It is now early 2006 and Sarkom’s debut full-length album has just been released. In June 2004 I already reviewed their demo, simply entitled ‘Demo 2004’, which showed a band with huge potential to become big in nowadays Black Metal scene. Because I liked this demo so much I was really curious if Sarkom was able to fulfil my high expectations.
The first thing I noticed at ‘Aggravation of Mind’, as this debut album is entitled, was the very sinister and eerie looking cover. There is really no better way to introduce your debut album to the world than to have a cover like this. Well done. But as we all know it is really the music that counts. Luckily there is really nothing to complain about the music either. ‘Aggravation of Mind’ is a logical continuation after the 2004 demo. The musical style remained the exact same but the sound is way much better now and also the arrangements are a bit better worked out this time.
Two tracks from the demo were found good enough to be featured on this debut album as well and both ‘Bloodstains on the Horns’ as well as ‘Passion for Suicide’ haven’t lost anything of their original raw power. In fact they nowadays sound even darker than before. With a tracklisting of eight songs and a total duration of exactly 62 minutes you can see the tracks are all quite long but because of the improved arrangements the songs don’t get boring at all. They actually suck you completely into the album without a way of escaping. Musically Sarkom shows some resemblances to Gorgoroth, Trelldom and old Dark Funeral. The pace is most of the times fast though the band isn’t afraid to lower the pace to a heavy, almost bombastic mid-paced speed. The instrumental ‘Inside the Memories’ is the track which is a bit different from the remaining songs. Here the pace is rather slow and the riffs are quite bombastic and hypnotizing, quite similar to the older Burzum.
Sarkom is furthermore proud to have released an album which doesn’t contain keyboards nor synthesizers and with ‘Aggravation of Mind’ they proved that it is possible to get an eerie dark sound by using only the basic instruments of drums, bass and guitar.
As said in the beginning of this review I had really high expectations towards this album but luckily Sarkom managed to fulfil them completely. ‘Aggravation of Mind’ turned out to a really good Black Metal album and I can advise it to anyone with a passion for real Black Metal.
