Album Review: Christ Dismembered - Ov Vampiricy
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Perhaps not the first place you think of when considering Black Metal, but the foul and pestilent horde that is Christ Dismembered hail from the fair city of Adelaide, Australia, and have been emitting their rotten rasps for more than a decade.
Ov Vampiricy is the band’s sophomore record, released eight whole years on from the self-titled debut, and finds Christ Dismembered in a particularly blasphemous mood.
Peels of thunder, the wind howling across a desolate plain, and a singular tolling bell form the introduction, a door opens and someone – or something – whispers demonic incantations into the air.
From there, Ov Vampiricy shifts into a huge wall of guitar and muddied, blasting drums. Vocalist Archworm spews tortured rasps over raging triplets and rampaging percussion, easily as cold and frost-bitten as anything from Scandinavia.
In many ways, it’s an album that feels like it’s searching for its real identity: whether to be accepted into the trve legions of the Norwegian scene, through the obvious blasphemies of Under the Cross, with its fetid riffs, or Sorcerer of Nazareth, where the guitars howl in perpetual infernal torment.
Or, whether theirs is a more cvltured, cleaner version of the genre, a Swedish sound, reminiscent of latter-era Dark Funeral’s more festival friendly offerings. Mother of Demons and The Numbers Oppose You come with crisp guitar sounds and crystal-clear drums, the riffs, while still dark, not quite as evil as elsewhere on the record.
A mid-album pause sees the brief, instrumental interlude, The Banishment replace the unholy with the atmospheric intertwining of simple strings as the wind continues to howl outside.
A Ritual Most Foul follow immediately with a twisting, measured riff; See You in Hell taking a similar track, while the ungodly devastation of Child Devouring Servant of Satan and the climatic Riddled with Sin should see the darkest of hearts giving praise to their fallen god, crucifixes inverted and damnation beckoning them onwards.
From a personal stance, I think Ov Vampiricy is at its best when it’s dirty and mean; the most blasphemous passages are where the album is at it’s most interesting. There’s nothing at all wrong with the more polished parts – heck, I loves me a bit of Dark Funeral as much as the next berserker – I just think the stylistic shifts disrupt the consistency of what is otherwise an enjoyable album.
That, of course, does not stop me from looking forward to seeing what Christ Dismembered release next, or hopefully catching them live somewhere soon
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