With many bands in the genre using it for monikers, album and song titles, etc. Latin has got to be the official language of Black Metal, and the class all BM-metallers have to take in order to qualify for the ranks. Somehow this dead European language goes well with the mystique and blasphemy of Black Metal, especially it being the official language of the hated Catholic Church, making this choice a bit ironic. If you are a French black metal team, not only you need to take the Latin class, but you need to ace it as well, as this country seems to be spawning a disproportionate amount of blasphemy as of late. Obscurus Advocam fit the part, with the motto claming that “only the one who lives in darkness can be eternal”.

The band’s debut Verbia Daemonicus, bookended by a couple of instrumental pieces Bounded Artifact and Tale of Scorched Earth, feels like a journey, the one that starts at the surface and keeps descending into the inferno, with intermittent stops … only to continue the descent. Two instrumental cuts declare the album to branch outside of the realm of old Norse BM, and incorporate altogether doomy parts (especially ), clean leads and thick warm production with unusually booming bass lines.

The title track and Starlight to Twilight follow Bounded Artifact and set the bar enormously high, almost too high for Obscurus Advocam itself to follow. Verbia Daemonicus, the song, pendulums between predatory lounging after the prey feeling and dark god worshipping Deathspell Omega atmosphere. After a grand bass line and practically a classic lead, the melodic double bass section shows that the beast can also be vulnerable. Even more desperate feeling is projected by Starlight to Twilight, the song bouncing frantically forward, like a bird in a cage, with the single purpose of trying to find the way out, discovering by the grim unrelenting end that there is actually none there.

The rest of the songs on the album do have their moments, To the Bone combining raw militant double bass and hints of melody leading to the acoustic ending. Endarkenment has a very interesting, almost saxophone sounding lead amidst the mass of detuned electricity.

Obscurus Advocam carefully balance cutting Burzum rhythm guitars, convoluted leads, Infestvvs gnarly vocals and groovy bass guitar – all in a production that sounds surprisingly clean for an extreme metal record. Verbia Daemonicus is an appealing album with a pair of standout songs.