Description

White vinyl with printed innersleeve. Limited 350 copies

The Vision Of Fading Mankind serves as a showcase for two of the brighter, more promising bands on the French underground, even if their individual sounds don’t have a terrible lot in common. Of the two, Temple Of Baal are the more experienced, having about 13 years below their belts, three full-lengths and various other splits and demos. The Temple Of Baal contribution to this split is a quartet of tracks that are consistent with their most recent full-length, Lightslaying Rituals. They bring a dense, ominous guitar tone in here which immediately lends itself to a striking, corpulent atmosphere beneath which they alternate rapid tremolo black metal sequences with jaw clenching double bass passages and chugging mute grooves, while the vocals dance between growls and snarls. Nothing subtle about what this band does, they simply bring the fucking clobber straight to the listener’s personal space and don’t even bother to dust up the ashes. Ritualization have a pummeling old school, brutal death metal aesthetic about them that recalls Floridian legends like Deicide or Malevolent Creation. Rapid flurries of flesh branding mute-streams are glazed with brief, uncouth lead sequences and a vocalist that grunts percussively over the far more involved musical undertow. The production of their three contributions here is admittedly thinner and less fulfilling than those of TempleOf Baal, but it works with what they’re playing, and I especially liked the hustle and bounce of the bass lines and the mesmerizing, semi-technical evil melodies. Each outfit on this split is intense in its own right, and with luck, both evolve into favorable squads that can fill in the absent shoes of countrymen like Gurkkhas and Yyrkoon.

Track list:
1. Temple Of Baal -Ordeals Of The Void
2. Temple Of Baal -When Mankind Falls
3. Temple Of Baal -Slaves To The Beast
4. Temple Of Baal -Heresy Forever Enthroned
5. Ritualization -Ave Dominus
6. Ritualization -The Second Crowning
7. Ritualization -Devil Speaks In Tongues-Mortem cover