Gorgoroth "Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam" (Candlelight)
By Cameron Higby-Naquin
Friday. Sep 29, 12:02 AM
Crushes barriers and defiles new ground for the mighty glory of Satan.

Gorgoroth, like a number of black metal bands, take their name from Tolkien's Middle Earth but its mythology from Catholicism. They are clearly no strangers to mass, though all they seem to have taken away from it is a knowledge of Latin and a reverence for the Dark Lord. Their music benefits from both. Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam is a tightly welded altar of unparalleled black intensity.

For me, Gorgoroth's greatest asset has been their uncanny ability to create an underlying rhythm so powerful that it sweeps you into the song and refuses to let you escape. Their drumming variations, beyond a simple play-as-fast-as-humanly-possible, create a raw energy that far surpasses what most bands can do, in terms of effectiveness. In "Carving A Giant," the drums inspire a blasphemous march; in "White Seed," they create a rhythmic churning that undulates between a rattling, vibrating intensity and a steady, measured throb; and in "Untamed Forces" they pound as hard and as fast as world-ending thunderstorm. Though all of this is of course very good, the actual sound of the drums themselves has been significantly upgraded from their earlier albums. Those looking for the same primal beating, raw and grimly hollow, that, to me at least, defined the sound of Under the Sign of Hell will not find it here. Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam is very crisply produced and Gorgoroth are able to coax some tremendous sounds from their instruments, but the primitive cannot be born of the technological.

The songs are all innovative without a loss of intensity. Some tracks are dirge-like, some evoke a droning, echoing ritual, some have a rich layering of noise-upon-noise. The most interesting, "Sign of an Open Eye," is a colossal, cyclopean monolith of sound punctuated by wailing, half-heard voices, and a blade of sorrow that scars the massive rock. I greatly enjoy varied, unexpected twists and turns in metal, and Gorgoroth's path does not disappoint.

The only element missing from this grand and Satanic album is something that Gorgoroth were full of on their earlier works. For lack of a better term, it is the frenzy of losing control. Almost every riff, every chord, every drumbeat of Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam feels tightly grasp by its creators. There are some moments, such as the end of "White Seed," where I felt the band was coming close to letting everything loose and giving into the frenzy, but these moments never last quite long enough. This is less a complaint about their current opus and more nostalgia for their older works, but the absence of an all-consuming, total frenzy is something I'm slightly disappointed by. Taken as a separate whole, however, Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam crushes barriers and defiles new ground for the mighty glory of Satan.
www.gorgoroth.org
www.candlelightrecordsusa.com

Listen to a song from this album in our Radio section!

Cameron Higby-Naquin

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