Mystifier — Wicca (reissue)
Mystifier goes to great lengths to make Wicca overtly satanic, with Jesus being crucified on the album art and song titles like “Defloration (The Antichrist Lives),” “(Invocacione) The Almighty Satanas,” and “Mystifier (Satan's Messengers).” As it turns out, the music matches the album’s outward appearances perfectly. After the short intro, “Tormentum Aeternu” greets the listener’s ears with hateful black/thrash/death riffs that give you a perfect idea of what to expect from the rest of the album. They have a lot more in common with death metal than black metal, with deep, bassy elements not often associated with the thin streams of distorted tremolo that characterize black metal. The guitarwork is extremely thin, and because the bass is so pronounced on the album, it’s often easier to concentrate on Blackgoatbeelzebuth’s bass lines than the actual riffs themselves. I’m all for having more bass presence in black metal, but it’s taken too far in Wicca and detracts somewhat from the rest of the work.
The album’s main strength is Meugninousouan’s vocals. He makes us of wide variety of styles, but most typically uses a heavily distorted, harsh growls and rasps. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but it works extremely well with the instrumental work. His thick accent has a noticeable effect on the vocals that I quite like. Meugninousouan’s work on “(Invocacione) The Almighty Satanas” is what makes it the stand out track on the album. The song begins with the sounds of a thunderstorm, and then leads to a spoken ritual. This lasts for over a minute, with demonic gurgles, rasps, and whispers underneath the prayer to Satan, and then finally bursts forth in a torrent of frenzied hatred. The prayer adds an atmosphere to the album that it previously lacked, but it’s not quite enough to last for the rest of the album.
The rest of the album continues on in exactly the same fashion as the previous few songs. There’s not much to say about the individual tracks; they essentially blend together into a forgettable, thirty minute song. There’s nothing particularly wrong with any of them, but they’re quite forgettable and generic. The guitarwork is too low in the mix, and this combined with the constant, crashing cymbals that obscure the riffs make it difficult to remember individual riffs, which is essential when you have such little variation in songs. In addition to much of the album being forgettable, it’s simply too long. The original 1992 release of Wicca was 42 minutes long, whereas the re-issue I have is 56 minutes. The addition of fourteen minutes is entirely superfluous and adds nothing but bloat to the album. I’m sure that the album would be much more manageable if it were its original length. As it stands now, it’s a chore to make it through the entire album.
As you can tell so far, I’m not very impressed by Wicca. Musically, it’s pretty forgettable. Sure, it’s energetic and authentic, but that’s not enough to make it worthwhile. But there’s something else I want to bring up. As I pointed out, Wicca was released in 1992. This is just a few years before black metal because more and more commercialized, so naturally, it deserves some credit for being ahead of the pack. Or does it? Mystifier was formed a few years after Sarcófago, Holocausto, and Vulcano all released material that sounds similar to what can be found on Wicca, so it doesn’t fare too well in originality yet. But if you take into consideration that A Blaze in the Northern Sky was released in the same year, that really puts things into perspective. Wicca really didn’t do anything groundbreaking, and had it not been released, black metal would have continued along just as well without it. Mystifier was an early imitator, sure, but an imitator nonetheless.