Exaltatus Mechanism

Recently, I received the first full length album of Abigorum. First of all, let me give you some information about the band. Abigorum was created in Russia in 2012 but after a demo and split release, this year (2019), two new members coming from Germany, joined the band in order to record their first full length, “Exaltatus Mechanism”. It was released in June of 2019 by Satanath Records and it contains nine tracks of about forty-five minutes of duration.

I really like this kind of albums. The music is raw and straightforward, the atmosphere is very thick and dark, full of passion and intensity. The band creates a mixture of Doom – Funeral Doom with some slow Heavy riffs and a mysterious, agonizing Black Metal atmosphere and a few ambient elements. It is like you have taken Abysmal Grief and Faustcoven and you have put them in a dungeon to record their album, but this similarity is something that will not bother you at all as their ideas are very interesting. The ambient sounds that are added here and there, will deliver you to that cold and wet dungeon I mentioned above, as their use is interesting making the images more vivid. I am not familiar with their work before “Exaltatus Mechanism”, but I guess that there have been some changes and improvements as the new members have contributed their ideas both in compositions and in lyrics. The songs last from three to seven minutes and their structure is good, although the style of the music doesn’t allow the band to make a lot of changes, the way that the song reaches its climax is smooth and comes naturally, so it doesn’t become boring.

As you can understand, the compositions are not that demanding regarding the technical abilities of the members, but they are demanding in passion, atmosphere and intensity. If these demands are not met, the compositions will fail miserably. Fortunately, Abigorum have achieved to deliver a very good performance, achieving to meet those demands. The guitars are raw, bassy and very passionate. The bass is dirty and gives the depth and the darkness that the compositions need. The drums are minimal, without many changes but they are stable and passionate. The vocals are also very good, sometimes clean, narrating, sometimes deep, heavy but most of the times raw, harsh and dirty Black Metal ones, adding various feelings to the compositions. The production is dirty and bassy, while the mixture is balanced giving priority to the guitars without burying any of the other instruments. The lyrics are contained in the four pages booklet and they are written in German. I don’t speak German, so I don’t know what they are about.

I guess the new members benefited Abigorum a lot and as a result they have offered an interesting album full of darkness, images and passion. I have enjoyed the album a lot and I am sure that if they continue to work in the direction that they have at the moment, they will offer some very enjoyable and intense albums. The tracks that stood out are Grau und Schwarz, Jetzt, Königreich Dunkelheit and Krieg, although each one has an interesting moment to catch your attention. If you like Black – Funeral Doom, you will appreciate this effort. Listen to it.