By Albert Mansour
Dark Celebration is a Brazilian-based black/death metal outfit from Rio Grande do sul. Phlegeton: The Transcendence of Demon Lords, recently released by Paragon Records, is their third full-length album and – I hate to say this – it is a very messy, choppy and noisy affair. The disc storms out of the gates with the first three tracks, “Reversed Creation,” “Sulphur” and “Ocularis Infernum” but then begins a gradual repeat of song structures in each subsequent track. The album becomes so repetitive that it is like listening to a cassette deck stuck on auto-reverse.
On their myspace page Dark Celebration mentions their influences lie in the traditional old school death metal sounds of early Morbid Angel, Diabolic and Krisiun. The guitars are mostly tremolo picked and usually play unremarkable and/or uncatchy melodies. The bass is very difficult to hear throughout. It is very faint in the mix and I fail to notice anything interesting going on. The best parts of the album are related to the drumming, which domineers the rest of the band, basically beating them into submission. I find this is a nice contrast to the overall messiness of the arrangements. This is one of those albums where the appreciation of the music goes down if you listen to it too much. Overall it is just okay.
http://www.myspace.com/darkcelebration666
(Paragon Records)
