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Rating: With this album, Samael let the world know they existed, and with talents that combined great class with fierce and lethal music, they established themselves as a living and pulsating reality for a Swiss Black Metal scene that probably never existed, but has always produced excellent works from excellent and seminal bands, Celtic Frost and Coroner above all.
Alongside these, Samael inserted themselves and were destined to carve out a significant niche in the extreme underground, influential even for bands that came later and tried to draw inspiration from their clichés. It certainly wasn't an easy task, given that they, besides having an extraordinary boldness, knew (and know how to combine) the lethal and grandiose brutality of European Black Metal with a pronounced taste for the symphonic and choral, placing them in an awkward and somewhat ambiguous position: the sounds of this album, in fact, never exceed in furious speed and murderous screams, a trademark of the genre, but rather insist on a certain underlying serpentine malevolence, on a misanthropic and blasphemous malice that is felt distinctly in every groove and every note, without ever going overboard, and without getting lost in the "tout-court" experimentation that marked their future works (Passage above all).
And so, one can certainly speak of Black metal for "Ceremony of Opposites," a ceremonial album with a thousand facets, that fishes where the abyss is always murkier, succeeding admirably in its goal of matching the devastating and nihilistic "mood" of Black with flashes of composite and highly technical Industrial.
The first "Black Trip" and the fourth "Till We Meet Again" are clear examples of this, the latter a true manifesto for the entire CD, with its sampled effects and its eclectic and cadenced "step" that, amidst bells, tuning forks, and almost tribal drumming, can evoke certain sick and sulfurous atmospheres typical of the novels by H.P. Lovecraft, very fascinating and introspective.
Moreover, to compose such a work requires a massive dose of intelligence, something the Samael don't lack, positioning themselves as a "cultured" band that skillfully explores every negative and unhealthy aspect surrounding mankind. Noteworthy is certainly "Mask of Red Death", inspired by the famous story by E.A. Poe, highlighting aspects that might never be imagined.
In short, this is a beautiful album, a classic for a group that, while being part of a certain scene, even though it harbors all its seeds at the songwriting level ("Baphomet's Throne", "Flagellation", "Ceremony of Opposites"), has dared much in the future (speaking of the present day, naturally), but here is absolutely grappling with a well-made work, studied in minute detail and excellently arranged and executed (and this is also a note that has always distinguished Samael), with all beautiful tracks, even if at a first listen they might seem "cold" and disconcerting; perhaps, however, this is precisely the beauty: to want to seem alienating and icy, but managing to emanate nevertheless an aura of cosmicity and "black humor" as thick as pitch permeating every corner of a shapeless and grotesque world unknown to most.
Recommended for those who don't know them, and also for some Blacksters in search of something "different" from the "True Norwegian."
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Black Trip (03:19)
I've chosen the dark, I've chosen the night
I've lost hope of loving a day of life
The shades of night belong to me
I am at one with hell
Dead inside, I watch the time pass
I await the coming of my day
My journeys are always within me
There where is found the bottomless pit
Where, there in I plunge, always a little deeper
There, in that other world where only unity is harmony
Sheltered from the regard and the rules of men
There colour is absent, light is black
Enemies of the sun, the phantoms of the shadows
Have taught me to delight in horror
Faces without eyes, and silent lips
Float in the immensity of empty space
A sweet melancholy fills my heart
Life as a whole seems absurd
Silence is so pure, so profound that it intoxicates
The emptiness, annihilates all
And nothingness takes it place
02 Celebration of the Fourth (02:53)
Oh purificator fire, that burns in me
Rekindle my courage, give me your force
Blow, northerly wind, come, wind of death
Storms, hurricanes, be at my side
By water, by air, by fire, by earth
Oh purificator water, essence of life
Mirror of time, drown the lies
Earth, mother's man
Disembowelled by your sons
From your blood of fire
Will rise the chaos
By water, by air
By fire, by earth
03 Son of Earth (03:58)
Hideous louse!
The face deformed by horror,
By the fear of life's duties,
By the anguish of the unknown
-Born in blood and tears
-You'll bleed and cry when the day you die
Welcome to the world of the living
Here's your supreme punishment
Look at the wound of life
That only death will be able to heal
Oh! Bulged tummy women
Oh! Deformed body women
From your filthy womb
It's death to whom you give birth
Hideous louse!
The face deformed by horror,
By the fear of the nothingness of death
By the anguish of the unknown
Welcome to the kingdom of the dead
Here's your promised reward
Looks on you to close again
The great vagina of the earth
06 Baphomet's Throne (03:30)
Each blaspemy is another stone to the edifice of your glory I want to be the rock on which you'll build your church Am I the son you've been waiting for? Am I the chosen one? To be your messiah on earth And to sit at your left in hell I've always ignored the doubt Answers are in the questions Show me the way to the Baphomet's throne... Guide my hand, light my path My mouth will speak with your words, I'll make statements with your orders I'll be the supreme insult Which will forevermore soil the image of god I'll be your revenge, I'll be your victory Guide my hand, light my path Show me the way, To reach one day the Baphomet's throne...
07 Flagellation (03:41)
Pleasure in pain
Desire of mortification
To achieve the extreme
To know the ultimate
To be a slave for a moment
The body offered up to cruelty
To the lash which whips on the skin
Which slashes the flesh, lacerates the back
To feel the blood, thick and warm
Flow over my wounds
Flagellation...
To thrust aside the limits
To say "Yes" to death
Without fear, without remorse
To give up oneself to torture
Punishment and reward
The whip is ambiguous
It distills vice
In a perverse refinement
To be a slave for a moment
The body offered up to cruelty
To the lash which whips on the skin
Which slashes the flesh, lacerates the back
08 Crown (04:06)
If eyes are the mirror of the soul
You will find in mine the scorn and apathy
You will read my hatred as in a curs'd book
You will see yourself as I see you
It is a mirror sombre and opaque
Which protects me, which stifles me
A great ditch around the heart
Which rejects, which estranges me
There is a world in my head
A dead world where nothing lives
And it is there I am, too far,
Far too far to be rejoined
A crown of thorns is still a crown
I am a king in a kingdom of suffering
I have taken my time to reach this stage
I have taken pains to torture myself
To descend, to descend
Into pain, I exist
And if my brain is numbed
The thorn in my flesh
Can overcome apathy
There is glory in humiliation
A throne to be taken, a crown to win
I have no more tears,
And my smile has lost its brilliance
I have forgotten who I was,
I have killed my emotions
Crushed, empty, weary,
Always standing, I am a tree
Awaiting the lightning
09 To Our Martyrs (02:37)
Reign of fear, of war,
Of silence, of resignation
Under the rules of the book of lies
Trawling the wrong path
Led like cattle
Never try to understand, accept, obey
Follow followers
And forget who you are
What's a lifestyle, to live for others
To share all with everybody
To answer love to hate
[repeat second verse]
Take each single insult and injury
As a present, as a spiritual gold
To buy your place in heaven
I spit at your god's face
I piss on the cross
I vomit on the holy bible
I shit on the blessed whore and hers bastard son
I desecrate, crush and destroy
All which is sacred, all which is blessed
I've found the one who lives in me
Brothers and sisters
Time for change is coming
Bells for revenge strick the end of times
By faith, by force
We'll walk toward the light
And forever be our own god
10 Ceremony of Opposites (04:39)
The top becomes the bottom
The fantasy becomes reality
The conceptions change
The landmarks dissolve
And all becomes intermingled
To flirt with the despicable
In a trance without end
Where the ice burns
Like glowing embers
And where one shatters
By fits and starts of sperm
The morale of men
Serve another god
Lose another dream
Sentiments imprison and leave
Their victims without defence
Love is a poison which
Flourishes in the heart of the weak
From the lower world we direct
The attraction of the distasteful
Makes us ignore the vile
Since only from below
Can one better see the heights
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