Pact’s debut full length The Dragon Lineage Of Satan, with its somewhat crude but oddly effective and altogether appropriate cover art, was a surprise bundle of nasty, very accomplished black metal with hard and fast values to match the bestial assault. Unsurprisingly then, their sophomore album called to me and as with the more refined cover, the music too is a pinch more refined. Actually perhaps focused would be a better word as the relentless satanic racket going on in here should have no words that could be mistaken for implying softness applied to it. This is full tilt, raging black metal. The snarling, grinding vocals swirl with echo and reach from the heart of the dense riffs. Songs with titles like ‘Pactmaker Lucifuge’, ‘The Great Serpent Of Tehmon’ and ‘The Witchmother Of Shades’ just lunge out of the wall of noise and cleave straight through your skull with no frills, no ‘post rock’ wankery. Just nine tracks of from the gut black metal blood and sinew driven determination.
I guess that reference points now might be somewhere around the Marduk way of crushing everything in their path, or Gehenna before their recent ‘comeback’ album when death metal undertones somehow creep into the black metal ferocity without overwhelming it or snippets with links to Watain and early Deathspell Omega. There is a constant feeling of tension too, of being pulled towards a vortex of steel wire and being bound ever tighter. Breakdowns into slower vocal heavy passages abound and on songs like the aforementioned and excellent ‘Pactmaker Lucifuge’, Pact know the value of a slow, atmospheric build up before taking a deep breath and simply annihilating your face.
There are a couple of downsides here, too, though. The first is simply a matter of stamina. With albums like this where it is pretty much a feral assault from start to finish the length of the album, even at a relatively reasonable less than 50 minutes, can get to be a war of attrition. As it pummels you your senses start to reel and things become a blur. This is partly a success as it demonstrates absolute power, but partly an issue as you end up missing things. The other issue is the production. Now this is hardly some ultra modern sterile laboratory production, but even so the sound seems a bit too neat somehow. The nuanced rattle of the filth in the riffs on the debut have been partly lost and this levels them too much for me. I have to add that others will seriously disagree with me on this, and again I certainly don’t want to suggest this is anything other than a totally ripping and rending display. Just without the imperfections and the grit I personally found it slightly less memorable towards the end.
However to end on a deserved high; this album should see Pact kicked squarely into the league of Marduk and 1349 at their speed drenched best and fans of either or any of the other bands I mentioned should really lend this serious bunch a good old earful because I think they’d be in heaven.
Good, solid follow up, then. Foundations built. Let’s see where it takes them.
(7.5/10 Gizmo)
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