Opus Magorum — Opus Magorum

This self-titled release is a bleak winter storm-ragging example of Greek underground black metal.  It was originally released back in the early 2000s as a 100-copy demo cassette. Here we have a recent vinyl reissue- either in swamp green or black vinyl- from Lithuania’s Inferna Profundus Records.

Opus Magorum is a two-piece project from Athens, Attica- they were formed in 2001, and have six demos and one split to their name. This self-titled release was first put out by the band itself in 2004, and came presented as a single-sided c46 cassette tape.

After the wind battering wind field recording intro track, we’re into “Ablazing” which is a one-minute forty-three-second slice of bitterly raging tremolo churn and blacked throat shredding. As we move on we come to the murky simmering buzz meets slowly bayed tarry roar of “R'lyeh”. “Impalers Wood”  is the longest track on here at the six-minute and seventeen-minute mark- it moves from mid-paced chainsaw-like guitar buzz ‘n’ crashing cymbals of the opening, onto sliding sinister tremolo, blunt drum bound and occasional baying vocal roar. With the release been finished off with  “Journey of the Psychonaut” featuring riff craft that shifts between murky blacked gallops and grimly cascading tremolo- all finished off with the most present vocal use of the release, with a blend of shrieked bays, shredded roars, and guttural rants.

This certainly is a grimly unforgiving self-titled debut, which features zero respite from its blacked storm raging attack. The balance between the shorter and longer tracks work well too- all making this a worthy statement of unforgiving and underground Greek black metal.