AVMAKT – Satanic Inversion of….

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7.5

• Band:
  AVMAKT
• Duration: 00:44:23
• Available from: 08/30/2024
• Label:

• Peaceville

Streaming not yet available

Kolbotn is a small town of six thousand inhabitants thirty minutes from Oslo, clean, quiet and bathed by a picturesque lake that in winter transforms into a large ice rink.
Do you remember the cover of “Astral Fortress” by Darkthrone? Well, that’s exactly it, and Fenriz and Nocturno Culto are the reason why all of a sudden a small town like Kolbotn found itself at the center of a metal scene that was able to cross national borders with bands like Aura Noir, Obliteration, Nekromantheon, Coffin Storm or Beyond Dawn, thanks also to labels like Candlelight or Peaceville. The latter is currently publishing the debut of Avmakt, a duo from Tårnèsen (a hamlet of Kolbotn) that features the talented Kristian Valbo, drummer for Aura Noir and Obliteration.
After a demo and the participation in the compilation “Dark Side of the Sacred Star”, Avmakt release their first work “Satanic Inversion of….” and the result is a solid hit, which will especially hit those who have not yet digested Darkthrone’s post-“The Cult Is Alive” turning point.
The six songs here actually represent the closest thing you can hear today to the classic cold and cutting sound of the first part of the career of Fenriz's band: a faithful tribute like few others have ever heard, which however never becomes cloying, made by people who understood very well the sound of black metal of that period.
An album, therefore, that does not have the slightest pretension of creating something new or revolutionary but is able to work very well from start to finish: starting from the production, in step with today's standards but which seems to come directly from an album like “Under A Funeral Moon” and arriving at the songs themselves, it is all a succession of minimal riffs and drums capable of getting to the point without getting lost in overly complex arrangements, creating that groove typical of Norwegian black metal from the early nineties.
Take “Ordinance”, the opening track that wouldn’t be out of place on an album like “Hate Them” or the following “Poison Revealed”, an ideal bridge between the haunting sadness of early Burzum and the nihilism of Darkthrone’s historical trilogy. “Towing Oblivion” takes up in an exemplary way the nihilistic lesson of a song like “Inn I De dype Skogens Favn” by Darkthrone, adding that typical Aura Noir thrash groove, while “Charred” even takes the liberty, in the first part, of flowing into doom to then embrace the 'usual' dissonant and cold chaos.
Then there are the ten minutes of the furious “Sharpening Blades Of Cynism” (a title that smacks of Darkthone to the core) with its sporadic references to Celtic Frost and the underrated “Plaguewielder” while the equally long “Doubt And The Void” closes the album and deludes with its very slow and obsessive beginning and then returns to hurt with wild blast beats and mosquito-like and minimal guitars.
“Satanic Inversion of….” travels on safe and well-trodden but not at all obvious tracks, not limiting itself to simply re-proposing an old-school sound (something that many bands today manage to do very well), but going beyond and re-exhuming that anarchic and punk spirit that burned in those records there. Something as simple on paper as it is difficult in practice.