Black Altar are a band originally from Poland but now resides in the United Kingdom that has had music reviewed before in this zine and plays a satanic form of black metal and this is a review of their 2022 compilation album "Arcana of The Higher Principles" which will be released in July by Zazen Sounds and consists of songs that where included on their splits with Kirkebrann, Beastcraft, Varathron and Thornspawn.
Dark sounding synths and ritualistic sounds start off the compilation before going into a heavier musical direction. When the music speeds up a decent amount of tremolo picking and blast beats can be heard which also gives the songs more of a raw feeling and the vocals are mostly deep yet angry sounding black metal screams.
All of the musical instruments also have a very powerful sound to them while the songs also add in a decent mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts. Melodies are also added into some of the guitar riffing along with some tracks also adding in a small amount of acoustic guitars and demonic voices can also be heard at times.
Some of the tracks are also long and epic in length along with one song also introducing clear vocals onto the compilation. as well as the synths also making a return on some of the intros and outros. Gregorian chants, clean playing and ritualistic spoken word parts can also be heard briefly and when guitar solos and leads are utilized they are done in a very dark yet melodic style, they also bring in a Beastcraft cover and one song is also an industrial orientated re-mix from PreEmptive Strike 0.1. The production sounds very professional while the lyrics cover Satanism, Occultism, Darkness, Evil and Misanthropy themes.
In my opinion this is a very great sounding collection from Black Altar and if you are a fan of satanic black metal, you should check out this compilation. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Ancient Warlust" "Tophet" "Winds ov Decay" and "I'm Demon". 8 out of 10.
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