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Temple Of Baal: Lightslaying rituals

27/11/09 || cadenz

A few times during your mortal journey on this Earth, life confronts you with quintessential, fundamental questions regarding the important things in life. Like for example: What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? Did Jesus shave his pubes and flash his genitals to get the attention of his manslav-…I mean apostles? Once in a while, you need to start thinking and re-evaluating the decisions you’ve made in your life, your philosophical principles – in short, how you think and live. Well, the time has come to set another of these paramount issues straight – is Temple of Baal black or death metal? No need to groan, Mr. Cynical-penis – it’s not as easy as you might think it is!

First of all, TOB hail from France. How many great death metal bands do you know from France? That’s right. Now how many great black metal bands hail from the country of champagne and cheese? That’s right. Two. Um…yeah. Now what does this have to do with TOB’s genre? Err…well…you know, it’s ehh…er… OK, now that that’s settled, let’s move onwards!

If I was to describe “Lightslaying Rituals” with one word, it would be merciless. There’s no pity left for the weak or stupid here, only skullcrushing blows to the head, leaving nothing but a steaming pile of bone rubble behind. Devastating riffs somewhere between Morbid Angel, Vomitory and Marduk accompanied by many a blastbeat and even at other times furious drumming is what this BM/DM (haven’t decided yet) smorgasbord is filled to the brim with. There are some fine moments with guitar leads and somber melodies strewn a little here and there across the record, and they bring much-needed depth to the texture. Without these extra spices the main course would taste like wood (of the tree kind) after a while, and that’s not something to strive for. The tree kind, that is.

The vocalist has a mid-to-high pitched growl that sounds ace, very raw yet still powerful and articulate. I don’t have access to the lyrics, but the album and song titles (as well as the music, of course) invoke an aura of hate, blackness and death. Maybe this is hate metal? No, that sounds like something Hatebreed does, fuck no! Maybe this is what the genre categorizers deluxe call “blackened death metal”, or ”deathened black metal”? No, that sounds really, really, really, really bad. I’ll return to this. Stop groaning.

The production is quite massive, all of the instruments sound raw, authoritative and beefy. The overall sound is a little disorderly, but the chaotic feel only heightens the music’s character, so nothing to complain about there. The song-writing is maybe not the most unique I’ve ever heard, but it’s damn competent. All songs on “Lightslaying Rituals” are good, and it’s not easy to clear the bar you’ve set every time. I’ll be coming back to this hard and relentless slab of thick and hateful destruction many times in the future!

Oh, right, the genre. Is this death metal, or is this black metal? You know what? Nobody fucken cares what the fucken genre is as categorizing is an absolute fucken waste of time for the most part. Listen to Temple of Baal’s music instead and judge by yourself – after all, we’re listening to bands, not genres, right?

Information
Released: 2009
Label: Agonia Records
Website: Temple of Baal MySpace
Band
Amduscias: vocals, guitars
Alastor: guitars
Arkdaemon: guitars
Antares: drums

Tracklist
01. Piercing the Veils of Slumber
02. Triumph of Heretic Fire
03. Black Sun of the Damned
04. Angstgeist
05. Dead Cult
06. Hate Is My Name
07. Poisoned Words
08. Vectors to the Void
09. Blessings of Blackfire

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