Ecnephias - Inferno
Scarlet Records
Blackened Gothic Metal
10 songs (42:04)
Release year: 2011
Ecnephias, Scarlet Records
Reviewed by Charles
Finally! A long awaited promo copy of the latest Ecnephias arrives from my great pal Mancan. It’s hard to believe that we met in such inauspicious circumstances. I wrote a review which was pretty dismissive of The Ways of Descention.Then, he registered on the forum to give me a piece of his mind. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, but we ended up the best of friends. He was kind enough to send me the band’s back catalogue on CD, which I also wrote about. I think he posted me this record when it was actually new, but- alas!- I moved house and never received it. So, this review is a year out of date, at least.

OK: the reason I didn’t like Ways of Descention initially is because Ecnephias’s music is theatrical and camp. Normally, I like metal to be stonyfaced and utterly without humour. Perhaps for the benefit of people such as myself who take a while to notice this sort of thing, Inferno, has ramped up the elements of hammy tongue-in-cheek (the first vocal sound we hear on the record is manic laughter). With present-day Ecnephias (older records like Haereticus are more strongly oriented towards death metal), what we have here is occult-obsessed gothic metal, with lashings of defiantly heavy-handed synth work giving a real sense of melodrama. More so than I recall in the past, the band really aim for catchiness. I could see a number of these tracks bothering the lower end of the pop charts in Continental Europe.

Opener A Satana is quite emblematic. An ultra-simple riff strolls cheerily along at mid-tempo (most songs here are mid-tempo), accompanied by kooky synth lines and a big, sing-a-long chorus. Mancan’s vocals are usually harsh, but often when we get to the choruses he frequently transitions into a deep baritone croon. Weirdly, when he does this his voice reminds me of Til Lindeman. In fact this, combined with the thudding (yet engaging) simplicity of much of the riffing and the sense of things not being taken quite that seriously, does put me in mind of an extreme metal equivalent to Rammstein. I don’t think they’ve made a porn video yet, though some of the promotional images the band has released throughout their career aren’t that far off.

So yeah, even if it isn’t my cup of tea I can see this is a record with its own identity. Super-straightfoward, catchy, occult fun. And hey, there’s another album coming out soon. I’d actually quite like to hear it.

Killing Songs :
A Satana, In My Black Church
Charles quoted 75 / 100
Other albums by Ecnephias that we have reviewed:
Ecnephias - Necrogod reviewed by Charles and quoted 78 / 100
Ecnephias - Haereticus reviewed by Charles and quoted no quote
Ecnephias - Dominium Noctis reviewed by Charles and quoted 75 / 100
Ecnephias - Ways of Descention reviewed by Charles and quoted 65 / 100
0 readers voted
Average:
 0
You did not vote yet.
Vote now

There are 0 replies to this review. Last one on Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:25 pm
View and Post comments