Band:	Behemoth
Album:	The Satanist
Style:	Blackened death metal
Release date:	February 03, 2014
A review by:	wormdrink414

Disc I
01. Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel
02. Furor Divinus
03. Messe Noire
04. Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer
05. Amen
06. The Satanist
07. Ben Sahar
08. In The Absence Ov Light
09. O Father O Satan O Sun!
10. Ludzie Wschodu [Siekiera cover] [Australian bonus]

Disc II [DVD] [deluxe box set version]
01. Live Barbarossa
    1 - Intro
    2 - Ov Fire And The Void
    3 - Demigod
    4 - Moonspell Rites
    5 - Conquer All
    6 - Christians To The Lions
    7 - The Seed Ov I
    8 - Alas, Lord Is Upon Me
    9 - Decade Of ΘΕΡΙΟΝ
    10 - At The Left Hand Ov God
    11 - Slaves Shall Serve
    12 - Chant For ΕΣΧΗΑΤΟΝ 2000
    13 - 23 (The Youth Manifesto)
    14 - Lucifer
02. The Satanist: Oblivion

Not too many bands could throw a spoken-word, Kenny G sax muzak thing into the middle of a song called "In The Absence Ov Light" and not get laughed away into obscurity. Behemoth can get away with shit like that. They're just too cool to be dismissed. They sound cool and, with a theatrical sense that rivals well over half a Lady Gaga, they LOOK cool. I mean, I'm not gay, but I'd let Nergal and Orion double team me if they still want to.

The Satanist hasn't changed any of that. The already slightly precarious balance between their style and the substance of their music has changed. Since Thelema they've been making some of the most vicious and furious blackened, anti-Christian death metal around, all with an extravagant dramatic flair. With Evangelion they started emphasizing the evil mood creation bits and the ambient bits of their tunes more than they had before. And that wasn't necessarily a bad thing when it came down to it, but the sheer testosterone of what they'd done on their earlier discs did feel a little watered down.

They did what they do and made it work on Evangelion. "Lucifer" is boring, but goddamn is "Shemhamforash" a neck breaker. That balance is almost completely gone here. The Satanist feels a lot like a bunch of "Lucifer"s. Sure, there's still some DM fury, but it seems to come secondary to all the build-ups. And while the build-ups can sound juicy, they never lead to any kind of exploding that's to be expected from the band that gave us The Apostasy not too long ago.

The extreme bits on this get boring quick. Every time you think, "shit, this is about to get good," songs will peter out and fall back into "just wait for it" mode. It either goes back to what feels a lot like filler, or the faster riffs are bland and melodramatic enough that you'll pine for any of their earlier albums, even the overrated ones like Demigod.

None of this is to say these guys are sounding bad necessarily. The mix is robust and the guys still play tightly; Inferno is still distractingly good at what he does and now the bass gets accented more, so Orion's chops are more audible, Nergal's voice is as powerful as ever, and so on. What they've put together here is tedious enough to surprise even their casual fans, in other words. It sounds like the kind of stuff made for expensive music videos, not the other way around.

Highlight: "Amen"