Otargos – No God, No Satan (Season of Mist Records)
Tuesday, 19th March 2013
From Otargos’ Myspace bio (excuse the all-caps):
NO GOD CREATED US… WE, CREATED GODS!, NO GOD PUT US ON THIS FUCKING PLANET… NO GOD WILL SAVE US AFTER DEATH! DEATH IS JUST AND ONLY THE FUCKING END. GOD IS A DISEASE, A PLAGUE, A VIRUS OF VIRUS, CAUSE WE ARE JUST A VIRUS. GOD IS THE GREAT HOAX !!! NO GOD – NO SATAN
“No God, No Satan,” eh? It’s about time a black metal band took a neutral stance. Then again, this is coming from a band whose last album was calledFuck God Disease Process, which may be the coolest album title in the history of black metal, just for how unflinchingly tough it’s trying to be.
As for No God, No Satan, it’s the type of visceral, lateral black metal album that recalls the prime works of 1349 and other like-minded assault-oriented artists. There’s little in terms of laying off the gas pedal here – just look at the blast-intensive “Workship Industrialized” or “Origin.” Otargos sure knows how to whip up a storm via the usual method of brazen chords, using it to massive effect on “Origin,” which boasts a cool stop-start sequence that we usually don’t get to see in BM.
Elsewhere, the band doles out some cool riffs on “Cuius vis Hominis est Errare” where the guitars hum and howl like a pack of wolves at the moon, while the atmospheric “XXI” only lends further credence to how varied the band really wants to be. In the end, however, No God, No Satan is your atypical middle-of-the-road black metal album. And even with the great, awe-inspiring call-to-arms we included at the top of this review, any kind of rhetoric won’t push this past the middle of the BM pack.
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)
