Get your gob round that for an album title! Preposterousness aside I had been suitably pumped in anticipation for this thanks to earlier reissue of 1998 album ‘Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult’ and recent and very powerful live show. This is album number five for the cult of Inquisition and again sees just Dagon providing vocals, guitars and bass and Incubus on drums; it’s a tried and tested formula and one that sees no need for an expanded line-up. If you have never heard Inquisition before and have them simply tagged as a ‘black metal’ band they may well be a surprise stylistically and not what you expect. They are the sort of band whose vocal approach you will either love or hate and there is little change on the new album to the way things are done. Having said that the hymns do seem a bit richer in places and the production is excellent here making everything crystal clear in the mix.
Song titles are as epically Lovecraftian as ever and we are literally flung into the abyss of ‘Astral Path To Supreme Majesties’ with a furious welter of barbaric drum blasts. Behind them you can hear that rich and almost Gothic sounding gleaming guitar and then the vocals come in. The best way of describing them in an arena of vocalists who do their best to sound like a demonic jackal is to compare Dagon as being akin to a necrotic frog. This is not meant to be a put down in the slightest as they are really atmospheric and conjure a real mystical and even magical flair to the music cascading around them. The guitar-work is excellent here with huge flailing solos and a burst into jaunty folk summoned straight out the heathen forests here and there. A good sample from I know not where but as per usual very much a Satanic one leads into ‘Command Of The Dark Crown’ and again it is evident that although he only has the one part to play on proceedings Incubus is not going to do them in the background. Some neat juddering riffs lie heavy in the structure of the song here as it slows down and the craggy and gnarly demeanour following, shows the duo are more than happy to vary the tempo. Longest song ‘Desolate Funeral Chant’ brings the slow crawling and many tentacled doom exactly as the title suggests. It is an unholy sermon and overpowers you with an oozing, deadly melody running through its labyrinthine melody. ‘Cosmic Invocation Rites’ picks up the speed and throws it into a very cosmic vortex as it flurries off on a destructive path like a whirlwind.
That is just the first half of the album and there are plenty of other moods and textures to come. The music entrances and mesmerises at times, just drawing you into its ever undulating cosmos. The album may only be a nice and compact 41 minute listen but playing it kind of draws you into another dimension as the music twists and turns through both time and space before it abruptly finishes as suddenly as it started with the last batter of ‘Across‘The Abyss Ancient Horns Gray’ leaving you in utter dreadful silence.
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