Halphas are a band from Germany that has had music reviewed before in this zine and on this recording plays a very raw, melodic, and old school form of black metal and this is a review of their 2024 album "Sermons Of The black Flame" which will be released in February by Folter Records.
A very dark sounding intro starts off the album before going into more of a heavier and melodic direction. When the music speeds up a decent amount of blast beats and tremolo picking can also be heard which also gives the songs more of a raw feeling and the vocals are mostly high pitched black metal screams.
The album also adds in a lot of old school influences while angry shouts can also be heard at times. Throughout the recording you can also hear a good mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts along with the solos and leads also being done in a very melodic style, a couple of songs also adds in a small amount of spoken word parts.
All of the musical instruments on the recording also have a very powerful sound to them as well as some synths also being utilized briefly and as the album progresses a brief use of clean singing can also be heard, a couple of the tracks are also very long and epic in length. The production sounds very professional while the lyrics cover Satanism, Occultism, Left Hand path and Darkness themes.
In my opinion this is another great sounding recording from Halphas and if you are a fan of raw, melodic and old school black emtal, you should check out this album.. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Satan Speaks" 'Disciples Of Dark Gods" and "Into The Fires of The Black Flame". 8 out of 10.
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