Enochian Crescent
Black Church

If all the most twisted minds in history were to assemble in some obscure underground, and there, hidden from the world's gaze, after indulging every absurd fantasy, after abandoning themselves to the most atrocious acts, after blaspheming in every possible way against God, Life, and Nature, they were to take up instruments and sheet music, their hands and lips slick with blood, their teeth clenched in terrifying grins, they began to saturate the air with senseless notes and blasphemous, boisterous choruses, they would render no greater homage to their muse, Madness, than that paid by Enochian Crescent in thirteen years of musical activity.

And perhaps explaining the evolution that brought this Finnish band from the visionary schizophrenia of "Telocvovim" to the insane ritualism of this "Black Church," passing through the terrifying absurdity of the magnificent "Omega Telocvovim," wouldn't be less complicated than illustrating the tortuous mechanisms that bring an ordinary man to become a mad killer.

There's something that escapes in Enochian Crescent. Like a logical step, a connection that, if grasped, would allow one to fully understand the hallucinated work of Dark Wrath and Victor Floghdraki (respectively voice and guitar, the core of the band since 1995), but that continues to remain beyond normal perception, leaving the spectator astonished in front of each new chapter.
This is exactly what one feels moving from the final notes of the inspiring "Grey Skin," the closing piece of "Omega Telocvovim," to the thunderous attack of "Tatan," entrusted with opening "Black Church." The rhythms are tight, chaotic; over the double bass pedal backdrop, the guitars weave dissonant melodies, accompanying the feverish singing of Dark Wrath. Every slowdown, every disorienting guitar passage evokes those insane atmospheres that have always imbued the compositions of Enochian Crescent.

The innovative element lies this time in the sing-song progression of the melodies, to which the voice joins, creating a ritual, celebratory pathos. A long, violent, tormented prayer to some idiotic idol surrounded by hordes of mad worshippers. The tones become even more peculiar in tracks like "Thousand Shadows," where acidic and obsessive riffs introduce unsettling slowdowns over which the voice recites a hallucinatory sermon.
Different yet again is the devastating "The Imperfect Vision." Introduced by the gruesome interlude of "Ghost Of Saturn," it's here that Floghdraki's compositional schizophrenia reaches its peak. The guitars intertwine and chase each other in shrill and absurd dissonances, evolving into granite passages counterpointed by more cadenced moments accompanied by choral insertions. As in every other part of the album, the singer's work is of excellent craftsmanship. Dark Wrath alternates ranting and boisterous screams with harsher vocals, overlaying voices until the track takes on the flavor of a hallucinatory religious hymn.

This alienating experience ends with the majestic "Black Church," the crown jewel of the album. The slow, morbid riffs, accompanied by a bass counterpoint with very dark tones, unravel along an obsessive double bass pedal. The chorus explodes as the natural consequence of the growing pathos. It is a mystical ecstasy that pervades Dark Wrath's voice in celebrating the cult of Madness and its ambiguous and unsettling divinity, an aberrant incarnation of all neuroses.

This "Black Church" represents, in my opinion, one of the last frontiers in the field of extreme music; the assimilation was incredibly difficult, and each listen proves exhausting. But it is a meager price to pay to access the tormenting delights of this journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind, where the most hidden anxieties and most unconfessed desires nestle.
Initiate yourself to Madness. Initiate yourself to the Black Church.

"Another Black Church for the Other God, another Black Church for the Dark Lord..."