Enthroned – Pentagrammaton (2010)

Three years have passed since the band’s lackluster album “Tetra Karcist”, now they are back and ready to play some ‘balls to the wall’ Black Metal that will blow you head off. “Pentagrammaton” is by far a better quality release than the band’s previous opus.

The band has never been known for their consistency, however, they have managed to produce some fine Black Metal albums like: “Prophecies of Pagan Fire” and “XES Haereticum”. If we had to decide, we would place “Pentagrammaton” in the band’s top 3 albums of their career.

Featuring no original members left on the band, Enthroned has continued to play Black Metal their own way. With a heavy Death Metal influence and no extreme tremolo picking abuse, the band sounds very different than most Black Metal bands. But they still maintain a high level of chaos and brutality in the music that will have metal heads moshing up and down for hours.

The riffing is very diverse and does not sound like your typical Black Metal release. The overall guitar work sounds a bit saturated at times, but this created the chaos feeling that we really like about this album. The vocals sometimes sound like Venom or Celtic Frost and then come back to a more traditional shriek, but understandable enough that you can listen to the lyrics.

The drumming on this album is very tight and has a very nice rhythmical aspect to it, of course when it’s not going 200 miles per hour on the fast parts of the songs. In overall we like the sound of this release since it has a chaotic feeling, but it’s well produced and mixed making it sound crystal clear.

While “Pentagrammaton” is one of the best releases of Enthroned, compared to other newer releases is not that impressive. The album is good but not great. You will truly enjoy this release, but it will slowly slip away from your memory. However, if you are a fan of the band then you should definitely get this release since it’s one of their best. We enjoy this release, but after listening to other releases we already started to forget about it.

Release: March 22nd, 2010

Country: Belgium