Time Signature Remember death...

Genre: death-black

While the Norwegian black metal scene is probably the most influential black metal scene in the world, I would say that the French one is among the most interesting ones, spawning a number of different black metal acts operating within a number of different black metal subgenres, each offering their own take on the genre.

One of these French black metal bands is Vorkreist. Their style is normally described as blackened death metal, but I think that, at least on "Sigil Whore Christ", the scales tilt more towards the black metal side. Granted, there are a couple of death metal elements in the form of certain riffage styles (such as palm-muted brutal picking), guitar solos and breakdowns, and, production-wise, the album also leans more towards death metal. However, the attitude, the vocals, the atmosphere are, to my untrained ear, straight up full of black metal evil, and there are enough repeated tremolo-picked dissonant chords accompanied by blastbeating to qualify as black metal. If anything, I'd consider this "deathened black metal".

The whole death or black metal debate aside, "Sigil Whore Christ" is a very well made album, I think, and I quite like the brutality that the death metal riffage and production adds to the black metal attitude. Just check out a track like "Dominus Illuminatio Mea" to hear how the death and black elements are well balanced and well integrated into each other.

Spicing black metal up with death metal elements, Vorkreist have managed to combine black metal chaos with death metal brutality into a very convincing evil and aggressive brand of black metal, which should appeal to fans of the likes of Svarttjern, Behemoth and Temple of Baal.