Band:	Abigor
Album:	Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint: An Excursion On Satan's Fragmenting Principle
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	January 2010

01. Part I
02. Part II

Whoa, Bal-Sagoth called, they said they wanted their ultra-long, pompous album title back. I mean Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint: An Excursion On Satan's Fragmenting Principle ? Imagine them playing live with the crowd chanting: "We want something from Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint: An Excursion On Satan's Fragmenting Principle " over and over. Why am I so hung up on something as meaningless as the title? Because the music itself is very much like the title: way too long and just fucked up.

Basically, I could conclude the review by saying the album is like a much tamer, but more experimental Deathspell Omega. Still, those popular Frenchies only sound random and messy at first, but every subsequent listening reveals more and more very connected and perfectly thought-out layers, whereas Abigor's extremely long named opus pretty much is just... random. I was preparing myself for a truly layered, complex and ambitious release, the kind I would enjoy praising the shit out of. Unfortunately, what I ended up getting was an extremely high dose of random weirdness that barely works as a coherent musical form. The music takes a while to build up a momentum, and when it finally does, instead of expanding on it, it usually just breaks into a bunch of weird electronic samples. Another thorn in my ears is how silly and cartoon-ish lots of those samples sound, which severely damages the overall atmosphere. Other than the samples, the album can boast about having a ridiculous amount of quite schizophrenic guitar leads (adding up to the overall feeling of randomness) as well as one or two choir-like sections.

If you're wondering how the album is structured, well, I'm pretty sure there is no formulated structure. Instead, various elements are just thrown in there one after another, sometimes sounding related and well-connected, sometimes sounding as if they don't belong on the same album. I imagine the writing process was less a writing process, and more like three dudes randomly tossing out ideas. All the weirdness is glued together by standard black metal, which is, ironically, the most enjoyable part of the album.

Time Is The Sulphur... is a maniacal release meant only for those who are not bothered by the lack of coherency, or those who are musically gifted or educated enough that they can see patterns in what I consider total madness. Were the album split into proper tracks and organized better, with some trimming of the unnecessary bits, it could have been a mighty psy/electronic black metal assault. The way it is now, the only thing I can say for it is that it's an album filled with fine ideas that are executed quite poorly. Time Is The Sulphur... wants to be everything and go everywhere at once, but instead sounds confused and is confusing the listener.