I volunteered to review this malevolent creature essentially on the basis that it featured none other than A.A.Nemthegea on vocals and bass, and I am a big fan of his output. I really had no idea what else the band had in store for me. I mean, sometimes it’s good to take a punt, yes?

Well, it turns out that Verminous Serpent are a pretty filthy doom-laden black metal band. Now, I don’t mind Black Metal, but it’s fair to say that it’s not in my top three sub-genres of metal. It’s fair for me to say that I prefer newer Darkthrone to older Darkthrone, and I’d rather that my screamy, tinny metal sounded as if it had been recorded in a studio rather than via a mono-cassette recorder propped up against a tin-shed wall.

All of which is good news (for me), because whilst “The Malign Covenant” is undeniably a metal album cut from the cloth of Black Metal, it’s got a whole lot of personality and professionalism that sets it aside from the pack. I’m a sucker for all atmospheric music, and opener “Seraphim Falls”, with its atavistic take on slowed down Celtic Frost riffing, demented vocal takes and rumbling bass provokes images of strange cavemen howling within their stygian lairs. The main riff is infectious and effective in its simplicity too.

The production is really on point too. I listened to the album mostly through a very decent set of headphones, and there’s some significant subtlety in the noise being created here. While all of the riffs are fairly straight ahead in their design, in execution the waves of distortion and effective merging of the overlapping collision of the six and four strings, with the insistent, almost tribal drumming provides plenty of interest. It’s particularly in the moments where the tempo slows down though, that I think Verminous Serpent come into their own. Tracks such as the title number, “Verminous Serpent” really give me an answer to the question, “what would it sound like if Winter’s 1990 masterpiece ‘Into Darkness’ was covered by old Bathory”?

The closer, “Death’s Head Mantra” is a 13 minute long epic. 13 long, cold, hateful minutes of warlike gristle, doomed tempos and demented shrieking. I get that this does not necessarily make this a rush out and grab it endorsement of the record. I will say that the final track really encapsulates everything that’s enjoyable about this as a release; it’s a little different, it’s altogether interested in being quite an austere record and it really, really doesn’t give a fig for convention. That being said, I do feel that it’s also quite an avant-garde record; I suspect that Black Metal purists will turn their noses up at what’s here, but for the rest of us, this five tracker is a good taster of what I hope will be an ongoing concern.

(7/10 Chris Davison)

https://verminousserpent.bandcamp.com/album/the-malign-covenant