Alghazanth – Vinum Intus (2011)

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After their monumental “Wreath of Thevetat”, Finland’s best Symphonic/Melodic Black Metal band Alghazanth returns with a very interesting offering titled “Vinum Intus”. In three years between releases, the band has managed to fuse new elements into their sound and will surely take by surprise a lot of people, but they still manage to deliver a crushing release.

The album starts off very rudimentary with the straight forward track titled “A Living Grace”. In this song you can immediately notice a simpler and less bombastic sound from the band, but equally cold and raw than before (and other Finish bands like Sargeist and Horna). The keyboard hints are a nice atmospheric element added to this song. The band gets a bit more comfortable and melodic with “With a Thorn in Our Hearts”, some guitar riffs even remind us of Celestia and their melancholy Black Metal style.

The acoustic/piano section near the end of “Only the Reflection Bleeds” makes this song a bit different from the first one, but it’s not until the contrasting “Under the Arrow Star” that we get the Alghazanth I was eagerly waiting for. In this song, the band graciously combines their traditional raw and melodic sections in a much more cohesive manner than in the early songs. “Our Ascent of the Tower” is a nice atmospheric/creepy song that nicely creates some build up before the very Melodic “Wine Within”.

The best song of the whole album comes with the name of “For Thirteen Moons”. In this highly emotional song, the band takes us through a journey of desolate acoustic passages that get surrounded by powerful guitars and excellent shrieks of pain. The combination of desolate passages with the keyboards is just majestic and creates a very powerful combination of elements. In order to close things strongly, Alghazanth gives us two of the most hectic tracks of the album before the end: “Triunity” and “The Way of the Scales”.

In this release the band shows that their sound has evolved and matrured even more than before. While this release might not be as strong as “Wreath of Thevetat”, the band has done a great job in creating 9 very diverse and raw sounding Melodic/Symphonic Black Metal tracks. The riffing is top notch, the drumming is very well structured and the vocals are just straight from Hell. If you are a fan of the band, you should completely understand the evolution of their sound. If you are not a fan and are looking for a powerful yet Melodic Black Metal release, you can’t go wrong with “Vinum Intus”.

Band: Alghazanth Album: Vinum Intus
Label: Woodcut Records

Release: January 1st, 2011

Oficial Site myspace
Genre: Symphonic/Melodic Black Metal

Country: Finland

Rating: 86/100
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