DAGORATH / OCCULTUM / MORDHELL / CZORT - Under the White Flame (UNDER THE SIGN OF GARAZEL CD 2019)
Split such as "Under the White Flame" is a real feast, in my opinion, as this is an impressive alliance between little known, obscure, but great bands, which should get an immediate interest from fans of this cursed music. In this case we can experience a gathering of four Polish black metal bands: Mordhell / Occultum / Dagorath / Czort. I doubt that they would be known among foreign listeners, but here in Poland they all received some attention and good feedback in the underground with the albums they did in past few years. This is why this split is definitely a must have for the collection. I started to listen to it with pretty big expectations and luckily I do not feel disappointed.
Dagorath and Occultum are definitely the brightest parts of the split.
First of these two bands, Dagorath, unleashes a real hell with their harsh, vicious and utterly hateful black metal. Very often it is fast and uncompromising, totally in the pure black metal style of second BM wave from Norway. But it’s not a mindless and primitive effort, you’ll find here a whole lot of great riffs and arrangements, interesting song structures. And everything is played in the pure BM style, without combining it with other genres. And that’s good. I think their part of the split is the most hateful and aggressive.
As for Occultum, whose "In Nomine Rex Inferni" I'm yet to dive into properly, these two new songs impressed me fuckin a lot. They're quite expanded in the structure, diverse and deeply influenced by the NOEVDIA bands, I think - which is nothing bad! The riffage is excellent, everything is very well played, there's a lot of great arrangements and ideas, top harsh production and I absolutely love the ritualistic, sinister atmosphere in their music. And the vocals as well, especially with these choirs somewhere in "Return of the Giants", where the atmosphere becomes very mystical. But it’s “Satanic Black Metal Until Death” the best song, not only from this band, but for this entire CD in general. What a fast paced, vicious and brutal black metal outburst!!! Absolutely great.
Mordhell... Somewhere in the mid 00's they've been often described as Carpathian Forest clones. And it's been ages since I have listened to anything from them ("Suffer in Hell" is the last thing I know from Mordhell, but it's already covered in dust, I haven't listened to it many years). These news songs from this band are OK, I think, Mordhell still likes to bath in that filthy and primitive, almost punkish sometimes, simplistic black metal. Their music has that very old school, almost 80’s style, almost like a sort of simplistic black / thrash, which you can especially hear in “WhoreCunt”. A lot of Darkthrone there as well... And it sounds fine, I enjoyed it, but I feel like I preferred this style of black metal a decade ago more than nowadays. It sounds a bit naive a little, I have no idea why haha. But good stuff.
And finally we have Czort with two songs of slightly more melodic and sometimes almost epic, yet rough and traditional black metal. And again, I can only speak in positive words about their music. Mid paced, maybe not so insanely harsh and aggressive as the previous bands, which is probably why the music is easier to listen to. But it sounds interesting from start to finish, I like how they create that dark atmosphere and get a malicious feel. I could only hope that Czort will unleash new album in that same quality very soon.
With four bands in the program, "Under the White Flame" kind of reminds me another killer 4-way black metal split, which have impressed me so much in recent months - and that is Abigor / Nightbringer / Thy Darkened Shade / Mortuus split. But there all bands sound quite merged, their presentations are connected not only conceptually, but also musically. "Under the White Flame" is not really alike in that way, but here are also four great black metal and the result of their work is definitely worthy.
Verdict: 75/100
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