. I liked “Rise of the Immortals”. “Noctem Eternus” is very much in the style of Marduk. The vocalist preaches hatred to the accompaniment of a repetitively dark riff. The intensity is 100% if the riff is unoriginal. The fire and brimstone continues but whilst I heard screams and sinister, at times vacillating riffs, what I was hearing was somewhat nondescript. Ezurate promote Black Metal of the Satanic variety. “For I am The Almighty” contains the repeated lyric “I am Satan” – a bit trite, and although fiery, the track and the album as a whole was failing to make my blood boil with passion. After a brief acoustic interlude, death-like screams take us into “Thy Infernal Entity”. There’s more feeling about this one. Constant guitar work and blasting give way and the track slows down. With the distortion, it’s more effective. “Salvation Denied” is back to the usual – fast and furious instrumentals, razor-sharp guitars and a vocalist preaching venom. “The Black Cross of Berziers” has more of a boxer’s punch. It’s not as straight-lined as much of the rest but it’s just as venomous. The riff has a slight variation from the norm, and the effect is created of crows hanging ominously in the air. “Jehovah Bleed” has the swirling anger that you would expect from Dark Funeral, while strident guitars accompany the sermon on “Metamorphosis of a Lycan”. The album finishes with dark, piano passage.
Ezurate manage to get their point across in an ultra-brutal and violent way on this album but I would question whether that’s enough to make it interesting. 65 minutes is long enough to explore musical ideas but by and large this doesn’t happen. I prefer my Black Metal to have twists and turns but this is what was missing on “Eve of Desecration”, so ultimately I found it a bit bland and disappointing.
http://www.myspace.com/ezurate
http://www.rottingcorpserecords.com
http://www.myspace.com/rottingcorpserecords
