MZ.412 - In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi [Cold Spring Records - 2010] | This is the first in a series of five reissues of classic and genre defining albums by this dark & violent Swedish collective who birthed the style of music called black industrial which mixes together elements of ritual & occult tinged Industrial, dark ambience, power noise, and blacked metal into a brooding to pounding dark sonic soup. “In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi”( taking it's name from one of the phases used in a satantic black mass) original appeared back in 1995 on the Cold Meat industry label, and surprisingly for electronic based industrial music this doesn’t really sound that dated or tacky- it still sounds darkly potent & grimly atmospheric with often sudden and jarring noise sears and bone pounding ritual industrial percussion elements. The album features twelve tracks in all that fall between the two to eleven minute mark a piece, and each track here is a grim mixture of: dark occult brood, ritual electro poundings, thick throbbing black synth lines, sudden bursts of blacked noise(taking in noise matter & guitar tone), and lastly but hardly leastly are subtle often semi-buried grim samples; be it of dark rituals, screams, animal grunts, unsettling dialogue samples, grim wind or environmental recordings, and all manner of very cleverly placed mood setting sonic samples. All the tracks here are worthwhile in their own right, but really it gains its ultimate dark and violent power as one long raising and falling ritual that takes you deep into a dark, bloody and mind-altering satanic ritual in sonic form. So this an album that slips, snaps and darts from brooding ‘n’ prime evil ambience, through to pounding thick & black as night industrial tone, onto seared noisy and blackly curdled electronic highs, through to ritual and nasty psychedelic rthymic dwells, and beyond. It’s a darkly potent, often violent & scary record that has something very evil and pitch black running right through its sonic marrow. So real kudos goes to Cold Spring for re-release this prime bit of sonic evilness- I can’t wait for the next in the series!. Roger Batty
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