Lycanthropy's Spell - Two albums for lunar reflections

I figured it was about time I fed you kids some Black Metal, so here it is. Lycanthropy's Spell was a two man project from Belgium with Sarmak doing all lyrics, compositions, guitars, vocals and bass while Inferis handled the drum department. Unfortunately, the band was only active about two years as Sarmak died of heart failure in 05, but not before he left us with some truly amazing pieces of depressive black metal.What we have here is some uber lo-fi but insanely melodic and emotionally charged black metal. While this obviously suffers from production quality issues, don't let that hold you back from giving it a fair and honest listen. In fact, the low-fi fuzz seems to only add to the feeling of loneliness and hate that fills these two releases to begin with. The first album, Glorification of the Night is hauntingly depressing as the tempos vary from your typical blasted bm songs, to slow almost doom metal like dirges. The title track is an elven minute long instrumental hymn that does exactly what the title states, pays homage to that certain time of the day of which we are all fond of, while the rest of the album continues on with themes of nightly worship and chaos.

The second album I have included, "Misanthropic Visions" does its title proud by being filled with melodic yet furious black metal songs about werewolves and hatred for your fellow man. The atmosphere on this album is fantastic also, filled with acoustic passages and sound clips of war and howling wolves, it really attempts to drag you into the black pit where Sarmak's mind resides. It even contains a cover song of "Spokoynaya Noch" from the popular Soviet rock band Kino, successfully making the song even more depressing and sad sounding than the original. It's a bit more crisp sounding than G.O.T.N. (and more melodic in my opinion) and is probably the more "listener friendly" of the two but don't let that fool you, it's still very much a basement black metal album. But as I stated earlier it's that very "problem" that (along with Sarmak's depressive screeches) gives these albums a truly mystical and misanthropic atmosphere around them. Both albums are a must listen to any fan of depressive or melodic black metal and go best (obviously) when listened to deep within the nocturnal hours.

Glorification of the Night

Misanthropic Visions