Behemoth - Grom (1996)^{Release ID: 2520}

I heard from Rateyourmusic that Behemoth's sophomore album, Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic), is supposed to be the best of their worst era of musicianship: their first four albums.  However, I felt that the sophomore was only a slight improvement over their debut, by a literal quarter star.  Since their third album, Grom, was supposed to be worse, I expeted another disappointment.  That isn't QUITE what I got, though.

After a monotonous dungeon synth intro comes the real speed and power of the album's genre. There's an improvement in the villainy of Nergal's vocals, as well as the quality of the guitar solos. “Spellcraft And Heathendom” even shows an improvement in percussion. The album is able to stand with the previous two entries and above due to the band's newfound brutality. And because the production values are a little better, the noisy quality works with the brutality instead of against it.  Unfortunately, with this new brutality also comes new monotony. There's less of a will to experiment with new sounds related to the black metal scene than there was on the previous album, and so all of these songs are pretty much doing the same thing. It doesn't help that “Thou Shalt Forever Win” sounds almost exactly like “Rising Proudly Towards the Sky.” Thankfully, the closing title track is arguably the most epic song the band had done up to that point.

I guess I'm a little satisfied with where Grom went.  Behemoth made some very drastic changes to their production approach, which helped a lot.  Still, the flaws are still there and they haven't really learned how to perfect any of the elements that made this album their best so far.  But I'd recommend this for anyone who wants something that sounds quite epic.

67/100