EP REVIEW
BEHEMOTH - I, Scvlptor
A dark bridge between past and present.
Rather than arriving with a new studio album, BEHEMOTH have emerged with the eight-track "I, Scvlptor", creating a brief point of contact between their past and their present identity rather than simply filling a gap in their discography. Comprising new material, re-recordings of older compositions and two classic covers, the collection rises above the status of an ordinary stopgap release by presenting the band's evolution across more than three decades within a single framework.
The opening 'I, Scvlptor' moves with a distinct rhythmic discipline after its slowly developing dark atmosphere. Melodic guitar lines woven around the clipped main riff keep the track from becoming merely an overwhelming exercise, while tremolo passages and flashes of technical soloing complete the modern BEHEMOTH character. 'Lord Ov The Horizons' takes a different route: its acoustic and melodic introduction broadens the composition's dramatic scope as it moves into heavier sections, while the closing stretch, driven upward by Inferno's drum fills, combines melodic tremolo picking with a guitar solo in almost ceremonial grandeur. The song's rough mix is also significant in this respect; the more prominent vocals and less polished presentation make the composition's raw dynamics more apparent when set against the controlled production of the final version.
The more interesting section, however, emerges when the band turns toward its past. 'Rise Of The Blackstorm Of Evil' reconstructs the raw black metal atmosphere of the '90s with today's technical capabilities, but the cleaner guitars and professional drum performance inevitably alter that bare quality born from the original recording's limited production conditions. 'In Thy Pandemaeternum', on the other hand, undergoes a more successful transformation in its new recording. With the problematic keyboard texture of the old version removed, the crisscrossing guitars, surging drums and Nergal's dry vocals push the track into a darker, more chaotic form.
'Begotten' is a fast and direct track that shows the band's old black metal vein is still fully functional. By contrast, BEHEMOTH's take on VENOM's 'In League With Satan' and the live recording of BATHORY's 'The Return Of Darkness And Evil' remain conscious nods to the band's roots; the contributions from Shagrath and Sakis Tolis add variety to the collection, but they do not carry its real weight.
"I, Scvlptor" therefore works less as a manifesto for a new era than as a small but meaningful release that brings different periods of BEHEMOTH's history to the same table. The band are not trying to return to 1993; they are reinterpreting that old spirit through the musical discipline they possess today. And that is precisely its most valuable quality: rather than imitating the past, it shows that the past still remains one of the elements that belong to BEHEMOTH's songwriting today.
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