Satanic Dirge is a black metal band from wooded state of Pennsylvania, featuring the talents of Wight (aka Brandon Strader from Rainwound) who plays all the instruments as well as handles the vocals. Tribulations is the most recent album (another one is in the works), and is filled with tasty atmospheric black metal, highlighted by aggressive guitar riffs, plenty of symphonic keyboards, and screeching vocals. Despite the rough sounding production (which honestly, will suit lovers of early 90's black metal just fine), this is some serious stuff here, showing just how adept Wight is at writing intriguing black metal with lots of progressive flourishes. "Stages of Rapture" is an epic number with a lulling acoustic guitar intro, before the raging programmed drums, tremelo picked guitar riffs, bubbling synths, and violent vocals come crashing into the mix. Other recommended tracks include the Opeth-meets-Mayhem "Epitaph" (with some great organ passages), the nightmarish "Torrent of Souls", the doomy black metal "Aerial View", and the crushing, 15 minute "Chaos". You also can't go wrong with the demonic "Weaklings", and the symphonic extreme metal gems "Venom" and "Brainworkz". With a bigger budget, a professional producer, and a real drummer, Tribulations would probably be one of the most surprising black metal releases this year. As it stands it's a very solid independently produced & recorded underground extreme metal album. While there's nothing wrong with that, we need one of the many established black metal labels to take notice and sign this outfit, so Wight/Brandon can take this thing to the next level.
Track Listing
1. Venom (4:04)
2. Weaklings (4:55)
3. Brainworkz (5:26)
4. Unrest (Interlude) (1:03)
5. Stages of Rapture (8:19)
6. Epitaph (4:38)
7. Torrent of Souls (5:41)
8. Aerial View (7:51)
9. Satanic Dirge (Interlude) (1:14)
10. Chaos (15:11)
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