Year of release: 2018
Label: Iron Bonehead Productions
Rating: 6,6 / 10
"Death is our guide and we are his scythe". The physical edition of the debut album of the Portuguese band SUMMON is decorated with this slogan. If you look closely, you can see HELLHAMMER t-shirt on one of the band's members. Along with a fancy logo and classical text component of the release, there are no doubts: before us is another example of modern occult (?) black metal, built on the basis of primary samples of extreme genres and brought to the very limit of gloom. As I have said many times, this combination almost never gives a bad result. However, finding something really interesting in this style is also difficult. About 7 years ago there was a time when any album in this style was perceived as revelation because of the freshness of the sound and the stunning atmosphere. But today there are so many of them, that all this music merges into memory in a continuous rumble which you'd want to listen to only as a background music.
SUMMON make timid attempts to stand out somehow, to diversify their music. For example, they composed a couple of remarkably deep intro. They also have incredible vocals, in which there is absolutely nothing human. I think that the ancient ghosts wandering endlessly in the cold otherworldly abyss have such voices. The track "Below Death Splenddovr" shows it well. The pace of music varies from song to song. Somewhere the listener is drawn by the whirlpool of chaos, somewhere he languishes, hanging on chains over the abyss under the accompaniment of classical slow riffs. Somewhere there is a mixture of both. It's a pity but SUMMON is another group in style that is devoided of composer's veins. Everything they do is made up of standard pieces that ae million times tested. I can't stand this fucking bullshit anymore. Yes, it works, and I will not say that these guys are worse than others, but they ae also not better. And they don't even try to be better. With all the credibility of the ideological component, you need to understand when the music from the traditional turns into a template. However, whom am I trying to deceive? The ideological component is also banal. I have a suspicion that the band just sketched out the list of requirements for the album, and then it was created by specially hired Chinese workers. This explains the protracted creative impotence of this style. If it were not for the vocals, which somehow save the situation, the band could be recorded in the Faceless Army and forgotten forever.
English (UK) 
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