Gorgoroth – Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt (2009)

Gorgoroth is finally band and with full strength. “Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt” is their latest release, and one of the best in their career. After getting rid of the ‘troubled elements’ within the band, Infernus focused 100% on the recording of this album. Writing all the music for it and recording all the guitars on the album, his creative forces were completely aligned for this album.

The product of this creative process that took several years to complete (the music was written between 2006 and 2009) is a masterpiece that will clearly go down as one of the best Black Metal albums in history.

Gorgoroth slowly builds up momentum as the album progresses, keeping better and better by the minute. The trash metal sounding riffs featured in this album bring back memories of the good BM albums of the 90’s, Infernus excels at creating this feeling in some of the songs, and only to improve it with great tremolo picking riffs (like in Building A Man).

The vocals courtesy of Pest blow away anything that the band every released with Gaahl singing, his vocals are probably the best in the Black Metal scene and he is greatly welcomed back into Gorgoroth. His gut wrenching sounding vocals sound like they are coming straight from hell (also check out is Blood Stained Dusk band). Also back in Gorgoroth’s lineup is Tormentor on guitars, but he did not record anything on this album.

The new comers to the band are Frank Watkins from Obituary on bass, a very strange but great addition to the band’s already massive sound. Tomas Asklund (Ex-Dissection) on drums which takes the band’s drumming style into a different dimension, even tough sometimes during “QPAST” the drumming is very mechanical, but greatly executed.

With this massive lineup, you get a brilliant album that feels like a reboot for Gorgoroth, going back to their earlier musical direction, but with great technical improvements in their sound. All songs create a very thick atmosphere that is a result of the buildup created by some of the slower songs mixed with the brutality of other songs (like Human Sacrifice).

“QPAST” shows a great improvement over the band’s last full length album “Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam” and hopefully with this super lineup they continue releasing crushing albums like this one. I will let you discover this album on your own, since it’s a truly remarkable experience in Black Metal.

Release: November 11, 2009

Country: Norway