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HECATE ENTHRONED "The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried"
HECATE ENTHRONED "The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried"
By Dr. Abner Mality
HECATE ENTHRONED were one of the very first black metal bands from England, having started in 1993, but they've never had the visibility or success of England's other veteran black metal band, CRADLE OF FILTH. I am speaking of 2nd wave BM here, as everybody knows VENOM were the godfathers of all.
Maybe HE were too concerned with music instead of marketing and publicity like Dani Filth;s band. But they've never given in and in 2026, we have possibly the most massive and magisterial HECATE ENTHRONED yet. First off, the cover art on this is beyond stunning...an absolute masterpiece! What's inside it? That depends on your tolerance for long songs that mix face-melting blowtorch black metal with huge orchestral bombast. If either of those things annoys you, stay clear.
My feelings on it are mixed. The record sounds great and it is a rich sonic experience. The symphonic parts have never sounded huger or more ominous. But holy cats, the velocity is just absolutely ripping, a throwback to the age when the main characteristic of black metal was pure speed. Vocalist Joe Stamps has a throat-ripping shriek that eventually wears you out. Dani Filth's endless shrieky rasps are much the same. Joe does use some gloomy cleans, but there are times when the rasps just exhaust you. Same can be said for the drumming...like a machine gun.
That said, there are some cracking tunes here. First proper track "Spirits Stir Within Our Ancestor's Tombs" sets the table perfectly with a mountain-levelling blast that still has some great orchestration in it. "A Gallery of Rotting Portraits" is a shorter track and good because of that fact. Best of all might be the closer "Into A Vale of Endless Snow", a real epic that sums up what HECATE ENTHRONED are capable of. Of the rest, "Pwca" is an odd Gothic mellow tune that is way too long while the other songs are acceptable but not spectacular. This is a very long album and frankly, with 10 minutes pruned here and there, it would have been a classic.
Hats off to HECATE ENTHRONED for hanging in there!
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