Disciple of the Heinous Path
Amy | outer space | 05/21/2008
(3 out of 5 stars)
"After hearing Satanic Black Devotion and liking it well enough, I picked up Disciple of the Heinous Path and at first, thought it was awful. I wasn't tremendously fond of the vocals on SBD, but I put this in and when the vocals kicked in on "Black Treasures of Melancholy," I would always turn it off and begin listening to something else. I'm not sure why exactly, but it just sounded awful to me. After forcing myself to sit through the whole song (and then the rest of the album), the vocals on this grew on me a bit and I decided this was a pretty good CD. I still like Satanic Black Devotion better, but I don't dislike this one anymore.
Another thing that struck me immediately was how hard it was to hear the bass drums in most songs; in fact, in many songs it's hard to hear anything but the cymbals over the guitars and vocals. The guitar work is really the highlight of the album, and the reason I ended up liking it, so I guess it's not too terrible about the way things are mixed, because it does highlight the guitars.
"Cursed Blaze of Rituals" is slower with a nice midsection and again, the guitars are great, the riffs are all very dark and atmospheric. The overall sound of the album is memorable, and the title track has good guitar melodies (and the drums are audible!) and despite some of the longer song lengths, it never actually becomes boring. The best thing about Sargeist is really the atmosphere, they know how to write music that is incredibly dark and cold-sounding. This isn't my favorite Sargeist material, but it's still a decent album."