the new piece of behemoth and what a mammoth work this is. the pre-order process was somewhat sketchy. everywhere the record and its different versions were offered, only mock-up photos concerning the vinyl colour-ways were to be seen. those mock-ups indicated a clear merge pattern which would have been very interesting because i only know of opaque colours for merge patterns. i actually was tempted to get the u.k. version but shipping costs put me off.
so i went for the clear/bronze version, it was available via a few german distros and looked pretty cool in the mock-ups. though, i doubted the actual outcome would come close. when the package arrived i was truly blown away. the whole record looked simply amazing. the gatefold comes with partial gold ink printed on a lovely matte cardboard gatefold sleeve. it includes a booklet with fantastic hints to biblical events and their respective paintings.
there is the binding of isaac by abraham, the beheading of holofernes by judith, archangel michael and the weighing of souls, the moulting of apostle bartholomew and a few more which i didn't recognise yet. the colour-way of the vinyl is cool, too. it has nothing to do with the pictures shown beforehand but still nice. coke bottle clear (a teal tinge) with a bronze centre cut at 45 rounds per minute for perfect sound.
musically behemoth delivers a coherent piece of most delicious quality. they actually took the foundation of their death metal sound of "the apostasy" and "evangelion" and added a few new surprising elements like weird clean vocals or an almost catchy chorus. but don't worry, it all blends into the typical behemoth sound seamlessly. fantastic album all around. limited to 500 copies. going to catch them live next year in february. yeah! nuclear blast. 2018.
