Some might want to deny the clear progression and “maturity” process black metal has gone through this last years; and I don’t mean the incorporation of female singers, operatic antics and the “exploitation” of folk music and histories; I mean the musical, maturity that younger bands are focusing on, so it doesn’t matter if they want to play the crudest, most evil black they can imagine, but now they are planning and doing so with the knowledge that, you first write the music, then you perfect the sound and is until the end of the production that you add all the evil images, pictures, corpse paint photo shoots and all of those clichés that we are all so fond of… there is where this Portuguese band fits; they have it all, the right image, the right message, and mainly and more important good music!

Under the Might... is a simple record, it doesn’t exaggerate or diminish aspects of their talent in order to fulfill a certain stereotype; the songs are long and sometimes monotonous but the few riffs that compose them are good enough to keep you listening; there is no “mystic” search for what’s evil and satanic, or even what might infuse respect from the underground scene, it is straight up black metal without any complementary genre description like we are getting use to this days… Symphonic Black Metal, Melodic black metal, industrial… you get the picture!

Besides been simplistic, straight to the point BM, the production fits the songs perfectly, the guitars are as low tuned as they could have been, but their sound is clear and the leveling of the instruments on the final mix makes every player truly a contributor to the general sound, nothing is overlaid shadowing the other instruments, and the ability to listen to the entire song clearly, makes it easy to the listener to get into the song and the general raw and fast style of Flagellum Dei.