Incipit Satan (Incipit Satan - Gorgoroth)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Incipit Satan - Gorgoroth
Date:	10/07/08 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Something different.

Disadvantages: Infernus should stick to his day job.

Although it's one of my least favourite releases from Gorogoroth, the experimental 'Incipit Satan' is still an album I admire for its bold attempts at transgressing the band's restrictive black metal framework, even if the results aren't always successful. Guitarist and songwriter Infernus has clearly been struggling with a preference for melody even since the band's early days, and here he's free to experiment to his full with light, harmonic guitars in songs like 'An Excerpt of X,' which would have been out of place in previous, darker works.

This is a nicely varied album, but not a particularly consistent one. 'Incipit Satan' mixes angry shouty sections with non-ish ambience in an unsatisfying contrast, 'A World to Win' sounds more like a classic heavy metal song with its rhythmic gallop, and 'Will to Power' is a rather dull and seriously overlong ambient interlude. The other songs are less memorable but fall somewhere in-between, making for an album that will alienate long-time fans and confuse newcomers, but still offers something different.

1. Incipit Satan
2. A World to Win
3. Litani Til Satan
4. Unchain My Heart!!!
5. An Excerpt of X
6. Ein eim av blod og helvetesild
7. Will to Power
8. When Love Rages Wild in My Heart

Summary: Gorgoroth's fifth album (2000).