Bethlehem – Sardonischer Untergang im Zeichen Irreligiöser

Bethlehem - Sardonischer Untergang im Zeichen Irreligiöser Another classic dark metal band with a hell of a lot of variation! Their 3rd full-length album and Bethlehem have once again, a new vocalist. This time it is Marco from Deinonychus. There are many bands playing in this genre, but the band that stands out surely has something different to express and that is what I call excellence, which very few bands achieve. The music is morbid, depressive and suicidal stuff!! The vocals have a lot of contrast sometimes – it’s grim, there are screams, it’s delivered in such a manner as if someone is stabbing you and the cries and the pain is exactly, what’s felt when one listens to this cd! Guitars remain distorted, once again filled up with some amazing passages in between making the entire cd very dark! These interludes make their presence felt in the entire disc. The drums and bass play an important role as well; their sound is prominent. In fact quite a few tracks kick off with the drum and bass combination….moving towards a classic blend of atmospheric metal music. It’s the guitar work, matched to the best, some amazing solos, and some great rhythms which remain in your head all throughout. I guess the keyboard essence is not felt at all, the guitars take it over! But the keys are placed where felt necessary. The guitar work isn’t technical, but it’s to be heard to be accepted as truth that there’s some great work done here. The language is not English, but then the cd can be heard just for the ambient music it holds. In most of the cases the cds turn out boring, when the time factor is not kept under observation. Here, the average time each track holds is roughly around 4 minutes, the longest track being 9.31 minutes and the shortest one is 1.14 minutes. Graphically, Bethlehem’s music could be a V where the music suddenly explodes and then calms down at the same scale. There are a lot of blank spaces left in the song structures and it does make the sound appear doomier leaving the songs in a state of higher complexity. There’s flawless production here! Listeners of dark, atmospheric metal, get a copy of this cd at ONCE!!! (4.5/5)

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