Year of release: 2018
Label: World Terror Committee
Rating: 7,7 / 10
SARGEIST is probably my favorite Finnish Black Metal band. From the rawest DARKTHRONE worship of the old records to their modern a la GORGOROTH sound, full of epic melancholy. In my opinion, the turning point in the band’s career is “Let the Devil In”, a real bomb full of hits. Perhaps, even the musicians themselves were scared by this quantity of hit songs, as they later somewhat reduced the scale of their creative activity. “Feeding the Crawling Shadows” also turned out to be great album, but much more sullen and reticent. Not surprisingly, half of the new fans who appeared at SARGEIST fan camp due to “Let the Devil In” immediately fell off. However, “Feeding ...” was and still is a great work that you just need to pay attention to while listening. And this, without a doubt, was the album of SARGEIST, having a well-known spirit. But “Unbound” is not quite SARGEIST. It could easily be BEHEXEN, HORNA's one hundred thousandth recording or the work of some other good Finnish group. I will try to sort through. The musical material here has super high quality - in the sense that elements of various traditional styles of Black Metal are well mixed in the compositions, perfectly combining with each other. This is a very interesting and rare phenomenon. The vocals are beautiful - they are closest to the usual SARGEIST sound, despite the fact that the vocalist is new. But the general uniqueness was lost somewhere. These special GORGOROTH-like tunes that the band skillfully used on previous recordings are not some kind of banal depression / melancholy or “melody”. This is a very subtle kind of satanic music, suitable, despite its accessibility to the ear, as a soundtrack to the fall of the walls of paradise. This is a monumental song of unholy mourning. SARGEIST were the only (except for GORGOROTH, of course) band that managed to capture this feeling. Now they have lost it. In those parts of "Unbound" where there is no infernal blasting aggression, you can hear only banal and unconvincing sufferings. The final impression is disappointing: the album is really very good, but at the same time the weakest in the history of SARGEIST.
English (UK) 
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