Crepusculum-Illuminatus -cd

Crepusculum is a band which comes from Poland. Although that since the day it was formed, it consists of various members, in reality it is an one-man band as the one responsible for everything is Baphomet. They exist in the Polish Black Metal scene since 2003 and they have released two demos, three split and two full length albums. So ten years after their creation, they release their second full length album, which is called “Illuminatus” and it was released in the January of 2013 by the also Polish Odium Records. “Illuminatus” contains nine compositions of overall duration of about forty minutes. The first good impression is created to the listener by the very nice artwork, at first with the dark and mysterious cover but also with the beautiful photographic material and the paintings which accompany the lyrics of the tracks. All this shows a quite professional work and it raises the level of interest and curiosity of the listener about what he is going to listen.

The band, after the weird and not so successful intro, by the first track already, it doesn’t let the listener have any doubt. So here you will listen to fast and melodic, Scandinavian Black Metal, created under a more “professional” and “mainstream” aspect. The riffs are melodic with influences mainly by the sound of the second half of the ‘90ies and you will notice a lot of references to Dissection. Depending on the part they change rhythm and atmosphere, other times with beautiful, epic-melodic-melancholic riffs, other times with hyper-speed outbursts and sometimes with atmospheric, slow parts. Generally the purpose of this kind of style is to create to the listener feelings, something that Crepusculum manage to realize in this album. In the faster parts they put out passion and intensity, other times hatred, while in the mid and slow speed parts other times they create a dark and threatening atmosphere and other times they cause melancholic or nostalgic feelings. The changes between the riffs, the atmosphere and the feelings are done with nice technic and make the album an easy listen for the listener.

The production, the mixture and the instruments’ performance couldn’t be anything else but flawless as it follows the “professional” spirit of the band too. The guitars are the instruments which express the feelings and the atmospheres of the compositions and they do that very well. They are played with accuracy, passion and sentiment. The bass is clearly audible, but it is quite distinctive and it just fills the sound well. The drums are impressing as their lines are technical, with a lot of turnings and blast outbursts, with beautiful changes that come very smoothly during the evolution of the track. They are played with absolute accuracy and much power. The vocals are harsh Black Metal vocals that in various parts they become clean, narrating, they are common, they do their job right but they don’t have anything of interest. The production is clean putting out a crystal clear sound that on one hand it fits to the style of the album, on the other hand it gives me the impression of a mass production, industrial product. The mixture is very good as it puts out a massive character and at the same time it has achieved to highlight the strong parts of the album. Their lyrics narrate dark stories with main subject the magic and the occult, showing that they have a quite deep knowledge on the occult.

Summing up, I believe that the second full length album of Crepusculum is quite good. It seems that the band has worked a lot for the final result and has put out its personality, the experience that it acquired all these years into music and its love for this sound. Some of you may be annoyed by the more “professional” and “mainstream” aspect that they see things but that has no relation to the quality of the result. This album is indispensible to every fan of the sound that I described. The rest of you listen to it.