Sacramentum are a band from Sweden that plays a melodic and blackened form of death metal and this is a review of their 1990 ep "Finis Malorum" which will be re-issued on October 30th by Vic Records and the re-issue also consists of their 1993 demo "Sedes Impiorum" Sepultura, Mercyful Fate covers and one very early and rare track.
Melodic guitar solos and leads start off the ep before going into a very fast musical direction which also uses a great amount of tremolo picking and blast beats. The riffs also add in a great amount of melody along with the vocals being mostly grim sounding black metal screams and all of the musical instruments also have a very powerful sound to them.
Throughout the recording you can also hear a decent mixture of slow, mid paced and fast parts while the music also mixes in the more melodic side of Swedish death metal. One track also introduces clean playing into the music along with another song also adding in a brief use of whispered vocals.
Spoken word parts can also be heard briefly along with the cover songs also bringing in a different style than the original versions as well as introducing some demonic growls onto the compilation. The intro on the demo tracks also brings in a brief use of acoustic guitars before going into a heavier direction and the demo material has more death metal elements than the more recent material but still very heavily influenced by black metal. some of the songs also add in a small amount of classical guitars. The production sounds very old school while the lyrics cover dark fantasy, paganism, chaos, darkness and death themes.
In my opinion this is a very great sounding collection from Sacramentum and if you are a fan of melodic and blackened death metal, you should check out this compilation. RECOMMENDED TRACKS INCLUDE "Travel With The Northern Winds" "Pagan Fire" "Stormbringer" and "Morbid Humanity". 8out of 10.
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