### Besatt: Tempus Apocalypsis

#### 30/07/12 || Averatu

This album starts off with a bang, Besatt get right in there and rock out, no cheesy 2min intro of squawking crows or the crackling of fire. And at the sound of the wind over icy plains, that’s about where I take a dump behind a snow covered pine tree. Not many bands do the intro thing well, and the ones that do it badly tend to also overdo it. I’m not familiar with Besatt’s back catalogue at all, in fact, for a band that has been going since 1991, and to yours truly, who constantly and actively is looking for music to devour, not having ever heard of them at all is pretty lame, probably to do with Satan’s mother previously being responsible for promotion or something in that vein. Did that rhyme? So what I was trying to say before I got sidetracked is, I’m not sure if this is a normal or abnormal Besatt album, or if they’ve dabbled in intros before, but its not missed here.

“Seals of hate” is obviously a song about the time the band took a trip to the Arctic, fully equipped with pick axe handles. “Trumpets of desecration” must be a tribute to John Coltrain or Sun Ra. But I digress.

I’m not a fan of black metal bands, but its more complicated than that. If you had to excitedly tell me “I play guitar for an evil black metal band”, I would reply “Meh?”. Its because of the way they generally choose to produce and mix their albums, mostly. That, and the stupid names, and also the “my spikes are bigger than yours” outfits. You try do battle in a spike adorned costume, you’d save the enemy a lot of time by accidentally gouging your own eyes out. Can you spell friendly fire, byatch. I get the paper thin guitar sound representing the afore mentioned frost wind, and the unbalanced/bad mix being a social statement, doing everything backwards in the troo fashion of everything that is evil. But I do not understand why you would want to produce an album that offends the ears, why you would put in the thousands of hours of learning and practising to play guitar to the level of tremolo master and then make it sound like a protracted car crash in a snow storm. So I almost Bes(h)att myself, as here for a change is black album that does not sound like a band Bes(h)att a microphone. Fart. You still have the buzzing insects on guitars, barking/ shouting/ rabid madman on vocals, punk/ thrash/ death drums, and ghost of bass. But its decently recorded and mixed, and for this they get bonus points. The drummer appears to have put in over-time towards becoming a blast master, he’s no Master Blaster , but at a fair pace he’s very precise, and at least kicks my air drumming ass. Either that, or these Polish fuckers cheated.

Once I got over how familiar everything sounded, I started enjoying this album. The vocalist literally sounds like a ranting madman at times, fitting well with the thrash orientated song structures alternating between riffing and tremolo chords, and a fair amount of melody, enough variation to keep things interesting. But seriously, I just don’t see how the band could keep their equipment clean with all that rabies foam frothing from the mad front man’s blasphemy hole. One gripe is the break part midway thru track 4, ‘There’, the one guitar playing a riff, the other fucking left to feed back. Really, cock-knockers, stick a nail in my ear next time why don’t you. So getting back to an earlier point, when the opportunity presents itself, I shall be looking at what Besatt have gotten up to on past releases. I would not consider it to be a waste of your time to give this album a chance should the opportunity arise to you, my dear douchbag reader.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Witching Hour
- Website: www.besatt.net
- Band
- Beldaroh: vocals and bass
- Deadlight: guitars
- Devastate: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Seals of hate
- 02. Trumpets of desecration
- 03. Fallen
- 04. There…
- 05. War gathering
- 06. Seven great plagues
- 07. Queen babylon
- 08. The prophecy
- 09. The final battle