Corpus Christii – PaleMoon
Portugal is the home of many interesting bands, from the more experienced to the newer ones and in several metal styles as well. If you’re not familiar with the Portuguese Metal scene, I advise you to look around, as you’ll find a rich, varied tapestry of extreme music in the beautiful country. And from the Lusitanian lands comes Corpus Christii, which I’ll share some thoughts about its latest release.
Founded in Lisbon in the year 1998, the band have reached out to a vastly spread audience on all continents through their releases but also through numerous live-gigs over Europe. Corpus Christii also states that it was founded with the main aims of spreading the Word of Satan and to raise Torment over this Earth, Corpus Christii has been releasing works of audio terror. Now, in 2015, we are able to enjoy their new work “PaleMoon”.
When I first heard the album, I was already stunned by the extreme, energetic and honest music crafted by the band. For me it’s utterly important that the music has emotions, soul, and not some sort of sterile sound or masturbatory riffage that goes nowhere. And, at least to my ears, in my humble view, what we have here is a work filled with real sentiment, authentic anger and attitude.
The music is varied; we have hymns of hatred composed of classical Black Metal, Black ’n Roll, all created in full dark atmosphere and extreme speed, but don’t fool yourselves, never being so fast that it ends up becoming a mess, but still being, in a way, an organized chaos. This is the sort of ugly Black Metal that admirers of the old sounds would definitely enjoy: raw, aggressive and blasphemous, although respecting the traditional roots, also keeping originality in the music. Of course, like when it comes to all musicians, we can detect some influences here and there, in this case, Darkthrone’s first releases.
As for the vocals, they are hate-filled, fierce and grim, singing about obscure themes, while the guitars are a sonic attack to the ears, powerful, accelerated and morbid, all resulting in a very malevolent and somber sound, grim and vicious. The drums are simply outstanding, pure destruction. In fact, the whole instrumental sound of “PaleMoon” is, in my humble opinion, amazing, managing to represent pure evil in form of music. The vocals, one more time, add a sense of cruelty, grudge and malignance. I’ll repeat myself, “PaleMoon” feels like pure evil in form of music and you can’t say that about many bands, I believe.
As for the production, it’s a bit raw, but clean enough to be enjoyable. Not too clean though, as I guess it wouldn’t fit the musical style of Corpus Christii. So, my dear friends, I finish here by asking you all to give this album a try, which you can do legally via the band’s official Bandcamp page and, if you happen to enjoy this magnificence release, I beg of you to find any sort of way that you can support and/ or promote their music.
Until next time.
Grade: 9,8/10
Band: Corpus Christii
Album: PaleMoon (2015)
Label: Folter Records
Tracklist:
- Far Beyond the Light
- Under Beastcraft
- The Great Death
- Eternal Bliss
- Last Eclipse
- Being
- Night of Flaming Hatred
- From Darkness to Total Blackness
- Livid Night
- Carving a Light in Me
Corpus Christii is:
Nocturnus Horrendus – All instruments, Vocals
J. Goat – Guitars, Bass
Mist – Session Bass guitar live
G.R. – Drums (Studio/session Live)
Vulturius – Session Guitar live
Official Bandcamp: https://officialcorpuschristii.bandcamp.com
Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corpuschristii
All photos belong to their rightful owners.
May 6, 2015