Colosus - Blestem
Kaotoxin
Atmospheric/Black Metal
8 songs (1'05'29'')
Release year: 2013
Kaotoxin
Reviewed by Jared
Surprise of the month

This year I’ve listened to quite a few black metal bands. Something I’ve noticed greatly this year is the vast number of one man band attempts at bringing something new to the genre, or falling in line with the others. More horror filled driven, the album Blestem by Colosus is once again one man’s take of the black metal genre, and even though it may tend to drag on during some moments, it’s generally a pretty enjoyable hour long listen.

The album starts off on a creepy atmospheric approach which includes church style organ. The music perfectly exhibits a feeling of horror. A horror which is best experienced with the lights turned off and a few candles to illuminate a dark room. After the old school sounding horror experience, the album moves onto a lengthy 12 minute track Mormant. It begins with clean melancholic guitars and then emerges with big tremolo picking from a hellishly distorted sound. The song suddenly stops, and the song is filled with distant sounds of disturbing voices and church bells that give the overwhelming sense of terror. The song continues with a basic black metal slow riffing style which makes up for about most of its duration until the end, but the track is a very solid one.

Another lengthy track follows with the song, Intuneric, which starts off sounding like an old school science fiction movie soundtrack. Once the brief intro subsides, the guitars and drums roll into a scary distortion with strong double bass. The vocals are a bit harder to like here, but the overall musicianship is very good. Once again, Colosus combines fear and black metal into this track about two thirds of the way in, and its demonic and screaming cries during the atmospheric portion balance the song well.

There is one purely atmospheric keyboard track called Blestem. It’s an uneasy track to listen to, not because it is bad, but just overall disturbing to listen to, especially when we evokes his evil screams that are tortuous to the ear. Any person who enjoys Halloween, such as me, can see this track being put to great use at one of the local haunted houses. It is simply that chilling.

Getting to the albums close, La Apus is a great black metal riffing track that doesn’t get repetitive by once again delivering a dread filled atmosphere with cleaner sounding guitars at intervals. But the blast beating within this song is stronger here, and it’s done well without it being overdone like a lot of bands like to do. This is indeed one of the darkest and best songs on the entire album.

Blestem ends in a very atmospherically dark way. The final track Pustiu is yet another strange and unsettling track that is worthy of absorbing into. The tunnel like feeling and the sense of being trapped in a horrific environment, this track does well. It’s only with the final few minutes that the distorted guitars emerge to give this album its final hurrah of wicked black metal.

I am quite surprised how much I did enjoy this album. I went into expecting myself to just become bored with about every aspect it was going to bring forth, but it’s a solid black metal album with an atmosphere that is very terror filled. It may sound like a typical black metal record at times, but the guitar riffing is still done in a hellishly good fashion and the disturbing atmosphere can definitely separate this from the rest in some areas.

Killing Songs :
Mormant, Intuneric, La Apus
Jared quoted 75 / 100
Alex quoted 70 / 100
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