The Arrival Of Satan — Vexing Verses

French three piece The Arrival Of Satan make often unhinged and nearly flying off the rails black metal with a perverse, ugly and often deranged mad-man fury. ‘Vexing Verses’ is the projects second full length album, with a split with Portuguese  suicidal  Black project Morte Incandescent appearing in between this and their first album Darkness Dealer.

The bands sound is quite a distinctive coming off like a mixture of black metal, perversely twisting and often complex punk spirit, and crude proged metallic’s like a beaten and fucked up the arse King Grimson. The tracks lurch and mad-man stager from blacked yet quite complex full speed vomit splattered gallops, through to sleazed and leering meaty blacked metal meets punk mid- pace chugs, with bass entrails leaking here and there. Onto more staggering, bloody hand grabbing and slower blacked rock riff nihilism.  Each track nice lurches, sleazes or suddenly speeds up to very rapid battering, but for all the tracks twists and turns it never becomes showy or ego bound with band always keeping their crude and perverse character.

All the band are competent enough to carry off the mixture of crudeness and sometime complexness on offer here, but the star of the show has to be the vocalist who carry the great title of Necropiss; his vocals lurch, wonder and suddenly change from: crude and roaring mix of black metal punked, Onto to swirl blacked and throat burn mournful shouts, through to truly unhinged and perverse rants where at times he’s reduced to hyperventilating and very disturbing rages/ choking sounds. The nine tracks here are fairly short and swift by black metal standards as they hit between just over the five and a half minute mark down to the two and minutes mark, but each track is well put together, ugly yet perversely rewarding in their own right.

‘Vexing Verses’ very nicely balances and mixers blacked crudeness, often quite complex and lurching riff craft, and punked vomit splattered attitude. The Arrival Of Satan are yet another great, distinctively sounding and wholly rewarding French based Black metal band to add to growing pile of great French bands- really the country is now out doing Norway for original and creative sounding Blacked metal fare.