Behemoth - Evangelion

Rating: 7.3

Country: Poland

Genre: Blackened Death Metal

Release Date: 2009

Track list:
1. Daimonos
2. Shemhamforash
3. Ov Fire And The Void
4. Transmigrating Beyond Realms Ov Amenti
5. He Who Breeds Pestilence
6. The Seed Ov I
7. Alas, Lord Is Upon Me
8. Defiling Morality Ov Black God
9. Lucifer

Total playing time 42:00

Band Website: Behemoth

Behemoth - Evangelion

Adam "Nergal" Darski - Vocals, Guitar
Zbigniew Robert "Inferno" Prominski - Drums
Tomasz "Orion" Wróblewski - Bass

Behemoth are huge nowadays aren't they?! Three weeks at number 1 and a gold record in their home country, plus landing at #56 on the Billboard chart in the US - all for this, their latest album, Evangelion. And that's been achieved without even the merest whiff of fallacy! Since mutating into their current Blackened Death form they've hardly put a foot wrong in terms of stepping up consecutive next levels, courting the Metal mainstream, and remaining relevant. Which is puzzling because they're still good y'know? But then perhaps, just this once, that is why. Either that or it's their stonkingly absurd image - Nergal, keep working at it buddy and one day you will master Derek Zoolander's Blue Steel!

Despite always being the formidable live act it wasn't until the Demigod album that Behemoth truly arrived in my opinion. The likes of Thelema.6 and Zos Kia Cultus were solid enough albums, however they lacked that spark, that sharpness. Demigod changed all that; it was still the same band but it sounded as though someone had spiked their drinks (perhaps with Anthrax - it was their ‘Be All and End All' riff they nicked after all), pissed in their corn flakes, or, oooh I dunno, cut them up on their commute to the studio. The Apostasy was similarly successful, and it is to the credit of both these albums that they still sound rampant despite Hour of Penance half-inching and brutalising their best Death Metal moves.

Evangelion largely carries on in the vein of its two immediate predecessors. There has been some tweaking of the formula, but nothing too drastic. Guitars shoot all over the place creating multiple threads and layers of other worldly cacophony, maintaining a certain darkened edge, aided by the odd high pitched yelp which sounds like the emitter's soul is being stolen. This time out there are more Blackened tremolo picked riffs which bring them remarkably close to Anaal Nathrakh at times, and evil arpeggios which are on the hellish (rather than the icy) side of Black. Naturally the performances and production are exemplary; Inferno's percussion is nothing short of rocket fuelled and laser guided, as is the rhythm guitar work (although I could bitch about the lead work). It all adds up to the sort of high quality Extreme Metal product you would expect of Behemoth at this point.

It does mix up the pace a little bit compared with the velocity of Demigod and The Apostasy. There's still all the all out speed you want, but there are decidedly restrained tracks where the band try to engineer intensity by other means. It is the speed which is their strongest suit and this accounts for some dips in the effectiveness of the material. Particularly when one particular track stands head and shoulders above the others: “Shemhamforash” is the true moment of inspired Extreme Metal genius on this disc. The musical equivalent of standing in a wind tunnel as acid tipped razor blades slash through the air and your person. It's worth the purchase alone. But just as your appetite is whetted for that tier of malevolence, they take their eyes from the prize with “Ov Fire and the Void”. Not a bad track, but not of the quality I demand of Behemoth. And that's the story of Evangelion; peaks of excellence, combined with “take or leave” sections.

The deepest relative trough is "The Seed ov I" and its unneeded Gojira style scree riff - No one, but NO ONE, in this day and age can use that technique in a riff without it being a shameless steal from that band ("Yeah, y'know it sounded good on From Mars to Sirius, so we thought, why not?"). In fact it wouldn't be uncharitable to pin this track as filler, and it wouldn't be stretching it to peg other tracks in the latter half of the album as such either.

Talking of the album's latter half, Evangelion's attributes cannot be discussed without mentioning the final track, “Lucifer”, which is their most stately piece to date calling on the crawling Lovecraftian terror of Metallica's “Call of Ktulu”, coloured in with Celtic Frost style horns, and aching feedback. It's text book Metal utilising creepy arpeggios and a dramatic chord progression. It ticks all the boxes, bar that one labelled "x-factor".

You could say that Evangelion is a little frustrating: the x-factor is there, and Behemoth are consistently hitting home runs, but that's not good enough - I want them to hit it out of the park, “Shemhamforash” style, with more regularity. It is good, and it is worth your time and money, but it's not a classic.

November 23, 2009