Band's List Ambiant Black Desecrated ...Thus Begins the Suffering

It seems to me that Naturmacht Productions have been quite busy lately. They released quite a number of interesting productions usually dealing with atmospheric and depressive material from various genres including Black Metal or Folk Metal.

This new release, Desecrated’s …Thus Begins The Suffering, is not exception to the rule and keeps on digging into the rotten soil exhumed by previous Naturmacht Productions releases. Only this time, the Black Metal side is much more pronounced.

Desecrated is an American one-man project driven by an infernal entity named Spectre. Obviously when thinking about the US scene, names like Xasthur or Wolves In The Throne Room are naturals but it seems to me that Desecrated’s sound is very much Finnish in essence. As the inlay sheet states it, influences include Darkthrone, Burzum and Emperor (among many others) and that’s exactly what I feel when playing …Thus Begins The Suffering.

It has the raw and cold guitars of its Scandinavian forefathers and all the desperation you may expect from harsh and heinous Black Metal vocals. Most tracks are rather long ranging from four minutes to twelve minutes but unlike some other bands, Desecrated builds on atmospheres but also offers some welcome variety alternating bleak and melancholic parts sometimes acoustic sometimes with a low building riffing with blast beasts.

If my overall appreciation of this first recording from Desecrated is rather high, I still would complain about the drumming. Yes, I know it’s programmed but still some do a better job than others and on this peculiar record, I feel like it could have had a much better sound. Snares sometimes sound quite out of place and it could have enjoyed a bit more “variety”. This won’t strike you if you’re playing the record out loud on speakers but it gets annoying on headphones.

Quite surprisingly, I found the longer tracks to be more interesting, both Drowning In Morose Solitude and Dirge Of Despair are the highlights of this record and Spectre’s saturated vocals even give them some industrial aspects due to the repetitive nature of the riffing.

Clearly a very nice effort for a first record and certainly the one release from Naturmacht Productions that I’ve enjoyed the most because not only it reflects on despair but also on hate which I felt was lacking in the previous two recordings I did review for them.