Review Summary: Where the ugly meets the insane.
The Norwegian Black Metal extraordinaires Shaarimoth are not likely to appear on anyone’s favourite list of the genre. They don’t really have a following and they don’t necessarily represent anything unusual in terms of sound and style. But they know how to ***ing put together a magnetic ***ing album. ***.
Just listening to the shredding, piercing drums on “Legion of Kingu” is invigorating. The utterly distasteful production makes the sound so crisp, and yet so sticky like a treacle of decay and gore, is absolutely mesmerising. But what is strange is that it doesn’t turn the music into unintelligible or unlistenable muddy mess. It’s actually quite a refreshing display of hypnotic gruesomeness that should not go amiss to any Black or Death Metal fan.
The extremes that meet on
Current 11 never entirely fall into the pit of deafening unpleasantness, neither does it become exhausting and repetitive. Somehow, the endless variety of combinations of demonic growling vocals (with occasional animalistic shrieks), headache-inducing guitar beatdowns and drumming worthy of the Satan himself, it all just turns into such a staggering hour of brutality and dizzying magnitude that your head will start spinning.
Sure, it has some lowpoints, such as the sudden ambient and spoken word passage “Incantation of Hour” or the shamanistic title track interlude, but it does not in any way ruin the magnificence of songs like the multi-layered “Flood the Cosmic Gates”, the crazy “Utukki Limunti”, the pruning heaviness of “In the Shadow of Akhkharu” or the occasionally almost Thrash-y "Come Mother, Come!". It is just dismal in the best way possible. It does not make you want to shower off the filth afterwards, but rather bathe in it and enjoy the despair and the luxury rotten fruits purgatory has to offer.
