Samael
Blood Ritual

THE REVIEW

Among the innumerable black bands that sprang up like mushrooms in the metal scene of the early '90s, it is possible to find quite a few that filtered this subgenre in a personal and intelligent way, while adhering to the old school canons not yet expanded and developed as they are today.

One band in particular deserves attention: the Swiss Samael, and more precisely their early period, the one most faithful to the black movement that raged at the time. This first part of their career is encapsulated in an extremely interesting triptych, which includes the debut album "Worship Him", the third album "Ceremony of Opposites" (perhaps the perfect emblem of the darker side of the Samael project) and finally the reviewed here "Blood Ritual" (1992), the second studio album. Then there will be the sensational turn of "Passage" to open a new triptych, the more electronic and avant-garde one, but that is another story.

This "Blood Ritual" thus places itself in the middle of Samael's "occult era" and the content itself confirms it: it is a predominantly slow and chilling black metal, at times doom, overall very sparse and without too many pretensions given the relative absence of striking innovations. But as much as it may adhere to the black metal stylistic features of the time, somehow Samael's style leaves deep and unmistakable traces, unlike many other bands that did/do nothing but naively stereotype the genre.

Indeed, most of the guitar scowls are dragged with relentless malice (typical of Samael) and supported by a very solid drumming, behind which more misanthropic than ever is Xytraguptor (the brain of the group); Vorphalack proves to be a vocalist certainly suited to the gloomy and spectral, as well as claustrophobic atmospheres, of this decent album whose style is constantly contained and slowed down to result more ruthless and venomous than ever. Thus, there are no typical burst-speed attacks of black metal since Samael prefers to rely on the corrosive power of a vague melodic appeal that has always distinguished them.

And it is exactly the creeping and biting slowness that makes this album a dynamic and satisfying episode of black metal in general: tracks like "Beyond the Nothingness" and "Bestial Devotion" draw heavily from the somewhat listless riffs of the previous album, making them more massive and penetrating and playing them with macabre drum beats; "Poison Infiltration" is shaken by the slithering madness of Vorphalack's screams, while "Total Consecration" is a track played entirely on the keyboard, dripping with frightening occultism and animated by an almost dramatic and tragic tone. The title track seems a bit like the most "black" song here, short and fast, while rather bland is "With the Gleam of the Torches", weak and not very incisive for its length.

In short, "Blood Ritual" will certainly not be an indispensable fragment of black metal, nor have Samael been a group of fundamental relevance for the metal scene in general. This does not change the fact that, in any case, the album in question is more than sufficient and has the good intentions to be considered at least original and worthy of being listened to, especially by fans of the genre. My rating is a 3.7 that becomes a scant 4.