L'Assassí de Venus

“L’ Assassi de Venu” is the fourth full length album of Atman, a quite old band from Spain which consists of two members and exists in Black Metal since 1992. Well this album was released in 2009 in cd format by Sun & Moon and it contains six compositions of raw, fast – chaotic Black Metal with a few mid – tempo passages.

The bands purpose is to create compositions full of hatred and melancholy. But unfortunately they don’t succeed to achieve so. The riffs, when they are audible, are repetitive and a million times played. There is no originality and nothing to catch the listener’s interest. The guitars are well played but nothing remarkable. The bass is buried while the drums are the worst part of the album. On one hand they are much higher than the rest of the instruments so the result is, especially in the fast parts, to suffocate the tracks, on the other hand they are so repetitive that they become annoying. In one or two parts I think there is also an acoustic guitar. The vocals are very harsh and primitive. Also the vocals are much higher. So when combined with the drums, the rest of the instruments aren’t audible. The production is raw, harsh and noisy whereas the mix is very bad. The lyrics are in Spanish and I don’t know to what they refer.

Generally the album doesn’t let me say something positive for the band and its future in Black Metal. Apart from the problems concerning the sound, the compositions are so boring and repetitive which show that the band doesn’t have any ideas, maybe nor the talent in order to do a good album. I hope to prove me wrong in the future. As about “L’ Assassi de Venu” avoid.