Band:	Shemhamphorash
Album:	Sulphur
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	December 2009

01. Dark New Cycle
02. Le Possédé
03. Sulphur
04. Shemhamphorash 2.1
05. Hell Redemeer Fire
06. Shining
07. Shemhamphorash 2.2
08. Iluntasuneratz
09. Poisonous Tongues

Black metal
Spain
Erzsebet Records / Indar Productions

Line-up on the CD:
Wilhkiem - vocals, guitars, bass
Mikkäl - guitars
Nechrist - drums, vocals


Shemhamphorash is a Spanish occult black metal outfit, formed back in 1996 by Mikkäl, Wilhkiem and Nechrist (both of whom play for Foscor). Sulphur is the band's second full-length album, following up their Emperor-influenced debut, Dementia. With the band members in search of a new sound, perhaps one less influenced by such a dominant band, they landed on a mixture of A Haunting Curse-era Goatwhore and modern Dark Funeral. How this works for the paganistic Spaniards is hard to say, as the music they perform has already been perfected by the aforementioned bands.

They may have escaped the Emperor worship with this release, but it shows no indication that the band is headed in the right direction in terms of originality. That being said, Sulphur is helped by its invocation-esque preludes ("Shemhamphorash 2.1" and "2.2"), which provides the music with a more occult feel than most straightforward black metal bands - a structure they obviously formatted purposefully into their sound. These are far from atmosphere builders however, though there are some melodic elements that help break up the monotony of this overdone style. The melody in Sulphur is best exemplified by "Hell Redeemer Fire", a song that, at times, brings forth comparisons to Deströyer 666. But again, what needs to be stressed here is that every song seems to be one of homage to an already established black metal band, and therefore the influences are picked out without much difficulty.

Of course there are more positive things to say about this album in spite of its unoriginality. The drumming is solid, very murky (in a good way), and not at all annoyingly repetitious. Wilhkiem's vocals range from a beastly snarl to the shrieks of a tortured old man, carrying the album from beginning to end; and the guitar melodies - when present - make for a very smooth listen.

This band deserves to be praised for their impeccable production as well - a perfected process that involved a years' worth of hard work and perfectionism on behalf of the band members. Yet with so much of their time and efforts focused on mastering the sound quality of the album, it seems they forgot to tend to the quality of the actual songs. Considering they play such a direct form of black metal, a style of music that is almost always exempt from production value qualifications, the band should have stressed the importance of originality and songwriting as much as they did with the production value. If that were the case I would be listening to a candidate for the best black metal album of 2009.

Alas, with back-to-back releases too-strongly influenced by other bands, Shemhamphorash is quickly earning a reputation as a copycat band, albeit with an exemplary quality of sound.