Celebrating two decades of service to Satanic dark metal, Pandemonium offer up a tasty morsel in the form of ‘Promo 2010’, an enhanced CD whcih combines two unofficial versions of new Pandemonium tracks scheduled for the forthcoming ‘Misanthropy’ release as well as a generous array of live and video clips accessible on your computer.
Of the two tracks on offer, the first is a brutal and atmospheric slice of black metal entitled ‘Black forest’ which features powerful drumming, greasy guitar riffs and some of the most inhuman vocal performances heard this side of a Pig Destroyer album. Sounding shockingly powerful, with a strong bass sound in evidence, it’s a good indicator of the quality of ‘Misanthropy’ and it will have fans salivating in anticipation. No less impressive is the phased opening of ‘God Delusion’ which has a huge intro that rapidly dissolves into a fast-paced, brutal assault that will simply rule in the live environment. All the more impressive that these are just promo tracks, if ‘Misanthropy’ is even half as good as these two tracks make out then it will be an album of earth-shattering proportions pushing the already impressive Pandemonium in the direction of Behemoth in terms of popularity. Epic, brutal and beautiful Pandemonium are the real deal and I can’t wait for the full-length record later this year.
The extra video footage is a nice bonus that is generously added to the package but which offers little that is essential. Split into three sections, the first section is the band live in Nowy Staw and although well-filmed the sound suffers, particularly in comparison to the amazingly recorded audio tracks on offer. That said, as a guide to the band’s prowess on stage it is a fine set and Pandemonium have a far better live sound than most bands from the genre. Cramming four tracks into the first eight minutes, it is ‘unholy existence’ that is the greatest moment with its doom laden intro and the band and fans clearly loving every minute of it. The second section is culled from Torun (the Od Nowa metal fest) and the sound is again reasonable although very raw and in the red, causing some harmonic distortion to mask the complexity of which the band are capable. Nonetheless Pandemonium are absolutely on fire throughout what must have been a very loud performance and once again you can see the crowd lapping up every second. The final section offers up the concert video for ‘Frost’ which simply rules and is well worth returning to.
On the whole this is a fantastic promo package that showcases both the band’s past (in the form of the live clips) and future and, better still, you can get it free if you order Pandemonium’s ‘Devilri’ album on vinyl which is a pretty sweet deal. A mouth-watering taste of things to come, ‘Misanthropy’ truly deserves to be huge, catch Pandemonium now and revel in the dark sound of Satanic, dark metal played to perfection by a group of passionate and talented musicians.
