Sunday, June 19, 2016

Schammasch - Sic Lvceat Lvx (2010)


Swiss modern black metal. Schammasch's debut LP, Sic Lvceat Lvx is a gnarled mass of angular riffage, tech-y drums, and hoarse shouts that lands somewhere in the realm of black/death metal, but doesn't really sound like anything else. If quality of output were the sole determining factor in a band's success, Schammasch would be one of the biggest black metal bands on the planet.

I'd like to note that, since this album, Schammasch has travelled further and further into the outer realms of the subgenre, recently arriving at Triangle, a darkly psychedelic masterpiece of blackened metal art that is very likely to end up as my favorite album of 2016. Get it now, I implore you.

Track listing:
1. Lvx Aeterna
2. He Whose Face Is Made of Entrails
3. Chaos Reigns
4. No Light from the Fires
5. Black But Shining
6. INRI
7. The Venom of Gods

Our poison devours us

You'll also wanna hear:
Kozeljnik -
Deeper the Fall (2010)
Tortorum -
Katabasis (2014)

6 comments:

  1. The fact that “Triangle” it is a triple album (100 mins) puts me off a bit…Same thing happens when I spot a relatively new band that has obscenely extended discography, such as “Circle of Ouroborus” or “Circle” (funny naming and nationality coincidence there). Same thing when someone recommends a massive book like Pynchon’s “Gravity’s rainbow”: I am quite reluctant to make the time investment. A sign of our times, perhaps?

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    1. Well, Trangle is worth the time. Maybe it'll help to know that it's not just three discs of artsy black metal? First one is that, the second is slower and more psychedelic- like if Neurosis was a black metal band -and the third is pretty much all percussion-heavy, dark ambient instrumentals. Sooo good.

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  2. Great BAND!!! Many thanks for the discovery mate.

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  3. Thank you for this. Unbelievable how good this shit is

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  4. do you have an opinion on their latest full length? so far, for me it's been a disappointing break from an otherwise phenomenal discography, but i hope i'm missing something

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    1. You're not alone, but I think it's great, I put it at #2 on my year-end black metal list (https://opiumhum.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-20-favorite-black-metal-records-of.html). It's definitely not on par with Triangle but that's maybe my favorite black metal record of the decade so it never had a chance. That one song where they go for a kinda psychedelic deathrock thing is kinda weak, but other than that, I love it.

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