NETHERMANCY - MAGICK HALLS OF ASCENSION

NETHERMANCY - MAGICK HALLS OF ASCENSION

Country: Portugal
Year: 2017
Label: Helldprod Records

If you are into old-school black metal, ''Magick Halls of Ascension'' should be an easy album to get into. NETHERMANCY come from Portugal and have been around since the late '90s, and this album sounds like a band that knows exactly what kind of black metal they want to play. No modern tricks, no clean production and no need to make things more complicated than they have to be. Quite a few years have passed since 2017 (but seriously, how the fuck does time fly so fast?), but my necro-brother Danihell from Murder Records sent me this CD quite some time ago. Sorry for the delay, my friend! The release originally came out through the awesome Portuguese label Helldprod Records. The album starts with the short “Kosmogenesis - Chaos Portrait” before moving into “Orme” and “The God, the Man, the Slave.” From the beginning, you get the fast drums, tremolo-picked guitars, harsh vocals and the dark atmosphere that runs through the whole record. There are plenty of fast parts, but the band also knows when to slow things down. “Lilith,” “King Saturnvs” and “Moonless” give the album a little more variety without moving too far away from its main sound. The keyboards are also used here and there, but they never take over the songs. They are mostly there to add some atmosphere behind the guitars. The main focus is still on the riffs and the drums. Some of the longer tracks, like “Deathless Flvx,” “Aru Am - Bonded in Lust” and “Tiamat,” give the album more space to develop. “Aru Am - Bonded in Lust”, at almost ten minutes, is the longest song and one of the tracks where the band gets more room to build the atmosphere. The production is not extremely raw, but it still has that old-school feeling. You can hear everything clearly enough, while the guitars and vocals keep the sound dark and aggressive. The only problem is the running time. One hour of this kind of black metal can feel a little long, especially towards the end. A few shorter tracks could have made the album move a bit faster. Still, ''Magick Halls of Ascension'' is a solid old-school black metal record. It does not try to reinvent anything, and that is fine. NETHERMANCY simply play the kind of black metal they have been doing for years, with fast riffs, harsh vocals, dark keyboards and plenty of atmosphere. If you like early-'90s inspired black metal with a bit of thrash in the riffs and some keyboard work, this is worth checking out.

By Steve the Filthy Dog.

NETHERMANCY CONTACT:

https://www.facebook.com/Nethermancy

https://nethermancy.bandcamp.com/

HELLDPROD. RECORDS:

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https://www.instagram.com/helldprod

https://helldprod.bandcamp.com/

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