Martyrium - Carnage Lit By Darkness CD Review

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2005-07-21 : lords of the flesh
Martyrium is one of those well hidden, not easy to find, European jewel. The band is hailing from Malta where I’m not aware of any other metal act or even that they had a metal scene. Nonetheless those strangers have found their way home and brought a lot of pleasant moments by the multi-spins it was given. The Carnage Lit By Darkness takes influences from various styles and blend them together with good / modern sounding apparel. Martyrium composed here a symphonic & vampiric gothic / black metal opus broken down into four acts, in turn splitting into scenes. This gives the album a theatrical approach only reinforced by the dramatic feel the compositions are literally bathing in. Try to imagine a combination of Dimmu Borgir and Theatre des Vampires with some Limbonic Art on top of it. This album is great, very varied, just like the multi characters represented by the different sort of vocals like the raspy black, deep grunt, devilish vocals, female voice, narration and son on. Going from x-treme to grandiose orchestration /epic not to forget the calmer, more melodic passages, you won’t fall asleep or go crazy by the constant aggressiveness of this disc. One crazy point to mention here is that it contains keyboard galore but it sure is fine by me since it was used intelligently to convey the dramatic darkness and the modern sound of today’s Vampire’s kingdom. Again I fell for the following long lasting ( 10 minutes +) epic pleasures : “Androgynic Somnium” and “Mina” and for these shorter ( 8 – 9 minutes) compositions : “Through The Venal Eyes Of The Possessed” and the title track.

An emotional journey into the realm of beautifully extreme sensations.