Album Review :
Suspiria Profundis - Divine Knowledge
By John Magelssen in Reviews | Comments closed
Artist: Suspiria Profundis
Album: Divine Knowledge
Label: Sanctus Gladius Records
Release Date: 11/12/2013
Reviewer: John Magelssen
Tracklisting:
- The Watchtower (YHWH)
- Rise Of The Archangel
- Divine Knowledge
- Holy Angels
- The Living Sacrifice
- Aeons Of Frozen Darkness
- Christian Against Christians
- The Last Days
Suspiria Profundis is a black metal band from Italy. The recordings from their album Divine Knowledge is somewhat rough and sounds like a live show without the crowd almost. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems to draw away from the music style that they play. It is hard to find good Christian black metal in the first place, but it goes a long way to have good quality tracks. The feel of the album remains fairly constant throughout the album, but nothing really sticks out to me.
I could not find the lyrics to the songs, so I cannot speak about the lyrical content of the record, however I do enjoy the black metal vocals. Nothing was very clear, but I feel that black metal has always had high fry vocals that were on the brink of coherency. Moving right into the album, let us start with “The Watchtower (YHWH),” the first track of the record.
This song hits fast with tremolo picking from the guitars and constant blasting of double pedals and a 4/4 beat from the drums. The vocals are high fry throughout the song and don’t really change to give dynamics in the rest of the record. The guitar melody is very repetitive and continues pretty much through the entire piece.
The entire record uses pretty much the exact same pattern, so I will move onto the last song. “The Last Days” is possibly the only contrasting piece on this record. It is slower and has an interesting echoing voice, which almost sounds like it is coming from a bullhorn. The drums move back and forth from a slow solid beat into the same beat with a double pedal, but the song stays in the same tempo with the guitars repeating two chords for a large portion of the song. There is a break and a change of feel with some sort of feedback on the guitars with the vocals moving into a high fry again. The song remains slow and fades out with the guitars.
Overall: This is a hard album to get into because of the repetitious feel throughout the album. I believe that Christian black metal (A.K.A. white metal or unblack metal) has potential, but it must be done a little more formally. I would like to see this band grow into using more dynamics in vocals and contrast with tempo. It would also be nice to hear more of a melody in the guitar parts instead of a pattern with a picking pattern for the entire song. I wish the best to the band and hope to see the musicians grow.
RIYL: Elgibbor, Old Man’s Child