Necromantia continues pursuing the occult directions where the Greeks took black metal - Norwegians made it a more direct assault on the senses but the Greeks always were more intellectual and maybe that is why I've got the feeling that the listeners of the Greek scene are somehow frustrated with their individual existences or just generally bored with themselves. In that way, the Greek scene is really serious with themselves.

"Scarlet Evil..." is somehow not so listenable as "Crossing the Fiery Path" was, yet there is some sense still to what Necromantia is doing. They don't use rhythm guitar at all, just two basses that play around with old-school stuff (like Bathory & heavy metal bands) and then also break into folk melodies and blast into a more Burzum-esque ambience - structured as corresponding to the mental condition prevalent in Daoloth's learned (?) lyrics.

© 2001 black hate