Blackened Wisdom - The Angels Are Crying

Obscurities brought back to life with the help of modern extreme metal labels is definitely a notion that I like. Hell's Headbangers are revitalizing and excavating numerous archaic artifacts from the deep, cavernous bowels of obscurity, and one good thing about these restored obscurities is that they're actually old school, extremities smothering ears from the early 90's, and Blackened Wisdom is most certainly a lost, shadowed relic to relished. The band traces its existence back to 1992, where, blackened death metal was not quite as popular as the quickly ripening Floridan or Swedish death metal scene, but these bringers of clangor bare great resemblance to ruinous blasphemers like Blasphemy, Angelcorpse, Impiety and similar acts (although they started about roughly the same time), stirred it up with  a pinch of that frenetic Swedish aggression and tone and produced a very brief three-track EP named ''The Angels Are Crying'', which was never released until now.

Blackened Wisdom's style hardly impressed me at first, but after giving it more than a few spins (which shouldn't take much time anyway), I started enjoying the band tumultuous aesthetics and raw power, and eventually, I came to conclusion that the EP is a pretty solid one. And it is. The greatest part for me was ripping, ferocious guitar tone, which can be basically classified as a sharper Swedeath tone, a corpulent and raw production to suit the primal display of sulfuric strength, and the these eerie rasps and snarls colliding amid the bashing anger of the instruments, and albeit this sounds pretty simple, it actually has a rocking rhythm section and bombastic array of riffs dabbled in raw turmoil, ultimately manifesting a carnal diversity with great intensity. Some riffs have a momentous swaggers that fall plummet upon the listener with a shower of well-sharpened meteors, and some are simply demented war metal charges, circulating hastily around the EP's hellish maw.

Despite its clamorous intensity, ''The Angels Are Crying'' is punishing, swerving, and serves as a prime example of the early aesthetics of black/death, in the vein of Bestial Warlust, Blasphemy and Conqueror. Sure, there's gonna be quite a bit of people who will dispute over the quality of this raw carnage, people who will dislike and even disdain the pernicious ferocity of this brief EP, but hell, it's obvious that the band wasn't aiming for something exceedingly high, so why not just give it a listen, bob your head vigorously and appreciate the energy? For me, the fact that the EP was too short made me kill a few points, and even though I enjoyed the EP the way a fun little EP should be enjoyed, it simply is not enough, even with a lengthier anatomy, to become an essential record.

Highlights:
I, Eternal
After Me Come The Flames

Rating: 78%