Septic Flesh
Communion

These days you often hear about the decline of genres like death/black metal, yet I always stand by my views, especially after listening to this more than valid work launched on the market by Septic Flesh themselves, known for the splendid and convincing "Sumerian Daemons." Those who had the opportunity to listen to this album excellently, paying particular attention to the lyrics, would have noticed one negative factor and two notably positive ones.

Surely, during the forty minutes of "Communion," we would have realized that compared to the past, they have delivered a work without too many pretensions, giving more space to a phase of intense work as well as experimentation. This hard process of transition is due to the simple fact of having decided to promiscuously produce, on one hand, tracks centered on death with, albeit limitedly, black contours, and on the other hand, pieces where all forms of extreme metal are abandoned, moving closer to the epic/atmospheric as well as experimental.

If I were one of their fans, I would have focused solely on the two positive factors that I will promptly reveal now and that elevate this work both from a qualitative and compositional point of view: it's useless not to admit it, Septic Flesh, even today and after almost twenty long years, hold a creativity and freshness out of the ordinary and manage to propose their trusted musical genres, starting from basic schemes that are indeed overturned and recreated through their repeated experimentation works, but not denied and completely abandoned. What fascinated me deeply and will impact my final rating is the fact that they are one of the few bands that offer, in detail, themes in constant evolution in their lyrics. Over the years, their lyrics have been particularly reflective and adherent to events that occurred throughout ancient history, preferring Greek, Roman, and Oriental mythology over the usual and at times now boring Nordic mythology.

The fundamental elements of their philosophy and overall sound are significantly explained starting from the first track "Lovecraft's death." The text is of incredible brightness and sublime depth that serves to recall and above all to immortalize, in a grand way, the majesty of one of the most prolific authors as a representation of the fantastic of the last century, H.P. Lovecraft. Rightly, they wanted to start the work by introducing a sound that recalls magnificent and dreamy Oriental atmospheres, triggering riffs at machine gun pace and using "drums" that particularly resemble those used in "The Serpentine Offering" from the latest work by Dimmu Borgir. "Anubis" and "Sangreal" are the pieces that remain etched in our minds not so much for being, in their respective choruses, very catchy but above all because they abandon themselves in the epic and symphonic, created once again in a profitable and highly productive manner, by guitars and samplers. Another factor that almost miraculously influences our memory is entrusted to the voice of Sotiris which, for this latest work, has proven to be much more commanding and at the same time theatrical and vaguely nasal (in a French way..). Another song that stands out for its Hellenic characteristics, for its sound both death and epic at the same time, and for its high-value lyrics is "Persepolis". The text recalls the destruction of this magnificent city and the sound could easily be considered by directors to produce the soundtrack of some film adhering to all of this. The remaining tracks, although greatly supported on one hand by Seth's guttural voice, on the other by Sotiris's symphonic/theatrical voice, turn out to be of quality that is at times, unfortunately, fluctuating and regain their refinement only in the last track "Narcissus." If someone among us perfectly knew Greek mythology and especially the events of the young Narcissus, we would already know in advance the setting of this last elegant text, which has the task of so faithfully closing, with a sound reminiscent of hard rock, the dances of love, passion, and Hellenic mythology.

All this ensures that in Greece Septic Flesh are currently considered one of the most important, interesting, and prolific metal bands, alongside their compatriots Rotting Christ. For fans, the immediate purchase of this Hellenic magic would be mandatory; for the rest, I would strongly recommend still listening to this magnificent pearl that, nowadays, alas, we glimpse all the more rarely.