‘Formidonis Nex Cultus’ came out in 2007 at a time when Impiety was already well established as one of the most ferocious names to emerge from the Singapore underground, but this particular record is interesting because of the musicians surrounding Shyaithan and the way their individual backgrounds feed into the album. Mike Priest (now known as Mia Priest based in Cambodia) on lead guitar, Iron Sheikh on bass, and Tremor on drums gave this version of Impiety its own identity, while Shyaithan remained firmly in control of the songwriting and overall direction.
The album gets straight into the kind of Black/Death/Thrash Metal that Shyaithan had spent years developing, with ‘Genocidio Primero’ setting the tone immediately. The riffs are aggressive without becoming completely chaotic, and there is a strong Thrash Metal backbone underneath the Black and Death Metal attack. That part has always been important to understanding Impiety, because Shyaithan’s influences have never been limited to Black Metal. He is a serious fucking maniac when it comes to old German Thrash, particularly Sodom, Destruction, and Darkness, and those records clearly sit somewhere in the foundation of his songwriting.
You can hear that obsession throughout ‘Formidonis Nex Cultus’. There is a particular kind of riff construction here that comes from old German Thrash, where the emphasis is on making the riff drive the song rather than filling every available space with technical playing. Shyaithan takes that approach and makes it much nastier by throwing Black Metal aggression and Death Metal weight over the top of it. The result still sounds unmistakably like Impiety, but you can hear where some of the rawness and attack come from.
The lineup also works very well. Tremor is probably the first musician who grabs your attention because his drumming gives the record a lot of its momentum. He is obviously capable of handling the speed, but what I like is that he doesn’t treat every song as an excuse to simply blast from beginning to end. He changes the patterns around the riffs and knows when to let the drums drive the song and when to pull back slightly. That makes a difference because the guitars are already moving at a pretty unhealthy rate.
Mike Priest brings another dimension through the lead guitar. Coming from Absence of the Sacred, he wasn’t some outsider brought in simply to fill a vacant position. He was already part of the same underground network and had his own musical identity. His leads fit the songs rather than turning them into technical showcases, and there are enough moments where his playing cuts through the rhythm guitars to give the album some breathing space without taking away from the aggression.
Iron Sheikh (Babar Sheikh from Dusk) is another Pakistan-based musician whose involvement makes the album a particularly good snapshot of the Singapore underground at that time. The bass could have been given more presence in the recording because the guitars and drums dominate the mix, but you can still feel the low-end underneath the songs. With these three musicians around Shyaithan, the album has a sense of being performed by a proper lineup rather than simply being another Impiety recording built around one person.
The opening stretch is strong, particularly ‘Genocidio Primero’, ‘Terror. Death. Worship!’ and ‘B.O.A.R. (Beast Of Abominable Regiments)’. The songs are built around riffs rather than gimmicks, and there is enough variation in the drumming and guitar work to keep the attack from becoming monotonous. ‘B.O.A.R.’ in particular is one of those tracks I think gets overlooked when Impiety’s catalogue is discussed, even though it has everything that works about this period of the band.
Shyaithan had already developed a very recognisable songwriting style, and there are passages on this album that feel like variations on ideas he had used before. ‘Skullfucking Armageddon’ and ‘Kaos Kommand 696’ are obvious reference points when listening to the guitar work here. Shyaithan was never interested in pretending he had invented some completely new form of Metal. He took the records he loved and made them part of his own language.
That German Thrash influence becomes even more obvious when you reach ‘Death Squad’, the Darkness cover that closes the main album. This is a completely natural choice for Shyaithan. Anyone familiar with his taste knows how much he loves the old German bands, and Darkness belongs in exactly the same record collection as Sodom and Destruction. The cover doesn’t feel like an afterthought or a label-mandated bonus. It sounds like a band paying tribute to music that genuinely matters to the person writing the rest of the album.
The Vulcano cover ‘Ready To Explode’, which appears on some editions, makes just as much sense when you look at the other side of Shyaithan’s influences. The old Brazilian Black/Thrash sound has always been important to Impiety, and the rawness of Vulcano fits comfortably alongside the German Thrash obsession. These are the records behind the records, and Shyaithan has never been shy about letting listeners hear that.
‘Aten… Once Upon’ is probably the most interesting song on the album from a lyrical perspective. The song deals with Akhenaten and the Aten religious revolution, but Shyaithan takes the subject much further by putting forward his own interpretation of the relationship between ancient Egyptian religious ideas and later monotheistic traditions.
The lyrics are deliberately provocative, with Shyaithan referring to “Jewish liars” and accusing them of twisting the facts, while drawing comparisons between the Ten Commandments and Egyptian Spell 125. This is Shyaithan’s own polemical interpretation rather than an established historical fact, but it is worth discussing because the song shows that he was thinking about the subject beyond simply using ancient history as decoration for an Extreme Metal song.
There is also no reason to attach some imaginary Egyptian or Middle Eastern musical character to the track. It doesn’t need one. The music remains firmly within Impiety’s Black/Death/Thrash vocabulary, and the historical subject matter sits over the top of that familiar musical foundation. The longer running time allows the riffs to develop more than they do on some of the shorter songs, and that gives the track a slightly different feel without taking it outside the Impiety sound.
‘The Blitzkrieg Omega’ is another track that deserves considerably more attention than it usually receives. It is one of those songs that can easily get lost when people talk about the band’s better-known material, but there is a lot going on here. Tremor’s drumming is excellent, Mike Priest gets plenty of room to make the guitar his own, and Shyaithan’s rhythm work gives the song the kind of foundation that makes the whole thing move.
The title itself could hardly be more Shyaithan, and musically the track has that same German Thrash mentality running through it. The riffing is direct and aggressive, but the Black and Death Metal elements make it much more vicious than straight Thrash. There is no attempt to make the song technically impressive for the sake of it. The emphasis is on the riffs and the momentum, which is exactly where this lineup is strongest.
I have always thought ‘The Blitzkrieg Omega’ was one of the more underrated songs in the Impiety catalogue because it represents the album at its best. The band sounds tight without sounding over-rehearsed, Tremor is pushing the songs hard without overwhelming them, and Mike Priest adds enough lead work to give the guitars some character. It is also one of those tracks where the influences are obvious without completely swallowing the band’s own identity.
The drums are prominent and have enough power, but the rhythm guitars could have been heavier and the bass deserves more definition. Shyaithan’s riffs are doing so much of the work that giving the guitars more weight would have made some of the slower and heavier sections hit harder. I wouldn’t want this album polished. The “roughness” is part of the character and suits the material.
What I like about ‘Formidonis Nex Cultus’ is that it sounds like a product of its time and its environment. The musicians involved were coming from the Singapore underground, Shyaithan was drawing from the old records he had always worshipped, and the album came together as a very direct piece of Extreme Metal rather than something designed around whatever trend was happening outside the underground.
That makes the record historically interesting to me as well as musically worthwhile. Mike Priest, Iron Sheikh, and Tremor were all part of a local scene that was much smaller and more interconnected than what exists today, and hearing them together on an Impiety album gives you a snapshot of that period.
Shyaithan’s songwriting remains the centre of the album, and while I think some of the riffs could have been pushed further, there is no denying that he knew exactly what kind of record he wanted to make. The Black Metal aggression, Death Metal heaviness, and German Thrash influence all sit together naturally, and the performances from this lineup give the material enough energy to make the familiar moments work.
For me, ‘Formidonis Nex Cultus’ really earns its place in the Impiety catalogue. It captures Shyaithan doing what he has always done best: taking the Black, Death, and Thrash records he fucking loves, absorbing them completely, and turning them into his own version of Extreme Metal. It isn’t without its flaws, but there is enough conviction, aggression, and genuine Metal worship here to make this a record that still deserves to be played loud. Real fucking loud.
