Ensepulchred - The Night Our Rituals Blackened the Stars
Autopsy Kitchen Records – AKR015 – October 31, 2006
By Jack Deming
I first listened to this album a day or two after I recently rewatched Ed Wood, the classic Tim Burton film which chronicles the filmmaking career of the man celebrated as the worst B movie director of all time. His work vastly surpassing everyday cheese, Edward D. Wood created countless sloppy productions by employing barely competent actors and filming as quickly as humanly possible, regardless of quality. Transposed to a black metal setting, that’s basically the feeling that I get from listening to Ensepulchred’s The Night Our Rituals Blackened the Stars, only I highly doubt that Ensepulchred will be remembered for their music, much less have a film made from their story.
The debut from the Virginia based BM outfit features nearly inaudible guitars, horribly contrived vocals, and keyboards so obscenely high in the mix, so generic in tone and melody that they are the singular bane of the small chance of this album being passable for decent black metal. To their credit, Ensepulchred is definitely not your run of the mill, “more frostbitten than you” black metal. However, the sound that they do have is so uninteresting and dull that it leaves me desperately hoping for something, anything to break the sheer monotony. It is repetitive to the point where the silence in between each song just seems like an instrumental break, promptly plowing into another section of the same song, rarely fluctuating in key or tempo.
The fact that these guys have written, recorded, and released another full length album (Suicide in Winter Moonlight) exactly a year after this one gives me the impression that they are more interested in the novelty of churning out a record in time for an annual Halloween release than creating quality black metal.
Official Autopsy Kitchen Records Website
Autopsy Kitchen Records – AKR015 – October 31, 2006
By Jack Deming
I first listened to this album a day or two after I recently rewatched Ed Wood, the classic Tim Burton film which chronicles the filmmaking career of the man celebrated as the worst B movie director of all time. His work vastly surpassing everyday cheese, Edward D. Wood created countless sloppy productions by employing barely competent actors and filming as quickly as humanly possible, regardless of quality. Transposed to a black metal setting, that’s basically the feeling that I get from listening to Ensepulchred’s The Night Our Rituals Blackened the Stars, only I highly doubt that Ensepulchred will be remembered for their music, much less have a film made from their story.
The debut from the Virginia based BM outfit features nearly inaudible guitars, horribly contrived vocals, and keyboards so obscenely high in the mix, so generic in tone and melody that they are the singular bane of the small chance of this album being passable for decent black metal. To their credit, Ensepulchred is definitely not your run of the mill, “more frostbitten than you” black metal. However, the sound that they do have is so uninteresting and dull that it leaves me desperately hoping for something, anything to break the sheer monotony. It is repetitive to the point where the silence in between each song just seems like an instrumental break, promptly plowing into another section of the same song, rarely fluctuating in key or tempo.
The fact that these guys have written, recorded, and released another full length album (Suicide in Winter Moonlight) exactly a year after this one gives me the impression that they are more interested in the novelty of churning out a record in time for an annual Halloween release than creating quality black metal.
Official Autopsy Kitchen Records Website
