Phantom, Beherit and Blasphemy - "The Luciferian Crown" Review (15%)
I know it's trendy to hate on Archgoat here, and often the hate is well deserved.
But I'll accept to be the exception and defend the stupidly named "The Luciferian Crown", which I believe is not (completely) devoid of merit.
No, it isn't the next Transilvanian Hunger or the next Det Som Engang Var, but neither is it the piece of derivative shit Instinctus Bestialis or the absolute turd of an album Rabid Death's Curse.
Much like the late days of hardcore, most underground black metal is now so standardizing into a plastic war metal/death metal hybrid that emphasizes fast slamming rhythm over atmosphere, that it is now dangerously close to being indistinguishable from the most brain damaged American deathcore.
Archgoat's claim to fame is being the "originators of ritualistic death black metal". That's not entirely accurate, as Von, Beherit, Blasphemy, Sarcófago, Angelcorpse and many others had done that, sometimes better, and usually well before them.
Where Archgoat did innovate, albeit by very little, is in applying the structure of Scandinavian metal to the raw onslaught of early Bathory proto-black droning.
So what is this "ritualistic death black metal" that Archgoat claims to play? Basically, Archgoat's music attempts to combine Phantom's Divine Necromancy, Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon and quite a bit of early Blasphemy into a single "style", just as "Lord Angelslayer" - Rainer Puolakanaho, the frontman and vocalist - tries to combine Von's Shawn Calizo, Devourment's Ruben Rosas and Angelcorpse's Pete Helmkamp into one vocal style.
It sounds pretty interesting on paper, but the problem is that everything becomes so standardized and formulaic that every album - and nearly every song - that this band produces feels just about interchangeable.
Phantom, Beherit and Blasphemy
The sad fact of The Luciferian Crown is that the songwriting is pretty decent compared to some of the other shit calling itself "black metal" nowadays, and the album is not devoid of quality riffs, but this band remains literally imprisoned by the stupid "style" by which they choose to define themselves.
About half of this album - preying on all of us who wish there was somewhere undiscovered in a vault another eight to ten tracks of Divine Necromancy, the same impetus that forces us to listen to repetitive and overdone early Phantom clones whenever they pop up - borrows rhythms and arrangement patterns from that highly-esteemed work, as well as developing known riff types from the above mentioned influences (Drawing Down the Moon, Satanic Blood, Enkull Tonpayr).
None of this is downright bad, per se. However, it does not add up to enough to be compelling.
The Luciferian Crown represents Archgoat's most professional work so far and clearly exceeds any previous efforts, but the genericism of its riffs make songs indistinguishable simultaneously from one another, from their rather pronounced influences, and even in terms of structure, creating the musical equivalent of listening to someone pissing down a flood sewer.
For every good riff, four or five "standard" ones borrowed either from Phantom/Beherit/Von repertoire or the "war metal"/Blasphemy-tribute/Incantoclone group crowd them out.
Periodic moments of musical decency are balanced by a constant feeling of boredom and annoyance at the genericism of this album. What I want to know is: what do these musicians actually idealize so much in this narrow and limited Phantom/Beherit worship?
Their work in a more artistically liberated medium might unleash the creativity that this stupid, self-imposed "style" suppresses.
The Luciferian Crown score: 15/100.
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