#mephorash — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #mephorash, aggregated by home.social.
-
By Dr. A.N. Grier
In a country where you have to compete with Behemoth and Vader to make a name for yourself, Hate has done damn well for the last thirty years. Never a band to wow the masses, Hate is consistently solid, moving their traditional death metal sound into a more blackened variation over the years. Though everyone calls Hate a Behemoth clone, I’ve listened to both bands long enough to know that’s not true. While they’ve never had the success of their Polish heathens, Perun V.’s crushing guitars and Vader-esque vocals continue to lead the charge, prolifically releasing albums to their dedicated fanbase regardless how many times someone, like Steel Dick, calls them “Behemoth Jr.”1 This year brings Bellum Regis, the band’s thirteenth fucking full-length album. Jesus. And, as fans would expect, it’s massive, spitting venom and rumbling daycare facilities like a panzer just rolled into town. But, will ole Grier love it or Hate it?
Coming off 2021’s solid offering, Rugia, Bellum Regis sets out to deliver more devastation to this already devastating world. One surprising aspect of this new album is the inclusion of female vocals. While mostly assigned to the nosebleed section to protect them from the action, these subtle touches add some well-needed texture to the album’s melodic passages. Combined with the vocals, those melodic elements dip deep into the Gorgoroth watering hole, pulling up similar handfuls of depressed trout as Gorgy’s “Rebirth” and “Burn in His Light.” Surrounding all this are nuggets of headbangable riffage, blistering blastbeats, and Perun V.’s vicious vocals that never seem to age.
“Bellum Regis” gets the war tracks rolling in a stellar way. One of the album’s better songs, the misleading clean guitars and gentle female swooning eventually give way to a minefield of blackened riffage and guttural growls. As it charges ahead, melodic flourishes rear their ugly heads before they are shot down by what sounds like a dozen machine guns firing in unison. As the song alternates between aggressive and melodic passages, it continues to build… for a bit too long. Regardless, it’s a crushing number and a fantastic way to begin the album. The follow-up track, “Iphigenia,” shares the title track’s ill-tempered mood with a synthy atmosphere and alternating clean and hauntingly distorted guitars, which bring to mind a combination of Behemoth and Carach Angren. The main riffage has some serious death attitude, and the back half is injected with a melodic transition, where that female siren returns. But, like its predecessor, it hangs around a touch too long.
“A Ghost of Lost Delight” is another long, building piece that offers as much as the previous tracks but never really reaches the crest. Romping around with old-school blackened tremolo work, it passes through dungeons of meloblack bliss before collapsing and restarting again. By the end, the hopes for an erupting climax hang in the air but never come. While the simplistic “Prophet of Arkhen” uses a similar riff foundation, it introduces beautifully crushing chugs that’ll snap your neck and leave you a vegetable for the remainder of the album. Keeping it simple, the build is more meaningful, and the final climax leaves me in orgasmic bliss. “Perun Rising” delivers the goods for the melodic areas of the album. Mashing black, death, and meloblack together, this dark beauty rises and falls through a barren wasteland where Mephorash lives.
Overall, Bellum Regis is another solid outing from Hate that continues along the path set by the band in the last decade or so. Some songs work perfectly as they stand, while others could use some trimming. Most notably, a few minutes of the album’s first half could use the axe, as the back half is shorter and arguably works better. That said, each track contains pieces that separate one from the other to minimize repetition across its forty-six-minute runtime. Though Bellum Regis isn’t perfect, I’ll return for those little morcels of goodness as I do with every Hate release.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kb/s mp3
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: hate.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/hateofficial
Releases Worldwide: May 2nd, 2025#2025 #30 #Behemoth #BellumRegis #BlackMetal #CarachAngren #DeathMetal #Gorgoroth #Hate #May25 #Mephorash #MetalBladeRecords #PolishMetal #Review #Reviews #Vader
-
What to not play on a first date. #Mephorash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DriisKRdUOI
-
By Dr. A.N. Grier
How I’ve never known about France’s ACOD is beyond me, and I heartily apologize to them because I’ve been having a hella good time with many of their releases. Beginning their career as a black/thrash outfit with metalcore tendencies, they began to explore Mephorash-meets-Septicflesh territories around the time of their 2018 release, The Divine Triumph. While there are thrashy moments, the songwriting is now predominantly massive string atmospheres, marching drumbeats, cranked-up bass work, and riff after motherfucking riff. Each song is a rollercoaster ride, continuously rising and falling throughout, leaving you wondering which pain level you’ll hit next. As of 2002’s mighty Fourth Reign over Opacities and Beyond, the band has been led by two founding members Fred and Jérome—the first lending his voice to these opuses and the second doing… well, everything else. But does Versets noirs have what it takes to widen the expanse left behind by its predecessor?
Versets noirs continues where Fourth Reign over Opacities and Beyond left off. But, its structure and delivery are very different from anything they’ve done before. Typical releases are in the forty to fifty-minute range with nine to thirteen songs each. Instead, Versets noirs consists of five (I repeat, five songs) in forty-two minutes, with a heavy cover of Samael’s classic “Black Trip” closing it out. But, it’s not like a typical bonus cover inclusion as it fits the album well, and closes it out perfectly. Aside from that, they also made a bold move by beginning the record with a twenty-plus-minute opening track. Freddy Boy also digs deeper into his vocal repertoire to add more diversity than the previous album, without going into the weirdness of their older material. All this combined makes Versets noirs probably the most unique release in ACOD’s fifteen-year career.
“Habentis Maleficia” begins with some slow, growing dissonance that settles into a smooth groove when the vocals surface. It’s a gigantic piece that includes rasps, French spoken-word segments, and booming cleans on the back end. Its foundation revolves around constant builds, falls, and rebuilds—morphing from one emotion to another. At one point, we are charging through Gorgorothian melodies and concrete-splitting black metal assaults. And, the next, we are soothed with calming piano work and string atmospheres. There are moments of impressive dual guitar work where, when played on headphones, each ear is combated by a different lead. And, sometimes, the bass rises above the foam to take charge in popping, rumbling beauty. On the back half, you’ll even find death assaults with vocals pulled deep from the diaphragm, and even a short passage where the band ventures into Southern, Pantera-esque territories. It’s a fucking wild ride but when its melodic climb to the final summit comes, it’s well worth the wait.
“The Son of a God (The Heir of Divine Blood)” is probably my favorite, kicking hard with a killer riff and guitar tone that reminds me of earlier Old Man’s Child. When it settles into its groove, the vocals match its step nicely to deliver a headbangable experience. But for all its aggressiveness, the song ventures into melodic atmospheres, alternating moods from wanting to rip one’s face off to wanting to cry. When the bass takes the reigns, we soar to new heights. During these moments, the atmosphere reaches the clouds, intermingling rasps with big, booming cleans as the piano surfaces and engulfs the entire thing in hopeless melodies. But, “May This World Burn” has to be the most unique piece on the album. It takes all the elements of the previous tracks and adds even more. Misleading you with some soft strings in the intro, it transitions to the most badass riff on the record. Between the flailing guitars and hard-hitting drums, this thing is ferocious. Then, it gets really interesting as the dual guitar work passes from Mors Principium Est influences to old-school Arsis death/thrash territories. But, after pulverizing you for seven-plus minutes, it concludes in the same beautiful fashion as it began.
As a whole, I prefer Fourth Reign over Opacities and Beyond to Versets noirs. But that doesn’t mean this new record is any less engaging than its predecessor. The fact that it continues where the previous one left off is exactly what I wanted from ACOD. It’s a forward movement on a sound and songwriting style that fits the band far more than the black/thrash days of Point Zero and First Earth Poison. With a rich master, every instrument finds its place in every moment of every song. The massive amount of riffs is shocking, the performances are tight as Hell, and the aforementioned vocal diversity lends well to the album’s overall theme. Perhaps they could have concluded the record with an original track, but the Samael cover does add texture to the record. If you like big, black metal atmospheres and wild, cross-genre influences, this album is for you.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Hammerheart Records
Websites: acod.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/acodband
Releases Worldwide: April 26th, 2024#2024 #35 #ACOD #Apr24 #Arsis #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #FrenchMetal #Gorgoroth #HammerheartRecords #Mephorash #MorsPrincipiumEst #OldManSChild #Pantera #Review #Reviews #Samael #SepticFlesh #VersetsNoirs
-
@HailsandAles gotta check the #mephorash release out
i'm not too familiar with the band, but i happened to watch their lockdown performance and it was epic.they played a creepy ass show, masked in some fucking woods and i think at some point it started raining. they closed at dusk with a song with a very gilmour-y (for a lack of a better word) guitar line. lovely