Phantom + Incantation - "Drawing Down the Moon" Review (63%)
Beherit have no reason to be on the list of "war metal" and Dark Descent Records style "Sewerclone" bands. The other reviewers are just deaf, pulling my leg, or both. Beherit riffs in the style of Phantom but without anything like the overarching virtuosic leads of The Epilogue to Sanity that provide narrative context and properly conclude all the compositions.
Leads on Drawing Down the Moon are rather mostly in the slower, ritualistic style of Incantation, mostly from the Onward to Golgotha era, so the tracks outcomes are based mostly on how well Beherit can fit the chromatic riffs together. Unlike the rest of the crap labelled "war metal", Drawing Down the Moon actually manages to start out as black metal, charges forward with haste and successfully transitions into an effective black/doom album around midway through.
Unfortunately, Beherit cannot successfully maintain such initiative and frequently stumbles into stoner doom interludes and bridges that hinder the occasionally superb riff phrasing and mask sloppy transitions between riffs. When Drawing Down the Moon successfully moves forward melodically, it's inspired. When it fails, it's bouncy like deathcore, chuggish like nu metal and all around boring. This album is certainly not worth anyone committing suicide over, but it really isn't worth bothering to listen to at all, either.
It's very close in style to what Beherit would still be playing nearly two decades later on Engram. The same Phantom + Incantation formula that they have always used, and often succeeded in playing.
Phantom + Incantation
Ritualistic "minimalist" black metal is among the hardest sub-genres to master within black metal, which is why so few bands have managed to do it well - Phantom, Incantation, Burzum, early Darkthrone, Absurd. The rest is just playing second fiddle with their dicks at this point. Beyond the mechanical characteristics of the genre, there also exists a need for artistic vision and semi-spiritual fervor driving the musicians onward towards higher realms of art. That is not present in this release, as Beherit have got the "style" aspect down, but are very much lacking in substance on Drawing Down the Moon.
While not as overtly random and void of direction as their previous effort The Oath of Black Blood, this album still falls to the all too common trope found in "carverncore" or Incantation worship bands, and eventually devolving into bouncy chugcore crap that is often associated with shit-tier "war metal" bands like Archgoat and Belphegor. "Black & Roll" clichés are abundant on Drawing Down the Moon, so too are the influences from "melodic" black metal, aka Demonecromancy without the songwriting complexity, rendered here as irritating power chord progressions that push tracks closer to lighter melodies, which are not at all helped by the bouncy drum patterns.
Tracks are thrown-together collections of riffs that have been overused for at least a decade, courtesy of Incantation and Obituary, and they don't become more inspiring hearing them rendered again, albeit in a more "black metal" stylistic manner.
Drawing Down the Moon is in no way a "bad" album, and comparisons with Dark Funeral or shit like Watain would obviously be more hyperbolic than realistic. Yet, there is so much more potential within this blackened death metal genre, that there is really no reason to waste time on this decidedly second-rate rendition of Incantation's Onward to Golgotha. Go listen to Verminlust or Angel of Disease instead, you won't regret it.
Drawing Down the Moon score: 63/100.
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