Year of release: 2018
Label: Iron Bonehead Productions
Rating: 7,4 / 10
ABHOR is an old Italian and whose members play in the miserable project PROFEZIA, and this immediately alarms me. I think you will agree with me that Italian extreme metal is a controversial thing, and that you can expect a catch here at any step. The first look leaves a positive impression: a killer catchy cover, the album is released by Iron Bonehead - cool. The aesthetics of the band are categorically unoriginal (retro-occultism and witchcraft), Italy is a homeland of such band as MORTUARY DRAPE after all, so I can totally understand this decision. Music, of course, is a slow and arrogant Occult Black Metal, which stands out because the organ plays a full role in it. Since 2014, the band has its own organist, and this is a very valuable acquisition. Sometimes it seems that even if ABHOR played polka, the organ parts would still make it sound ominous. However, the band plays real Black Metal, which only occasionally reminds Heavy Metal ("occult" formations' beloved sin). In the end, we have excellent music located somewhere in between MORTUARY DRAPE and CULTES DES GHOULES. And everything is almost perfect, BUT! Italy can not release a goddamn album without some of its national characteristics. I agree that there are not many of such things in "Occulta Religio", but they are still here and they influence the final result. Why for example, the Italians even in 2018 cannot learn how to make a normal guitar sound, not this watery chink? And why in the country that gave birth to Luciano Pavarotti and the crowd of vociferous power metal singers, almost all extreme vocalists are unable to squeeze out at least one convincing sound? Of all the variety of vocal styles on "Occulta Religio", each and every one performed sloppy, even clean-voiced declamations - and this is just an extraordinary event. All these shortcomings do not allow the album to become something more than just a good work, which I sincerely regret.
English (UK) 
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