Gravewürm - Blood of the Pentagram (2010)

Legendary USBM act Gravewürm have returned with their 7th full-length release titled “Blood of the Pentagram”. In this album the band continues to create their very disturbing sound by combining raw Black Metal elements with Thrash/Doom/Death Metal influences that give the band’s sound a little edge over the rest of the average sounding BM bands these days.

However, not everything is enjoyable in “Blood of the Pentagram” since this release tends to get a bit too simplistic and repetitive in nature. The band exploits the raw and lo-fi approach to things and creates a very creepy sound, but it fails to deliver when the music tends to get boring and super repetitive.

With over 42 minutes of music presented in “Blood of the Pentagram”, you will find yourself wondering if the track you are listening to has been repeated more than once. The song structures are very simple, always revolving around rudimentary distorted riffs and very plain drumming. The band does have its strengths when it comes to combining some extraneous elements into the mix and shaping songs a bit differently, but at the core they are all basically the same.

Since the first track “Goat Command”, you will immediately discover that the band is not the most proficient when it comes to technical abilities, but what they lack in skill they make up in atmosphere. With their raw and lo-fi atmosphere, the band might draw some people in and when paired with their hellish vocals some people will swear by them. As for us, we prefer our music to have some more substance and creativity behind it.

Tracks like “Two Coins for Charon” are particularly haunting, thanks to the atmospheric keyboards, but if they lasted longer than 3:30 they would just be plain dull. This seems to be the problem thought the release, songs tend to linger a bit too much and loose its rudimentary charms.

Overall, we like raw and lo-fi stuff as much as the guy next door, but we can’t really recommend this very dull and repetitive release. The band has put out some truly creepy and crushing releases before, but with “Blood of the Pentagram” they manage to only hit the target 20-30% of the time.

Release: October 26th, 2010

Country: USA