Valkyrian Music

Band: Hatemagick
Album: Spiritual Black Dimensions
Release year: 2012
Genre: Industrial/ Harsh EBM

When presented with album title that’s the same as that of a Dimmu Borgir release and occult-themed cover art you may be forgiven for thinking that Hatemagick is a black metal band. In this case however, you’d be mistaken. Hatemagick is an industrial/ Aggrotech project of a Norwegian occultist currently residing in New Zealand. With influences cited as ranging from Die Sektor to the aforementioned Dimmu Borgir, this is guaranteed to be unlike anything you have heard before…

The opening track ‘God Ov Worms’ features some eerie sounding film samples, synth tunes and distorted vocals akin to the likes of Mordacious or even Suicide Commando. Whilst it may stick in your head there is something disturbing about the song and the same applies to the remixed version. The title track illustrates the artist’s hatred towards Christianity and his hope for its demise presented in a series of speech samples mixed in with harsh vocals and harsh EBM style synth melodies. The only surprise here is the change in vocal style half-way through the track from distorted vocals to a cleaner, black metal voice akin to that of Old Man’s Child.

‘Wicked Owner Ov Souls’ continues with same formula set by the first two tracks minus the black metal influence but plus the NS elements evident in the samples. Similar things can be said about ‘Synthetic Messiah’ which in turn reflects the artist’s dedicated interest in the occult. This is also the most black metal sounding track on the album and aside from the synth tunes it offers little to fans of Harsh EBM.

3.5/5

Iza Raittila

This entry was posted on 17th January 2012 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.