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Abigor: Channeling the quintaessence of Satan

02/01/09  ||  Global Domination

Unholy Satan, devilified be thy name, what a fucken source of inspiration you are! Look at what you made Abigor do. Seriously, “Channeling the Quintaessence of Satan” has to be one of the most awesome and original album titles ever, hell fucken yeah! It smacks of something deep, you know? Like some higher echelon of meditative Satanism or something sexy along those lines of thought.

Looks certain that Abigor wasn’t aiming for a spot on the choir of the Vatican when they decided to sit down and write these elegies to the dark one. This a mean and snarling beast of an album that comes close to being the best this interesting band released during their first incarnation. While it doesn’t reach the heights of their masterpiece “Nachthymnen (From The Twilight Kingdom)”, “Channeling the Quintaessence of Satan” is definitely a top quality black metal release.

This record has that otherworldly, alien feel which has been a trademark of Abigor since their beginnings as a band, an unnatural coldness that comes from the barrage of echoing riffs around which their songs are constructed. Abigor uses complex and varied guitarwork, smartly hiding some malevolent melodies behind multilayered textures. Their tempos shift between fast, very fast and fuck-me-Satan-that-was-really-fucken-fast, an ability of the band which lends itself to recreate fairly odd song structures.

Once you add to those demonic riffs the incessant yet expected cascades of blastbeats, the venomous rasping vocals straight from the deeps of Hell, the nominal bass lines and the occasional random white noise of electronic origins, and you’ve got all the elements that round off the sound of Abigor. As par for the course, the production is nothing to be proud of, but luckily enough it doesn’t reach the levels where the intentional excesses of treble, background hiss and reverb become too idiotic for their own good.

Nothing that hasn’t been done before or after, I hear ye say. Well, what makes Abigor an exceptional black metal outfit is the fact that they manage to sound vibrant and decidedly weird through their intelligent songwriting. They pay attention to atmosphere like few of their brethren do. Dark, eerie and terrifying are apt descriptions for the music on “Channeling the Quintaessence of Satan”. Tracks like the searing “Pandemonic Revelations”, the dreamily evil “Equilibrium Pass By” and the bloodfreezing odes “Demon’s Vortex” and “Towards Beyond” are perfect examples of how twistedly brilliant Abigor can be.

All in all, this is a pretty darn good album which every black metal goon should know about by now. Abigor’s favorable reputation as a one of the darkest and most original entities of the black metal community is well justified. Their somewhat disappointing return effort of last year nonwithstanding, there’s no denying that “Channeling the Quintaessence of Satan” and most of their earlier records kick some serious corpse-painted backside.

8 satanic quintaessences successfully channeled out of 10.

  • Information
  • Released: 1999
  • Label: Napalm Records
  • Website: Abigor MySpace
  • Band
  • Peter Kubik: guitar
  • Thurisaz: vocals, bass
  • Thomas Tannenberger: drums
  • Tracklist
  • 01. Dawn of Human Dust
  • 02. Pandemonic Revelation
  • 03. Equilibrium Pass By
  • 04. Wildfire and Desire
  • 05. Utopia Consumed
  • 06. Demon’s Vortex
  • 07. Towards Beyond
  • 08. Pandora’s Miasmic Breath

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