Belphegor is a band that you need to take notice of, whether you like your metal to be blackened death or deathly blackened, Belphegor can and will confidently deliver it to you in blood-soaked spades. Through many line-up changes over the years, the bands core and leader, Helmuth has managed to keep things fresh and exciting while incorporating more atmosphere and memorability into Belphegor’s mix of brutal, yet majestic, sacrilegious heresy. The band has never been one to shy away from controversy within their brand of metal, and have been one of the very few bands that can bring a bleak nihilism, and even a sexuality to their metal that most bands couldn’t even fathom about where to begin in incorporating such an idea or more-so, an ideology.
It seemed that the metal world, critics and fans alike, began to take more notice of Austria’s Belphegor with the release of the bands fourth studio album, “Lucifer Incestus”. Since then the band has made sure to not rest on it’s laurels and has not only stayed prolific, but have made sure to up the ante with each subsequent release up to and through 2008’s “Bondage Goat Zombie”. It seemed that the bands formula hit a minor bump in the road with their last album, “Walpurgis Rites – Hexenwahn”, as most of the metal world were not as impressed with said album as they had been with “Bondage Goat Zombie”. In defense of “Walpurgis Rites, “BGZ” is arguably the best album the band has released in their career, and trying to top it was going to be a near impossible task for “Walpurgis Rites”, no matter how good it was. Though here we are in 2011 and those blasphemous Austrians have not only released a better album than their last, but have many calling “Blood Magick Necromance” the best thing to come from the tiny country since Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Get your blackened death breakdown here.