Vehemency Hrizg’s second full-length Anthems to Decrepitude is a hard bit to swallow for various reasons. This Spanish one-man horde has crafted a challenging, yet ultimately traditional black metal album off simple ideas that seem very uninviting at first, but only slowly starts to show signs of true potential.

Anthems to Decrepitude isn’t overly aggressive nor atmospheric black metal; the music resides somewhere between the two, at times blasting in great speeds not unlike Mayhem but mostly wandering in middlegrounds when it comes to the pace, the somewhat powerless production and minorly melancholic melodies helping in the creation of the interesting atmosphere that might seem dulling at first during the course of the 50-minute whole, but once again it must be said that this album takes its time to open.

In spite of not utilizing a lot of reverb, the album somehow sounds cavernous, as if recorded literally underground in a tomb or something along the lines. The mid-level growls of the vocalist are part of the reason why Anthems to Decrepitude sounds almost like an old school death metal album, but purely production-wise, that is.

It might seem that I’m implying that Anthems to Decrepitude is some kind of a hidden jewel of pure brilliance but that is not true either, as I can most certainly agree with other reviewers in that this 50-minute entity is a little too long and never musically varying enough - except an acoustic interlude like ”Invierno”. But in my humble opinion there are plenty of great ideas here that make the record a noteworthy release, clearly above an avarage old school black metal album for sure.