### Temple Of Baal: Verses of fire

#### 16/01/14 || Cobal

Whereas I was expecting some more traditional black metal approach from these Frenchies, I have to admit they got me with my pants off. A bit. It’s true I had been warned about “Verses of Fire” being some listening-worthy special stuff, but hey, they —no, not him— said the same on “St. Anger” and “Lulu”, right? Anyway, I decided to finally give this beast a shot and I’m not disappointed. Not at all. The album takes off with a regular mid-paced black metal song, except that as the tracks occur, the sound is ultimately a bit too heavy to be simply raw black. Time to rewind and start over.

Yep, there’s indeed some well-manufactured death metal involved, and then, when I thought I had got the hang of it already, shouted/clean vocals break into the whole mixture to make their appearance every now and then. A propos, those vocals appear only after quite a few minutes of regular growling, and they —the shouted ones— finally evolve into disturbing screams ala Tom Araya by track 6, “Golden Wings of Azazel”. Of course, the mandatory thrashing riffs accompany them. So, what we have here is probably one of the best balanced fusions of death and black metal that I’ve listened to for a long, long time, and it definitely blends together a whole bunch of influences that I fail at identifying. Have I mentioned I’m not a big fan of blackened death or anything?

Had I written a full review on this one, I would have prevented another staffer whose area of expertise does include this kind of stuff from doing it properly.

Cheers.

8/10: This is a stub only, what did you expect?