Christ Agony - Unholyunion (1993)^{Release ID: 9594}

Blackened death/doom?  Sort of like a more deathy Samael/Varathron-paced black metal album?  It is hard to explain Christ Agony's sound to the layman as there are few like them in the world of metal, certainly around in 1993 anyways.  For a (then) three piece they made a big noise, full of crunching riffs and spewing vocals.  Granted it is lyrically naive but overall still offers something new and different nearly twenty years on.

What's that?  Never heard of Christ Agony?  Me neither until finding them here in the dusty archives of the "c" section under "Bands".  Turns out they are Polish and have a lengthy career of some three decades (albeit on and off).  Unholyunion was their debut after a couple of demo releases from 1990 onward and the band found a home on Carnage Records for their debut full-length.

Straight away something is different to your normal bm record.  There's only four tracks, ranging from ten to fifteen minutes in duration and there's bone crunching riffs like on an Asphyx record.  The pace varies as well so it is not all one-dimensional slow and laboured riffing, there's blast beats to contend with her also to liven things up.  There's atmospheric passages to invoke a bit of drama and menace where necessary that give tracks some real sense of depth and density.

It is hard to get too lost in it though because it is only four tracks and the track lengths all could do with a trim and they lack enough variation for the track lengths to make them really interesting.  The pace never gets down to blackened drone/doom/death proportions but the track lengths could have you think the prospect is there. Vocally it is a bit guilty of some immaturity with a couple of parts were the word "Satan" gets growled ever few bars or so and it just feels amateur even for 1993.  Although not a bad record there was definitely room for improvement.