Denial of God - The Horrors of Satan (2006)

Denmark's Denial of God is a band I always felt I should have gelled with, but never quite got there. They have amazing cover artwork on their albums, clear occult/horror themes to all their releases, and they're frankly one of the most seasoned black metal bands out of that entire scene, having a long legacy of shorter EP releases before they ever even dropped this debut full-length, The Horrors of Satan, in 2006. They seem to feed a more theatrical vibe than many of their peers, almost like a King Diamond playing purely in the black metal realm, and this does translate onto their recordings, with a number of intro or interlude pieces like "The Witch - Now a Restless Spirit" which is a whispered narrative over an acoustic guitar. Synths, down-tuned vocal chants, all manner of embellishments give this debut a classic, creepy Gothic horror feeling.

The material here is solid if not totally impressive, aesthetically comparable to a lot of the 90s Scandinavian black metal that surrounded them on their earlier works. There's more melody than you'd think, in tunes like "The Curse of the Witch", which have some NWOBM or German heavy metal elements coursing through the tremolo picked riff choices. However, most of the patterns are pretty much standard stuff, just catchy enough to carry you along the thrust of the blasted drums and snarls, an occasionally eerie melody peaking above the ordeal (as in "The Book of Ouifael"). The beats are fast as hell with loads of fills, and the band does dynamically shift around so that the tracks never get boring, with segues like bells and the aforementioned chants or narrative to give it all a dark storybook feel. There's one tracks here, "The Iron Gibbet", that clocks in at over 11 minutes of slower black metal, and I don't know that this one quite earns its length, because they're aren't a lot of interesting moments or surprises. The epic titular closer is nearly 13 minutes, and this one is faster paced in general as has a lot stickier riffs and dynamics.

It's a little imbalanced, and probably about 20 minutes too long (almost an hour total), but The Horrors of Satan is certainly worthwhile to revisit. It's got a raw, sinister atmosphere to it created through the throwback mix of guitars and the horror trappings, gruesome vocals, and it's certainly the most savage of  the three full length albums although I can't speak for all the EPs. That said, the style here is actually carried out across the rest of their catalogue, maybe a little cleaner in production, doomier or more progressive. I got a little bored with the sophomore, Death and the Beyond, but this debut is more vital and exciting, a decent time if you're into the more traditional Satanic black metal of the 90s but with a little more cinematic/horror appeal. Haunted castles, witches dancing around bonfires, werewolves, old black & white horror films, sacrifices, Denial of God has your back on this one, it just needed an edit or two for when it became a little redundant.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://denialofgod.bandcamp.com/music