These souls awaits a terrible fate
The roaring, relentless opening track Avernus is fast and furious, slightly technical yet straight into the listener’s face at the same time. That being said this is far from blunt brutality, the Beguiled By The Devil track seeming to seethe with rage as it progresses and the snarling and growling vocals working as additional instrument to get the blood pumping. The Codex Mortis - What Befalls Of Tainted Souls album has a dense wall of sound that uses modern production values to help the listener appreciate the whirlwind guitar riffs and slow melodic lead accompaniment used here. Band are using dense, high-speed tremolo-riffing and occasional ritualistic passages as well as some sinister and obscure lead guitar melodies sprinkled all over the tracks.
A perfect juxtaposition of the chaotic and the calm, the found and the created, the constant and moving is what The Drowned song deliver on band's debut album, while providing very stringent songwriting skills. It is always difficult to define what “good songwriting” means, as everybody might have his own opinion, and what is considered thrilling and competent by the Where The Skulls Reside track might be classified as bland or badly structured by the next person. I have to admit that it took me more than one listen to really appreciate this album in its entirety, as some of the harmonies need a bit of time to unfold their magic. However, I found myself coming back to the album as a whole and to certain songs like the mentioned title track or others like e.g. Nine-Headed Mare with its nightmarish lead harmonies.
Packing a tight punch with a huge production and monstrous instrumental performances underline the Fallen track's ambition to get a place among the genre’s elite. I would not call It Was Satan Who She Served and Tainted Soul a work of reference, but in my books this album might get a place in my personal top 10 at the end of the year. In case you are looking for another competently played and tightly produced modern black metal record you could do a lot worse than checking out this one.
