Review: NEGATIVE PLANE – The Pact…

Year: 2022
Label: Invictus Productions
Rating: 8,6 / 10

For some reason, I was contemptuous about US band NEGATIVE PLANE (apparently, I confused them with someone else), but after reading Daniel Lake's book, I changed my mind. As it turned out, NEGATIVE PLANE is a very serious and sincere Black Metal band that thinks every aspect of its creativity through and through.

”The Pact..." is my first introduction to NEGATIVE PLANE music, and I was very impressed. Musically, it's not exactly what I'm looking for personally. But, as already mentioned, this band works more than hard, not letting anything take its course. The album has a professional design and exciting literary texts united by a common theme – this is what you can see immediately. Inside, the listener finds music that is based on old dark Heavy Metal like BLACK SABBATH and MERCYFUL FATE. In the hands of NEGATIVE PLANE, it's a little bit like CULTES DES GHOULES, but the Americans sound and play much more elegantly and subtly. In fact, the first association that I had was the last album of the Swedes PEST, only they failed at pretty much everything, while NEGATIVE PLANE did everything almost perfectly. Each of their compositions is a complex, technical masterpiece, thought-out to the very last devilish note. This is the case when it seems that all the 11 years that have passed since the release of the previous album, the band has only been working on new songs. The depth of the authors' ideas is almost limitless.

Of course, like the vast majority of such complex albums, ”The Pact..." sounds relatively unemotional. First of all, it is food for the mind and ears, and then for the heart. This is probably my only complaint. But don't let that stop you - be sure to pay attention to the album and don't forget to put your red signature under The Pact.