CarpeIceland’s Carpe Noctem thoroughly impressed me with their self titled EP in 2009, a resolute affirmation of how black metal should be played throughout its blistering four track offensive. A demo subsequently came out but now we have the proper full length that is as expansive in duration as it is within its soundscape of dense blackened malice. Listening to the opening background noise and feedback on “III Odium Somniferum” pensive thoughts lean heavily towards what sort of hellish outburst awaits from the speakers. Gently meandering in with distorted guitar, low end reverb and doom like drum beats the sinister unearthly tone is ceremoniously swept aside by the warlike battery that unfolds like a battalion of innumerable tanks.

Conceptually based on the self and its afflictions with life, death and the nature of evil as I paraphrase the promo blurb, there is an ethereal and majestic evil permeating this album with tangential changes in tempo alongside beastly and ferocious barrages creating a ghoulish and terrorizing auditory journey. Listening to this album in an isolation room in hospital was truly claustrophobic, and no it wasn’t that kind of isolation, my faculties are very much intact. The dramatic changes in style from thundering black metal rabidity to more exquisite schizophrenic melodies the opening tune flows smoothly into “II Ars Moriendi” with gentle acoustic guitar and cymbal taps before a tumultuous descent into cavernous expansive blackness that assails the listener into submissive oblivion. The tune is dangerously dissonant and maliciously spiteful with chilling demonic echoing vocals coupled to nightmarish sonic explosions of primal savagery.

Slightly off key for added psychopathic value, “I Vitriol” again has soft cymbal taps tormenting and torturing with the devilish vocal delivery. The double kick picks up almost unnoticed before the massive drop into black sludge terror. This is a frightening album, conjuring images of monstrous misshapen fiends lurking threateningly which they do as the song deviously meanders off into a melodious black metal foray. Sounding like the background noise to the original Evil Dead movie “II Metamorphoses Maleficarum” possesses unrivalled black metal vehemence where malfeasance and pernicious deviltry set about tearing strips off your flesh then dissolve your soul. The vocals are utterly demoniacal, harnessing an incorporeal inhumanness against the piercing guitar work. I couldn’t help but shiver listening to this, there is a palpable level of dread within its chords and beats that is unsettling and unnerving and as you reach the epic closing track “III Hostis Humani Generis” the droning ethos that initialises the tune is succinctly battered to one side by a devastating onslaught. The riff is staggeringly brilliant, a colossus that rides waves of blackened horror and sadistic festering malevolence. As you’ve probably noticed the tracks count down and back up but if you’re interested in this album then I will leave the reasoning behind it for you to find out.

I cannot overstate how incalculably brilliant this album is. This will pathologically satisfy your wanton desire for black metal that will invade the very essence of your being and take it prisoner for all eternity.

(9.5/10 Martin Harris)

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