Mastiphal
For a Glory of All Evil Spirits, Rise for Victory
[Nocturn]


One of the more modern (well, they have been releasing demos since '93 on the same label that released Christ Agony's demo material) and "non-raw" bands coming out of Poland. For those of you who hate the traditional (and much better!!!) "raw" black metal scene coming out of Poland, you can purchase this, and when someone goes "do you like any Polish bands", you can say "yes, I like Mastiphal".

Basically, the music here is somewhat in the earlier Emperor vein, filled with keyboards, highly rasped vocals, and seemingly epic atmospheres. The drums here are far less chaotic than any Emperor material though, and are actually quite tight sounding. Guitars are quite simple, and are basic fast paced riffs.

As I mentioned before, the music is quite synth laden. Much like Emperor, they allow for the synths to take control of the music, and create the general ambience. Take track two for example, at about two minutes in, the music is dropped for a tasteful keyboard section, again very reminiscent of Emperor. At times the band also create some more "pagan" sounding music, such as on the "I can't believe that's not a Summoning song", "Tesknota Czasow Minionych". Yes, there's really nothing original here, but at least they do in a fashionable, and very impressive way.

For the most part an impressive album. The band sound nothing like the dozens of other Graveland style bands out there (which is sad in some way), but they deserve credit for creating a solid release. They've also signed to Fullmoon, so the band will probably hit the American crowds soon enough. They'll probably start making worthless, and commercial pop-music to please the yank crowds. Let's hope that's not the case.


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