The grand Inquisitors Dagon and Incubus are back and ready to probe and torture a confession out of you with album number six, their first with Season Of Mist. Pull up a comfy chair and prepare to meet the questions! “Are you a witch, do you dance naked with goats on the Sabbath, do you worship Satan as your lord and master?” “What you do?” “Jolly good then, fancy a cuppa tea and a nice cream cake?” Test passed the pesky duo are set to batter and croak their way through another album of ten ridiculously titled tracks and yes the answer to what you are wondering is, they are very good indeed.
Play is hit and with no subtlety or need of an intro the drums rise and bruise quicker than a particularly vicious mark of the devil. The first song is called ‘Force Of The Floating Tomb’ and I am sure that has already helped you envisage all sorts of hidden stygian depths for what is to come. The album does have a lot of melodies that seem to hypnotically repeat throughout and you will keep coming back to them. Incubus does his part solidly as ever but the guitars hit some really mesmerising grooves as songs slow down into rotten rolling hypnotic passages and doom laden twists and turns. The melody is incredibly strong here and the songs are as ever real stayers, maybe designed to be played at midnight and possess your very soul. Songs flow into each other and you may not even realise that this is more than one solid long piece of music at times, indeed it perhaps could have been but that would have stopped the dastardly duo having fun making up the song titles. Cavernous cries of ‘Dark One’ and ‘Satan’ coated in reverb suddenly boom forth from catacomb depths and as we flow into the title track, it suddenly hits how much some of these grooving guitar segments sound like the Sons Of Northern Darkness Immortal. It makes me shiver but then again doesn’t everyone do that when it comes to being reminded of the frosty nebular riffing of said Norse band? Despite this icy touch the humungous drum pounds delivered at full force here and ghastly croaks have you in no doubt who you are ultimately listening to.
‘Spiritual Plasma Evocation’ has horrible voices from beyond the void and a slow drum roll into it, there are times like these along with the simplistic and rolling riffs that Satyricon also spring to mind, the Americans have definitely been touched by the Norwegian style this time around. By the midpoint mark you are well aware how good they are as they scythe and batter away at full force. They are wizards, no scrub that they are “Master(s) of the Cosmological Black Cauldron” and if that title doesn’t have you thinking of them doing a Macbeth in outer space (unfortunately down a number) then count your blessings as your sanity is obviously a lot more well hinged than mine! Some great warped and sustained guitar effects are utilised on ‘Joined by Dark Matter, Repelled by Dark Energy’ at times they sound like a band such as Prong and if you had the stopwatch out I think Dagon hits the longest croak of the album here, it’s an impressive one for sure!
When not blasting there is a huge sense of majesty found and with it a lot of atmosphere and even mystery as the album takes you on a journey through different dimensions like the gleaming ‘Inversion of Ethereal White Stars.’ Naturally if you are looking for more extreme depths then it is pretty obvious a track entitled ‘Infinite Interstellar Genocide’ is going to deliver a real battle beyond the planets! By the time we are summoned into Lovecraftian depths by a ritual of chants and parping horn we are complete acolytes and it is left to closing track ‘Where Darkness Is Lord And Death The Beginning’ to consolidate the position and initiate you as true believer. Needless to say I’m sold and loved this over repeated listens, finding it a difficult album to stop playing.
All that is left to say is that we need to witness these songs in a ceremonial live setting and one where the band actually turn up, preferably on time too! That said as the croaks die it’s just time to leave a score and vanish in a puff of smoke.
(8.5/10 Pete Woods)
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