Listening Experience of the Month (June 2000) - Enochian Crescent 'Omega Telocvovim'

Back from the dead! No, I'm not going to talk about Obituary here, it's more about me returning to my duties and, finally, poisoning you with some new metal writings. As you can see, Listening Experience of May 2000 got lost somewhere between Cleveland, NY, and Moscow, so why don't we just forget about it and get straight to June's feature?! And love at first glance it was not, my friends, because upon first few listenings to this new album by Finnish Enochian Crescent I was not really impressed. While a couple of tracks did stand out a little, the rest of the album seemed way too generic and forgettable pounding one quite brutal song after another without making any kind of impact , thus my first opinion was nothing more than 'another Black Metal band unsuccessfully turned Death Metal'. Keeping in mind sad experience with Behemoth's latest 'Satanica', which does not give me a whole lot of satisfaction when compared to their strong previous opus 'Pandemonic Incantations' or even 'Grom', it looked like a pretty fair description of Finns' second longplayer. However, I'm happy to report that further sacrifices of time and energy were not in vain, as I can easily state that 'Omega Telocvovim', given proper time and attention, simply rules! Moreover, it's not the album which is built around one or two songs being highlights and the rest of the pack simply filling up the space, as each and every composition on this recording stands strong and proud on its own. To give you an idea of what kind of music is presented on this album would be, as usual, a difficult task, but a point of reference in this case could be aforementioned Behemoth. One of the mailorders characterized this album as a black metal thing with just a pinch of death metal, but it's not exactly the truth, as this album contains a little bit more than just a slice of Metal of Death. What sets it apart from so seriously criticized Behemoth (don't get me wrong - I still like that band) is less brutal songwriting, which results in listener actually being

able to hear what particular song tries to present, instead of just having a headache. Another difference is that despite being quite hard-hitting each song on 'Omega...' contains enough hooks to satisfy your cravings for memorable tunes, something that a lot of black metal turned death metal bands can not achieve (i.e. Emperor). Good mid-paced riffs oftentimes quickly switch to faster melodies, which makes the listening quite an adventure and not just a waste of time. Vocals are mostly represented by a black metal screams of anguish, although Enochian Crescent are not afraid of experimentation, and thus occasionally use some distorted and even clean vocals reminiscent of 'La Masquerade Inferanale'-era Arcturus, which is especially evident on track #6 (don't ask me to print its name here - I won't!). As I mentioned earlier, this album is more or less highlightless, but (again, again!) if you force me to say something on this matter, then pay close attention to 'Abaiuonin' (hmmm...well, whatever) and 'Grey Skin', as they are really worth it. Storyline is, supposedly, a concept of some sorts, with this album being a final part of a trilogy started with their debut album on Woodcut and further continued on their MCD. As I've neither had a chance to listen to their first two opuses nor quite understood lyrics on this one (I would say lyrics on 'Omega' can be classified into 'intelligent blasphemy' category, if you know what I mean), I can not really tell you what this story is all about, so I encourage all of you to research this matter and then inform me :-) Now, you could rightfully say that if I choose to write a review, then it's my responsibility to find out what's going on. Yeah, in a way I can agree with you my friends, but I already mentioned that I don't really favor 'scientific' lyrics, and if Enochian Crescent choose to write this kind of poems, then I choose not to comment on them, haha! Plus some of them are in Finnish!!! As always with Avantgarde releases you get good production this time courtesy of Tico-Tico studios (although I would like to hear less of low frequencies next time around) and great Digipack packaging with lots of weird pictures including washed out photos of some Finnish musicians (I think i recognized Grief from ...and Oceans), haha. So what are you waiting for? Grab your purse, wallet, credit card or whatever you have by your hand and get yourself a piece of good music - you won't be disappointed! Andy.