Search - Sargeist :: Satanic Black Devotion

Church burners paradise

Victoria | Eugene, Oregon, Usa | 08/20/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"personally found this cd to be an amazing accomplishment in the black metal community... great bm vocals"

Satanic Black Devotion

Amy | outer space | 05/21/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sargeist is sort of another Black Metal supergroup with members of Behexen and Horna, and started out as a side project of Shatraug's (who played everything on the Tyranny Returns release). Hoath Torog from Behexen does the vocals on this and it took some getting used to for me, but grew on me a lot with repeated listenings. "Preludium" is an intro track that opens the album well, then it moves on to some very listenable, atmospheric and gloomy songs. There have been comparisons with Darkthrone, and it's true in the sense that they have the same sort of atmosphere as early Darkthrone albums, not that they blatantly rip them off or anything, but rather, they have some nice guitar melodies going on along with a great atmosphere.



However, "Frowning, Existing" has exactly the sort of of vocals that make me initially want to remove the CD from the player and throw it in the trash, but I guess it's supposed to sound mournful and agonized. I can see how people could appreciate the vocals here, but I can take so much agony and wailing and I felt too much like I was suffering just from listening, despite the fact that I liked the music. Maybe that makes it effective. I'm not sure.



"Panzergod" begins fast and energetically, which breaks up the slower pace of some of the songs at the beginning of the album and keeps it from sounding too similar to the other tracks. For me it stands out as one of the better songs, along with "Black F***ing Murder," which was the first Sargeist song I ever heard, before I even picked up the album. It was catchy and interesting enough to make me want to hear more Sargeist. There are sections of very nice, melodic guitars and memorable chorus that makes you almost want to sing along, and enough tempo changs to keep things from sounding monotonous.



Also, it's one of my peeves when bands name a song after the band name or the band name after a song (though several of my favorite bands have done so), but "Sargeist" is a decent song, so I forgive them.



It's all quite minimalistic sounding, and the drums are a lot more audible than they were on the later Disciple of the Heinous Path. The guitars sound very good as always and the songs have great emotion and atmosphere. I'm not overly fond of the vocals but they fit the music well enough and as a whole, this is a quality album."