Kev Rowland In their 15 year-long career, marked by 3 full lengths and numerous split releases, highly respected French trio Temple Of Baal have evolved from a traditional Norwegian style primitive Black/Thrash act to one that is generating uncompromising Black/Death Metal of wonderful brutality. ‘Verses Of Fire’ combines both their relentless violent face with darkest atmosphere and the result is something that is completely over the top, bringing together the best of both Death and Black Metal into an unholy union. Produced by Andrew Guillotin (Glorior Belli) in Hybreed Studios, he has concentrated on capturing an organic sound whose warmth is quite at odds with the frostiness of the music being generated. One of the highest praises I can bestow on this is that no-one playing this would ever imagine that these guys are French, as it seems as if they grew up in the same woods as Darkthrone.

This is not music of 2013, but rather they have taken what was coming out 20 years ago, added more brutality and much better production and have created something that straddles multiple musical camps, without compromising at all. Powerful and brutal, this has a great deal going for it.

Time Signature Slaves to the beast...

Genre: brutal black metal / blackened death metal

An unholy alliance was forged between two of the most evil French bands on the face of this planet when the decision to release this split was made which features Temple of Baal and Ritualization.

While the Ritualization part is more brutal death metal oriented, Temple of Baal deliver a brutal blend of death metal and black metal which combines the riff-style, associated with black metal, and the brutality of death metal. Performed on heavily distorted guitars and an even more distorted bass plus ultra fast blastbeating, all filtered through a raw production, the four Temple of Baal songs on the split come across as being incredibly brutal compared to a lot of other black metal tunes.

There is also some more death metal oriented riffage injected into the tunes on this split, and the vocals are performed in a death grunt style, so there should be something for both death metal and black metal fans here.

As with the Ritualization tunes on the split, I find the Temple of Baal part very enjoyable - in part because of the brutal sound and in part because of the way they balance death metal and black metal. I am sure that fans of brutal black metal and blackened death metal will find the Temple of Baal part of this split just as enjoyable as I do.