Valkyrian Music

Flagellated Seraph
Beyond Salvation
Due for release/Released: June 2012
Black Metal
Released via Label: Hellthrasher Productions

‘Beyond Salvation’ is the debut album from the Swedish black metal band Flagellated Seraph. The band have described this effort as “black metal darkness illuminated by the light of suffering and death, featuring some long, epic hymns in the vein of Funeral Mist”.

The symphonic keyboard intro to the opening track ‘Reminiscence Of The Serpent’ has certain eerie soundtrack quality to it. Then it’s on to some black metal with the first real track on here, ‘He Who Bears The Mark’ in which vocals seem a little coarse-sounding at times compared to the systematic guitar riffs. So far it sounds like a hybrid of Ragnarok and Funeral Mist. I’m not sure what to make of the howling towards the latter part of the song though.

The title track ‘Beyond Salvation’ starts off with a promising bass solo followed by some random noises from the singer before the pace picks up resulting in a well composed, albeit unusually structured black metal track. The guitar pattern and drumming is more consistent with the likes of Satanic Warmaster/Pagan Hellfire than the Funeral Mist style. Though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, if it wasn’t for the vocals, which once again let Flagellated Seraph down slightly. There’s something really disturbing about the vocal style which makes me think of a man crying out loud whilst trapped somewhere, deep in the depths of a well. All credit to anyone who is able to sing like that.

The rest of the album continues with the same pattern with the lengthy titles ‘I Am The Flame’ and ‘Redeemer of Nothingness’ offering more melodic and monotone sounding black metal.

3.5/5

Iza Raittila

This entry was posted on 17th July 2012 at 7:02 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.