Review: Sarkrista “Summoners of the Serpents Wrath”

Sarkrista “Summoners of the Serpents Wrath”
Purity Through Fire

This German band as its place of origin announces Schleswig-Holstein. This is one of sixteen states of Germany, and it’s northernmost of them all. The most populous city and capital is Kiel, other notable ones are Lubeck and Flensburg. But the logic tells us that musicians must come from several (haply these smaller) cities of this rather plat, but in spite of appearances geographically diversified state.

During all these years I noticed that the bands from Germany play quite often a little differently than these which come from other countries. Well, to be honest we can say the same thing about every country – of course it’s not about all bands, but and you must listen to music carefully to be able to recognize it. I can hear signs of legendary Black Metal band in their country (as I heard once) which released only demo “Hellfire” in 1992 and split with UNGOD ten years later. Anyway, SARKRISTA was born nine years after releasing of mentioned above split. Their discography is much richer than one of Bavarians, by the way and encloses three splits (with SIELENVIHOLLIAN, UNHUMAN DISEASE – both 2014 and SAD – 2015), “The Evil Incarnate” (which’s called EP, but it takes more than twenty seven minutes) and two albums (“The Acheronian Worship” – 2013) and just reviewing one).

“Summoners of the Serpents Wrath” contains nine songs: two minutes long intro & eight ones which are between a little more than four and a half and almost seven minutes. Intro introduces us into right mood and gives a proof that long one doesn’t have to be boring. Then we’re listening to equally interesting and played with imagination Black Metal. Well, it’s nothing innovative, nothing technically super-advanced and complicated. I already heard similar bands and there were more of them then ten. But in comparison with typical Norwegian BM (even if we can find bands from Norway which play differently from each other) it’s much more variable for sure. Riffs are maybe easy, but they change quite often – of course Farbauti and Revenant repeat them few times, but not whole the time as it happens quite often. They’re in its way melodic and played not on the highest possible tuning of guitar. Exesor’s drumming is also variable as well. He uses cymbals as often as he only can what in this case means: all the time. Revenant’s vocal isn’t anything innovative in Black Art, too. This is screechy and in this meaning is rather typical for mentioned sub-genre of Metal. But it’s also using in specifically melodic way.

Anyhow, if somebody thinks that SARKRISTA plays something even up-close to Symphonic Black Metal I have to say loudly: No, it has ANYTHING to do with that! This is normal, if I can use right this word, Black Metal! It has maybe a little other character than usually. Personally I guess that bands like that make that I listen to mentioned few times in this review sub-genre of Metal.