GORGOROTH – Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt CD
Regain Records
Well it’s been two years since the start of what observers would call the band’s implosion. Whether you sided with Infernus or Gaahl and King ov Hell in the band control spat shouldn’t matter anymore. Fans of all eras of GORGOROTH, of which I’m one, felt disgusted by the whole media circus atmosphere and unclean with seeing a great band fall in with hipster retards. If your head fills with dreams of grandeur and you fall in with cunt faced losers, which is what Gaahl and King did, then you deserve to lose everything. The band needed to die a horrible painful death which is what happened. Gaahl and King have quietly faded from the picture although not without their own added baggage. Infernus is back in charge of the band he created and he’s brought in with him some faces old as well as new. Pest has returned on vocals to bring back days of old. Tormentor is back on second guitar but is not on this recording, officially he’s playing live. Another face from the past is drummer Tomas Asklund formerly of DISSECTION who also co-produced this release along with Infernus. Ironically he isn’t playing with the band live so Infernus has enlisted someone else for that duty. Finally on bass its Frank Watkins who everyone knows has been laying down the grooves for US Death Metal legends, OBITUARY.
So Infernus has assembled a formable squad of Extreme Metal vets in order to resurrect the name GORGOROTH from disgrace. Has he done it on here? The title translates into “as many as possible converted to Satanism” which is a great way to return to the fold as it were and rebirth. Honestly I had no idea of what to expect from this other then knowing that Infernus started writing the material in 2006. So when the opening cut, “Aneuthanasia”, knocked me back I knew instantly this was going to be incredible. The opening cut harkens back to a time of the band’s first three releases. Pest sounds as if the 12 years he’s spent out of the band never happened. In fact musically the Gaahl/King era has been wiped clean and GORGOROTH has returned to their True Norwegian Black Metal form. For some strange reason I’m reminded of Wolf’s Lair Abyss by MAYHEM. Not musically of course but in how both band’s stories are similar. With that one it was drummer Hellhammer who got the band back together from the abyss and brought in former vocalist Maniac to create a great comeback release. It’s evident in the song “Rebirth” which carries along in this melancholy ambient way. It’s this cut where you can hear Pest utter, in his vocal styled screech, “rebirth of GORGOROTH”. I can picture Pest with a snake’s head on a man’s body. His vocals are that venomous sounding and I’d forgotten how good a singer he was.
The overall sound of Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt reminds you of misery and pain which is quite a change from their last release years ago. I guess that’s to be expected since Infernus had written this material from 2006 to 2009, a time period which was wrought with turmoil. There’s a frigid quality to the riffs and a sense of dread to the staccato picking. It’s like walking out onto a frozen lake and then suddenly you hear the ice cracking. It’s not a depressing Black Metal release. On the contrary this is an invitation into the morose psyche of Infernus who obviously is recreating his ordeal through the music. Songs like “Human Sacrifice” and “Satan Prometheus” are reminders of tiresome battles he’s endured in life over the past few years. That’s probably why the production on here is low compared to earlier works. It adds to the bleakness like Pest’s scream at the end of “Satan Prometheus” reminds you of endless pain and torment. Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt should be the comeback release of the year simply for all the scars it unveils upon the world.
www.regainrecords.com
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