Rating: 4.5

Country: Malta

Release Date: 2005

Track list:
Act I - Evil Manifests:
1.Prologue - The Primeval Reign of Spirit
2. Scene I - Through The Venal Eyes Of The Possessed
Act II - From Sobriety to Depraved Delusion:
3. Scene I - Deprived of Deliverance By Acumen
4. Scene II - The Transition
5. Scene III - Androgynie Somnium
Act III - Nightmares Ensue Sinister Fantasies:
6. Scene I - Enticement of Divinity's Final Hour
7. Scene II - Mina
Act IV - Evil Reigns Supreme:
8. Scene I - The Carnage Lit By Darkness
9. Epilogue - Eagerly, We Wait...

Band Website: Martyrium

Martyrium - The Carnage Lit By Darkness

Vargblod - Guitars and backing Vocals
Moloch - Bass and backing Vocals
Lucifuge Rofocale - Vocals
Necropaedophile - Keyboards
Count Mortem- Guitars
La Marquise DeSade - female vocals

Yes, that's the real tracklist. No, this is not some lost Kataklysm album from 1995. This is a steaming pile of faggoth bullshit. Well, maybe that's being a bit unfair. Buried somewhere in this 56-minute masturbation marathon is a perfectly good 30 minute symphonic black metal album in the vein of the earlier works of Nokturnal Mortum and Obtained Enslavement. Alas, the other 26 minutes is taken up by shameless virgin-baiting which would make Cradle of Filth blush. Seriously, there's a track halfway through which sounds like someone selected a random beat in Fruityloops and got their girlfriend to recite extremely bad goth poetry over the top. At the height of this nonsense, she moans “Christ… fuck me!” to which my mind responded “Christ… I'll become a fucking Christian if you make this band disappear!”. Well, maybe not, but I was quite close to doing just about anything to make it stop.

Somehow I made it to end after that, but any chance of being impressed was completely destroyed. In fact, from track 6 onwards (I'm not typing any of those ridiculous titles again), the ratio of excessive gothic sex-mongering to metal just kept getting higher and higher, with two extremely boring 10 minute songs in a row, both of them littered with huffy chick “vocals” and annoying keyboard breaks. Seriously, I'm all for good use of synth in metal, but these guys have no idea. It's either overly fast key-jerking trying to sound like a spooky Children of Bodom, or the usual “majestic choir” played in minor chords in a lame attempt to be evil. Well sure it's evil, if your definition of evil is “annoying and puerile”.

Basically, if this band killed their keyboardist and moaning gothic bitch, they might have a chance of coming up with something decent. This album reeks of young musicians with a complete inability to edit themselves, a skill which sometimes develops and sometimes doesn't, so I won't completely write them off yet. They have potential, and as I mentioned before, there's a good album in here somewhere. It's just been buried under a mountain of melted cheese and rancid semen. Oh, and their image is laughable at best. I swear one of them looks like an alien in bondage gear.

April 8th, 2006