Daemonolatria Hypnotica  (Elegy Music)

 Once again I was greatly surprised by the Italian Black Metal… “Daemonolatria Hypnotica” is the band’s second effort, being “Iter in Obscuritates Mentis” demo the first one, released back in ’99, and re-release in 2004, as a demo tape by Total War Records. This band plays an ultra fast and violent Black Metal in the vein of Marduk (principally) and Dark Funeral, with a pretty technical performance, dominated by ultra fast programmed blast beats and sharpened guitars. The album starts with “Misteria Nocturna”, a highly industrialized piece of darkness, with martial programmed drums, freezing atmospheres and some distorted spoken vocals which unleashes in macabre laughs… After this sort of intro, the storm of violence and nightmarish riffs comes. With a pretty melodic approach Ars Macabra creates apocalyptic sceneries full of anger, hate and destruction. The drumming plays at full speed during the whole album, maintaining the hellish and fairly chaotic mood along the disc. The vocals are an absolutely remarkable point; with a wide range of tones and shades, from the typical blackish shrieks, death growls to some kind of raspy clean voices… The industrial hints doesn’t remain only at the first track, there’re a lot of industrialized effects during this album (just listen to the dark, atmospheric, industrial interlude at “Prolegomena Of The Warfare State”), reminding me the sound of Mysticum in some passages, but much more inclined toward the traditional sounding Black Metal. This album, as a whole, sounds extremely coherent and powerful, but, in my opinion, the most impressive tracks of this work are definitely: “Machinator Tormentorum” and “Psycho Apocalypse” …This album will, undoubtedly, blow your fucking head off… (AP)