Artist: Eyecult (Sweden) Album: Morituri te Salutamus (2009) Genre: Melodic Black Metal Morituri te Salutamus. We who are about to die salute you. Those Roman gladiators knew it. I’m fucked now, so fuck it. Fuck yeah! Is there any better fatalistic expression that matches the ”fuck-life and all its happy friends” attitude of Black Metal?! Then why the flying fuck hasn’t anybody else come up with this title before? Guess it had to take until 2009 before two Swedish dudes named Patrik Carlsson and Andreas Åkerlind came up with the name.

Their names sound familiar? That might be because we know these dudes from their other joint project, Anachronaeon, which is a Death Metal project, as well. You can find a review for that project’s 2010 album The Futile Quest for Immortality here by the way. Today we focus on the saluting dudes who are about to die, and particularly on the music they salute us with. And we do this realizing this is a 2009 album and that they must then already be dead. We don’t mind reviewing old music, as long as it’s good fuckin’ music. Well, it is!

It’s Black Metal, just over half an hour of it, and it appeals to our ink black Metallic souls. There are seven tracks on which we hear Andreas stirring up a storm on drums and Patrik taking care of everything else: vocals, guitars, bass and keys. Like with Anachronaeon, the recording is raw and sharp edged which allows us to clearly hear what’s going on throughout. What’s different from Anachronaeon is that this one is a lot faster, liquid shit fast in fact, and a lot darker, like when you’ve had too much activated carbon to stop those fast feces.

Fast as the music may be, slow has been the progress on creating this album. The band formed in 2004, when it recorded a little demo. Then: long silence. Then in 2006: the guitars were laid out for a new release. Then: some more fuckin’ silence. And then I quote: “years went by and the old corpse Eyecult was laid to unholy, unwilling rest. But the old corpse started rotating in its grave again, and a new twisted spawn of Eyecult was morphing into shape.” How poetic! I guess the effect of that is that there has been enough silence already and there’s only room for speedy fuckin’ aggression! We like!

Like said, Andreas starts up a storm on drums, my stereo being unable to decide whether to play his beats as one lengthy buzz or not. And he does it nonstop, without breaks, except a small handful of break sections perhaps, in between. The man human machine pretty much keeps going at it front to back. There are variations and fills, but nothing can stop his flood of beats, strikes, smacks, punches, strokes and ticks.

In the song found below, titled Oblivaeon – spelling’s a nice reference to that other project of theirs – we hear bass drums that seem played on quadruple bass pedals. I mean seriously, are these even real?! The song also features some pretty fuckin’ cool demonic speech about the swastika going hand in hand with the cross. No kids, I don’t think the pope’s a fan!

The guitar work is full of devil chords, freaky blood-leaking leads and tremolo picking. The proper recipe for Black Metal! However, Eyecult’s album isn’t as brutal and despairing as many other Black Metal. It’s more gentle because it occasionally feeds you melodies that are actually quite nice. It’s almost like you’ve walked into hell voluntarily and the way back is still open and you can look back to the light when you want. Like a teaser to where you spirit will go after your body ceases operation.

This stuff is nice. In fact, it’s so nice that I’ve decided to feed you yet another song. This one’s the album’s opening track, Aeternum, which sounds like it’s Latin for Eternity or Eternal or something. It’s not though. It’s only four minutes and 15 seconds. Classic case of making it look better that it is, ‘cause fuck me, I sure wouldn’t mind this music to last for eternity!

To close off, Eyecult has got a MySpace page, which is slow, and a ReverbNation base, which is cool and where you can dig up another couple of songs.

We close off with the usual conclusion. In this case that states that Morituri te Salutamus is a killer record of hell-raising Black Metal on which speed, horrific images and an occasional ray of light take turns in rotting their way through your eardrums. That sounds nasty, but it is the fuckin’ shit! Once again Patrick and Andreas hit the spot!

My Grade: 8.5/10
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Tags: black, melodic, review, Swedish

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