Album Review: Behemoth - The Shit Ov God
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Thirty-years on from the release of their black metal debut album, Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic), Gdańsk extreme metal overlords, Behemoth, return with album number thirteen, in what seems like a matter of mere months since they issued Opvs Contra Natvram.
Since Nergal’s recovery from the life-threatening illness back in 2010, Behemoth have gone from strength to strength. Just prior to diagnosis they had issued the imperious Evengelion, taking five years to complete the acknowledged masterpiece that is The Satanist which, released in 2014, cemented the band’s status as one of the genre’s leading lights.
Headlining bigger venues and festivals became the order of the day, though the band didn’t sacrifice their creative ambition, or their extremity on the altar of commercial success. Both I Loved You at Your Darkest in 2018 and Opvs Contra… in 2022 were met with high acclaim from fans and critics, piling a heavy weight of expectation on the band’s shoulders for what they would produce next.
No strangers to controversy, Nergal admits the on-the-nose title was chosen deliberately to be provocative and confrontational, all the things we love this band for.
It’s okay to rock the boat, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and Behemoth appear to still be inspired the same muse as has been with them since Demigod.
The Shit ov God is composed of eight tracks, all around the four-or-five-minute mark and all filled to bursting point with everything that makes Behemoth the premier blackened death outfit on the scene.
The Shadow Elite opens Pandora’s box with a huge whipping death riff and frenzy of raw-throated rasps. It acts as something of an overture of what to expect from the album, blending rampant speed with measured and carefully crafted slower pieces.
From here on it’s a fifty-fifty split between frantic blasphemies and the classically profane. Sowing Salt leads the speedy charge, mixing unholy spells and even takes the movement of cosmic forces into consideration. Nergal and Seth’s guitars rage with blackened triplets and riff like they are bearing the weight of the world; yet the solo is an uplifting respite from the searing intensity.
Lvciferaeon and To Drown the Svn in Wine occupy the centre of the record and are Shit’s… most blistering tracks. The former finds the band standing shoulder to shoulder with the forces of Satan during the War in Heaven with some of the album’s filthiest moments as guitars scream like tortured demons. The latter’s unrelenting battery barely hides its explosive core among a polyglot of voices and fragments of Walt Whitman’s poetry.
But Behemoth’s appeal lies in its ability vary their approach and this new record is no different. For every blasting, blitzkrieg moment, The Shit ov God has a more refined – though not to say any less powerful – sections in which an entirely other kind of intensity is introduced.
The title track is an infernal invocation built around huge, classical motifs and ethereal chants. Drummer, Inferno, makes this one his own with a crisp, clean percussion leading the benediction. Slow and grinding riffs leads us through into a spoken word section in which the title becomes the liturgy.
Classical influences and solid, meaty guitars make impressive bedfellows on both Nomen Barbarvm and O, Venvs Come!. Nomen… reveals a skipping beat over which demonic howls and dualling guitars can be heard; Venvs… opens with a massive statement of an opening movement, driving
those classical influences to the absolute edge through choral effects, with drums acting as thunder and the guitars as pouring rain. It feels like a Wagner opera and damnation itself has never seemed so attractive.
As is Behemoth’s norm, the closing track – another feast of all the band’s stylings, mirroring The Shadow Elite – Avgvr (The Dread Vvltvre) finds all the pieces slotted perfectly into place. As with O Father O Satan O Sun! Avgvr is a big and bombastic finale, overblown and multifaceted, with a few unexpected supplementals and Orion’s fat bassline driving unstoppably through it.
Last month, fellow Poles, Hate, laid down the blackened death marker with their excellent Bellum Regiis record; Behemoth have picked up the challenge and have made a swift repost to demonstrate the natural order of things within the genre.
The Shit ov God is the obvious successor to the Behemoth canon; it sounds of the band, rather than like them and is another stepping stone to their world domination.
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