### Alghazanth: Vinum intus

#### 29/09/11 || Smalley

When it came time to choose which release to stub from a black metal band with a silly name that I’ve never heard of, I decided Alghazanth was the mildly safer bet than Smargroth; sympathies to the poor bastard-staffer who’s stuck with them. But anyway, “Vinum” is actually pretty good, which isn’t a huge surprise (just a minor one), when I saw Metallum listing them as a band who’s actually been doing full-lengths for a while now. I get a big Emperor vibe here, with the heavy usage of dark, symphonic touches (including an actual fucken orchestra!), though their songwriting doesn’t “switch tracks” as much as Emp; ‘zanth’s riffing is less violent, more stable, but it’s a catchy, epic kind of stable, which is good, and it’s well-paced all throughout.

The black-growling here is bearable, and the production has a low-fi-ish charm, though I may have enjoyed this more with a more polished sound; it’s like the music is more like an 8, but combined with the lacking-in-punch knob job here (stop snickering), “intus” turns out less than that. Oh well, it’s still pretty good.

7.5: This is one of our rare Stubs that doesn’t make me trip on my musical toe. Ha-ha. Ha.