by joseangeles@muchomail.com

The most insane and melancholic metal album ever. It's a personal all time favorite of mines that would be one of those hypothetical "albums you would bring with you if you were going to be stranded on an island". What stands out the most about this album is the vocals. As soon as you play the first track, the psychotic shrieks will just pierce right through your skull. I guess you could call them black metal vocals but they are seriously too deranged to lump under black metal. This is like a banshee that's completely lost his mind.

Besides the brilliant vocals, everything else is brilliant too. There's swift evil-tinged black metal tunes, crushing major doom and gloom riffs, weepy solos, and calming yet menacing parts. It's an album filled with very smooth diverse tempo changes. Also I noticed the bass can actually be heard and doesn't just mirror the guitars, something a lot of bands can't do. This is some serious top-notch songwriting that soothes an ambivalent mood of sorrow, rage, distress, hopelesness, and frustration. The music's atmosphere really captures those depressed lyrical themes. Sure the vocals are in German but the most frustrated of us can still relate to the madness bleeding all over this album. Listenting to it is almost therapeutic.

As for technical aspects about the release itself, you could get the special edition 2-disc re-release from Redstream or the original. In the re-release, disc 2 is Dictius Te Necare in all its original glory. The first disc I didn't really care much for, just a bunch of techno-noise. It's a shame Bethlehem stopped doing this destructive and gloomy dark metal after their third album and started doing that experimental crap. This band is legendary and this album changed eveyrthing I knew about the boundaries of extreme music.

10/10