Yep, that’s occult spelt with two k’s. I know. They’re evil. They must be. And face it, Atrocity need to prove their mettle after producing not one but two shitty albums of pop covers. Those songs were bad enough already without some death metal band with a keyboard and a drummer that’s evidently bored by the songs (watch the video to their cover of ‘The Sun Never Shines On TV’; they could have sat a mannequin behind the kit and nobody would have known) inexplicably prolonging their life. At least Six feet Under choose metal songs to disgrace themselves with. 2010’s After The Storm did little to restore the band to former glories. Okay, so they’re a band with ambition, but it’s been a while since it’s been achieved.
And so appears Okkult, its intriguing album cover not-so-subtly hinting at what we should expect; esoteria, mysticism, erotica, and magic await us no doubt. It comes as no surprise that a dramatic intro lures us into Okkult’s promise of many a mystery. And then, of course, the death metal erupts in a barrage of trem-picked riffs and hyper-blasted drums before the groove kicks in and Atrocity whisk us away in an irrepressible onslaught of brutality. With keyboards and choral vocals accentuating the esoteric, the dark promise of the album cover comes to life and we are subsumed in its darkly magical and deathly splendour. Not a bad start, but then comes the abhorrently titled ‘Death By Metal’ (really?). While not as bad as it’s moniker suggest, the brutal level that’s been established so far is tainted by that very refrain. So far, so Eurovision.
With the intro to ‘March Of The Undying’, the album begins to sound a little carnivalesque, pantomime even. ‘Haunted By Demons’ opens, like most of the tracks here, with a haunting intro. Thus begins an album of track after track of pretty standard and therefore ineffectual simple-to-the point-of-tedium riffs and fairly unimaginative lead breaks. While the string-scratching in the main riff of ‘Murder Blood Assassination’ attempts to bring a new dimension to the deathly grooves, the grim and gruesome side of the album is overshadowed by the pompous production. In terms of structure, this holds little in the way of surprise. Time and again, the chorus appears exactly where you don’t want them too; they are exactly at the point where the tracks get interesting and provide an opening for development. But no, with such promise in their hands, they let it go and fall back into the tried-and-tested-and-oh-so-tedious.
On the surface this is brutal and grand, its mighty edifices towering over the little people down below whom it could crush with one mighty stomp. But that’s all there is to it, surface. This album is all production, all inflated, vacuous bombast. It’s got the industrial mass of Rammstein without the body; it’s got the technicality of death metal but none of the brute force; and it bears the grandeur of gothic but lacks the substance to make it a truly moving experience. These guys have been at it for almost thirty years and it’s disappointing to find them taking such an ambitious idea in such a disappointing direction.
5/10
Jason Guest