REVIEW: SEPTICFLESH 'THE GREAT MASS' (SEASON OF MIST)

The ancient civilizations’ legacy is immortal. It shall live until the very end of human race and dig roots into every work of art. Extreme music makes no exception. Some of the bands, responsible for the evolution of metal in this new century have found the essence of their sound in a world which existed more than 2,000 years ago. The pyramidal death of Nile or the biblical approach of later Behemoth almost resurrected an ancient, divine power.

Greek symphonic maestros Septicflesh have a lot to do with this wave of extreme metal. They are technical, distinctive and precise; the world they create is a majestic mix of more than few mythologies, as the big return with ‘Communion’ proudly declared through the crash of Lovecraft-ian occult atmosphere, Egyptian phenomena and many other important details, leading the listener to the ruins left from this catastrophe of ideologies.

The energy, radiating from the ruins, builds up the atmosphere of ‘The Great Mass’, an album that rises from the ashes of a great, unknown colossus. Using the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra once again, the band reach evangelical scale IN THEIR music; ‘The Vampire From Nazareth’ is the simplest song (along with ‘Rising’), but beauty, ugliness, aggression, melody and deep melancholy all meet during the four minutes of atmospheric perfection. This is Septicflesh at their best, smartly balancing between epic orchestrations and modern, yet trve in its own way death metal. The title-track masterfully piles up layers of brutality to the point where on the last section it transforms into desert storm… of blastbeats. Mysterious female vocals, ritual percussions and dramatic guitar yell are so ‘visual’ that you're bound to feel the Pyramid god's untamable anger. Radical experiment this is not, but 'The Great Mass' completes the development of Septicflesh’ sound; a journey that started from ‘Sumerian Demons’ and ends right here.