Artist: Non Opus Dei
Title: Eternal Circle
Type: Album
Label: Witching Hour Productions

There’s a real shortage of death metal from Poland. Well if that was a Facebook group that would surely be followed by the phrase “LOL, j/k” as the Witching Hour label alone has enough of it to prove that statement a falsity. I’m not entirely sure what happened here – because the songs on the bands MySpace which appear to be older tracks, to these ears, bear little resemblance to what I’m hearing on this album with the older stuff leaning further into an atmospheric black metal territory. Truth be told, there are way more qualified people on this site to judge whether Eternal Circle is, or is not, a good record but I shall try to be as fair as possible.

The first track, ‘Woda Dla Umarlych’ gets straight down to business with a brutal array of battering drums and pummelling riffs while lyrics are yelled out in a vicious rasp. There really is no let up here and it’s a full on affair of unrelenting fury and battery. ‘Demon Nietzschego’ is introduced with a child-like nursery rhyme sung in Polish, before the drums blast in and give a continuous thrashing while the heavy guitars hint at a Vader influence. ‘Przystrojona Sloncem’ does have quite a cool little riff, a jagged and almost classically metallic sounding one that juts out from the chaotic undergrowth. The melody that circles round on ‘Until The Wheel Stops’ is also quite effective, and the ending returns to the childish sounds earlier with a crying baby – which seems to fit with the theme of the album. By the way, this would be the Nietzschean theory of The Eternal Wheel – an everlasting circle of birth, life and death of which we are destined to repeat over and over again. Perhaps in that case the repetitive nature of the music is a metaphor for life?

It doesn’t take me long to establish that this really is not my cup of tea – given repeated spins I attempt to look for positives to say about this album but I think the bottom line is that while it’s all tight and well played, it’s incredibly monotonous with zero variation (thankfully it’s only half an hour in length – any longer would have me hitting things or jumping out of the window). It’s hard to see the point in it really, I mean I’m partial to the occasional bit of blackened death metal and I can see there’s more than a passing nod to Behemoth here but it just seems very two-dimensional and uninspired. For me, three spins of this was enough and now I shall retire it to the box of “never to play again” promos or perhaps let the dog use it as a frisbee.

http://www.myspace.com/nonopusdeipoland