Cultes des Ghoules - Henbane (2013)


From Poland comes something truly sinister and ugly. Henbane is nearly an hour split across five haunting songs. Despite the length of each of the songs (all but one are over ten minutes in length) they never get seem to get long-winded or become uninteresting. Raw production values add to the gruesome aural presence without obscuring instrumentation. Hoity toity music dork guy talk aside, there are at least ten things you will hear on this album that will scare the shit out of you. From ritualized hypnotic cascades to terrifying inhuman utterances. That isn't to say this is just some extreme metal grossout, there are some truly inspired riffs that are allowed to stretch out and reach their full stride. Very cool. This is definitely top 10 material for 2013, don't sleep.

Vintage Black Magic.