Cleveland, Ohio’s Satanic/Occult rockers Ancient VVisdom are back with their fourth album, 33 (Magic Bullet), and the brothers Nathan and Michael Jochum have added bass player Connor Metsker to their line-up.

The album opens with ‘Ascending Eternally’, a warm and atmospheric piece of piano, and closes with another piano section, ‘Dispelling Darkness’. This should be a complementary number rounding out the album, but lacks in warmth and balance and is less effective than planned.

This sense of having tried and not entirely succeeded unfortunately pervades the album. The acoustic guitar really shines, especially in the outro of ‘In the Name of Satan’, the intro of ‘True Will’, and the entirety of ‘The Great Beast’. The vocals on the other hand range from ‘quite alright if not as clean as you’d expect from a studio recording’ on ‘In the Name of Satan’ and ‘Lux’ to pretty dull in ’33’ and ‘The Great Beast’. One song in particular is let down by lack of vocal control: ‘Rise Fallen Angel’ is a very well-written song, with an instrumental sound like a mix between Scorpions and Psychedelicatessen-era (Giant Electric Pea) Threshold. However, the high vocals in the chorus are not performed cleanly, and Nathan Jochum basically glissandos from one note to the next for the entire section, leading to a whiny sound.

The overall level of composition on the album is good, and the songs themselves are generally well constructed, even if some of them lack an actual end, but there are some massive flaws in the mix. On several occasions there are drops in volume, often coinciding with guitar solos, where the backing volume just seems to drop. One song where the acoustic and distorted electric guitars don’t mesh is ‘The Infernal One’. It starts with a promising grungy riff on electric guitar, but when the rest of the instruments are added they don’t match in style, or even in volume, though the song benefits from a surprisingly great chorus; a catchy sing-along, but the first verse is weak.

Rough around the edges does not suffice to describe this album. It could have been great.

5.0/10

LORRAINE LYSEN