Time Signature May god damn all of us...

Genre: crust/black metal

Apparently, the Italian band The Secret started out a metalcore act, but somewhere down the line they changed their artistic direction towards a blend of crust punk and black metal, and, I must say, this is probably the best 'career move' ever, because the music on their fourth album Agnus Deis is well night awesome.

Darkthrone have already shown us that black metal and crust punk go well together, and The Secret, offering their own spin on it, further proves the magic of the this combination. Making use of the fat and dark sound of modern crust (Wolf Brigade and Acephalix being good points of comparison), the Italians treat the listener to both black metal tremolo picking combined with blastbeats and dirty crust punk riffs accompanied by d-beating. There is something darkly primal and hugely aggressive to the songs on this album, as their capture both the oppressive bleakness of black metal and the energy of crust punk. In addition, there is even a slight hint of grindcore every now and then which contributes with a brutal edge, and then The Secret also draw on noise rock, as they are not afraid to the their instruments ring into feedback screams.

The vocals are, needless to say, harsh but not as shrieky as stereotypical black metal vocals are. The singing style goes well with the crusty, at times almost sludgy, yet well-defined production of the album. In fact it is a pretty interesting experience hearing the more typical black metal elements filtered through a fat and downtuned crusty production.

Definitely one of the more interesting releases to include a hybrid version of black metal, The Secret's Agnus Dei should, with its crusty crushingness and black bleakness, appeal to more adventurous fans of both a black metal and crust punk.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)