Behemoth – I Loved You To Your Darkest
Label: Nuclear Blast Playing Time: 47 Min Release: 05th October 2018
Behemoth are a phenomenon. The lyrics are highly satanic, catchy choruses and melodies are rare and common song structures are more or less rough guidelines. Although the facts are against mass compatibility, the Polish guys are some sort of Black Metal stars. They are very well-known in their home country, but also in Germany where their last album reached no 11 in the charts.
When listening to I Loved You at Your Darkest , one thing becomes obvious: Behemoth exceed all known borders of their genre. They integrate not only elements of Black and Death Metal into their sound, but also Gothic parts, acoustic (are at least undistorted) guitars, that remind to Nergal’s Country project “Me and that Man”, and symphonic and choir parts. The result is a weird mixture of styles that requires a long time to be understood by the listener (if you ever understand what the band is doing there…). Especially the undistorted guitars create some breaks, the listeners can use to take a breath before the next furor begins. In this point, Behemoth have much in advance to most Genre mates.
But, to be quite honest, their new songs cannot convince me at all. ‘Ecclesia Diabolica Catholica’ is great and the following ‘Bartzabel’ also. But almost the rest of the album is more or less average and contains no clear highlights. I guess that Death and Black Metal fans will love the faster stuff like ‘Wolves Ov Siberia’, ‘Angelvs XIII’ and ‘We Are The Next 1000 Years’. I, in return, think, that they are more or less boring.
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6/10