Info
- Band(s): Empyrean Gaunt
- Label(s): Altare Productions
- Release Format(s): Cassette
- Release Year: 2024
- Review Date: May 30, 2025
- Author(s): Seth Nekromancer
The present work, ‘Black Befallen Odium’, was released by the Portuguese label Altare Productions on tape, limited to only 50 copies worldwide. I know this label for works by bands like Black Cilice, Irae, Mons Veneri, Lunar Spell, or Inthyflesh. What I like is their consistent underground philosophy of releasing limited copies. And what to say about the band? We return again with one of those entities covered by an aura of mystery, as their identities are not revealed. The available photo shows a guy in a hallway, standing upright, chin up, defying the sky with corpse paint. I assume he is the sole instrumentalist behind the conspiracy, crowned with the appellation ‘Empyrean Gaunt.’
One click is enough to understand the dark depths we will enter. This is Raw Black Metal in its most primitive and unnerving form. Guitar feedback and a painful scream welcome us. A pretty lo-fi sound without any sonic embellishment, dark minimalism, and hatred injected into the music. The LLN influences are more than obvious. It is pleasant to the ear to continue finding bands like this that keep that damn sound of the past intact since they are a trip back in time. The attack that gives the album its name is a total bestiality, with mid-tempo rhythms and speed changes at intervals, volatile riffs, and the rotten tone of the guitar giving it a diabolical character. In ‘Misantropia Eclipsed’ (one of my favorite songs), the previous formula follows, but with an increase and decrease in speed that can give the sensation of loss of time-rhythm, but who wants something perfect? Primitive crudness is what burns among the horrors and screams of the epilogue. The opus has a duration of almost 26 minutes and is distributed in 3 blasphemous songs per side. The aberration that opens side B was cursed with the name ‘Gateways of Unbeing’ and is the longest of the entire work. One could expect greater repetition of patterns to fill the almost 6 minutes it lasts, and obviously there are repetitions, but there is also greater composition and contribution of riffs, time changes, and thousands of screams. This song, in particular, has one of the most memorable riffs of the work. The two songs that follow keep intact the black essence spat out so far, although I hear a variation in lower volume in these. Maybe that’s the case, or maybe it’s my shitty ear. Now we have fallen into the clutches of ‘Profusion of Possession’, where the mid-tempos and slow tempos predominate more, giving it a nuance of gloomy litany with only an increase in speed before the death of possession, and thus the closing of this Canadian tomb is consummated.
Continuing with the sensations that ‘Black Befallen Odium’ left me, I think it is well balanced in terms of the distribution of songs on each diabolical side of the tape. Musically, it is a delight for seekers of raw Black Metal sounds close to the French circle I already named above. But if you ask me for two influential bands, they would be Vlad Tepes and Mutiilation. Totally recommended!
Altare Productions
- Country: Portugal
- Style: Black Metal
- Links: Homepage, Youtube
