Blessed in Sin just might be one of the most underrated black metal bands to ever exist. This band plays a style of symphonic black metal similar to bands like Limbonic Art and Stormblast era Dimmu Borgir. Blessed in Sin was formed in 1993, but has only released two full length albums since then. Their first Melancholia, released in 2000, wasn't as symphonic or nearly as long as this album is. The band released this album in 2001, only a year after their first album, but already you can see a little bit of an improvement. First of all this album is about an hour and ten minutes long whereas the first album didn't even make it to 40 minutes. Some people may think of this as a bad thing, but in this case its not. All Blessed in Sin did was make a longer, more symphonic, and better album than the first. Don't get me wrong, the first album is great, just not as great as this.
Like most symphonic black metal bands, Blessed in Sin start this album off with an instrumental that is only about a minute and a half long. Nothing special, but before you can even prepare yourself for the real beginning of the album, you're getting blasted with the first real track Veualiah. Once you listen to this track you will know what to expect from the rest of the album. The guitar riffs throughout the whole album are extremely melodic. No solos or anything like that on this album, but this is one of my favorite guitar performances on a black metal album. Either they're playing fast tremolo picked riffs while still keeping a sense of melody or they're just playing some pretty techincal and fast melodic riffs. Of course since this is a black metal album it wouldn't be the same if the bass wasn't completely nonexistent. Don't worry though it is the same because the bass is pretty much nowhere to be found, at least for me. Drumming on this album is actually not always blast beats surprisingly. Sometimes they are presented, but most of the time throughout the album the drummer is playing fast, but not in a blast beat kind of way. He does his job very well though because he keeps the rhythym of the song while the melodic guitars do their work. Keyboards also play a huge factor on this album. They are present on almost every song. Most of the time it just sounds like their keyboardist is playing a regular piano, which he might be. Also there is an organ displayed a couple of times throughout the album that might remind you of being in a church.
Vocally this album is also top notch. You might think that the vocalist, Overlord Nasty Metatheos, sounds like every other black metal vocalist on the face of the earth. This may be true, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't give a great performance. His vocal range is kind of in the middle. Its not really high pitched, but its definitely not a low pitched death grunt either. He also does some clean talking. He doesn't sing, but in some songs he just talks in a sinister sounding clean voice. There are also some electronic vocals too. Whoever does these types of vocals makes them sound truly creepy. They're not in a singing style like Cynic used them on Focus and whoever does them has a very deep and weird voice. Its actually a little bit scary.
So if you want my advice, I say go out and buy or download both albums that Blessed in Sin has released so far if you want some great and underrated black metal. Like I mentioned earlier, everything on this album is top notch from the vocals to the instrumental aspect. Start off with the band's first album Melancholia to get a feel for the band and then you can move on to this even more epic piece of symphonic black metal. Both albums are truly hidden gems in the black metal world and they need to be heard by all metal fans.
