Belphegor were formed in 1992 from Salzburg, Austria and play a style of Pervasive, Darkened, Blasphemous and Satanic style of Death and Blackened Death Metal. With Totenritual released on September 15th, 2017 through Nuclear Blast and following up to 2014’s Conjuring The Dead, Totenritual consists of 9 tracks and clocking in around 52:00 of monstrous brutality. Totenritual opens up with the blistering track Baphomet, a epitome of Death/ Black Metal that features a concept album about a Black plague continues story of Conjuring The Dead and past releases showcases incredibly produced production values and extremely well as the tracks provide Belphegor’s greatest and most interesting songs they’ve ever written.
Then onto songs such as Spell of Reflection, Apophis – Black Dragon, The Devil’s Son and Embracing a Star, Totenritual Belphegor uses demonic, incredible and perfect combination of dissonance, melody, intense extreme metal blast beats and fiery explosion tremolo guitar melodies are beyond strange and instrumentality wise, there’s appropriate productions that are not entirely basic but rather keep balance slow to mid fast paced tracks are a underlying theme throughout past material. It’s a wide variety of suppression, darkness and Death/ Black Metal combinations have been significant terms of submission, overpowered instrumentation and raging into intensity. From their outstanding foundations, increased technicality and no sacrificed punishing Blackened Death Metal roars to add uniquely designed and authentic signatures are Belphegor’s heavy rotation while there’s hardly any cylinders explained.
Musically and lyrically speaking, Totenritual discusses Satanism/ historical history of Unholy Christianity seeking vivid and biblical prophets as the translation to the album proudly and disturbingly presents a darkened atmosphere that improved such great musicality. Overall, Totenritual is Belphegor’s aggressive, unrelenting and serpentine albums they’ve ever done to date since 2006’s Pestapokalypse VI and therefore this Austrian Extreme Metal band once again utilized Black and Death Metal compositions so perfectly well. If you’re into Blackened Death with Death and Black Metal elements, this is for you.
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
