Review of Ancient Rites - Dim Carcosa

Ancient Rites is a band that has been playing extreme metal for more than 10 years now. They've gone through quite a few hardships during this time like loosing a founding member of the band, but have persevered. They've been there since almost the conception of black metal and helped spread the music throughout Europe by touring when other bands early in the scene like Darkthrone and Emperor didn't tour or even play live for that matter. That brings us to the present where Ancient Rites releases their newest offering, Dim Carcosa. Ancient Rites has neo classical, melodic and symphonic elements added to their brand of blackened metal. The guitar work is pretty cool; you're given some straightforward black metal riffs, but there's also some really cool melodic and brutal stuff found in here, not to mention some cool solos. The drums are good and sound really crisp. The keyboards are cool, and I love the piano work found in this album. When combined with some great keyboards, it feels very atmospheric and I found myself playing "The Return" and "Remembrance" over and over just to listen to it. It's some of my favorite material off the album. As I come to the vokills this brings me to my first complaint with the album. I like the harsh vokills, but I'm not a big fan of the clean stuff. There are songs where they don't bother me as much like in "(Ode to Ancient) Europa", but then there are songs like "North Sea" and "Exile (Les Litanes De Satan)" where they just really annoyed me. They're one of the main reasons I won't be breaking this album back out as often. The production is pretty solid, but still maintains a bit of that raw black metal feel which never diminishes some of the epicenes emitted from the album. The lyrics tend to deal with that of many Viking metal bands, with stuff about Odin and Valhalla. They're pretty decent too. When it comes down to it, this album was enjoyable and I recommend at least checking it out. The main reason I couldn't totally get into this album is because of some of the clean vokills, but I can still see myself pulling this one out for a listen or two every now and again because of great tracks like "And the Horns Called for War", "(Ode to Ancient) Europa" (my favorite song on the CD), and "Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)".

Release Details

Ancient Rites

Dim Carcosa

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