Pactum Cum Diabolus

In many countries where we didn’t know that a real scene exists, the last few years there is much movement which shows that Black Metal is everywhere. So the small scene of Slovakia has begun mainly during the last decade to take form. Recently I received the first full length album of Warmarch, a three membered band from Slovakia, which was released in 2009 after three demos while before they split up in 2010, they released a split. So “Pactum Cum Diabolus” contains nine tracks of about forty minutes of total duration. Musically, they present us harsh, Scandinavian Black Metal with a lot of Thrash elements, rhythmic and slow passages and primitive sound.

By reading the description above, you will say that it is another band which has that kind of style. Yes their sound is not original but Warmarch have created a lot of interesting riffs, simple, passionate and full of sentiments. Mainly they are fast, tremolo riffs with quite a lot of references to Thrash while the band has done a very good job in connecting these riffs for the creation of the tracks. So their duration is so long as it should be so as the tracks to be more interesting from the beginning to the end. The guitars are quite distorted and raw, but their sound fits perfectly to the style of the compositions and it doesn’t make the listen difficult, and they are played with accuracy. The drums have nice lines, brutal-stormy in the fast parts, in the rhythmic they fill the sound very well, while they are played with confidence and passion. The bass is not audible at all. The vocals are raw, harsh Black Metal vocals very passionate and brutal. The production is dirty and somehow flat and combined with the mixture in which the bass does not exist, the sound comes out empty. The lyrics are not contained in the cd and if I don’t make a mistake they are written in Slovakian.

What annoyed me in the album is the production and the mixture. They annoyed me not because I couldn’t listen or anything like that but because if they had paid a little more attention in them, the album would have been very good as the compositions are quite interesting and they put out much intensity and passion. However I quite enjoyed “Pactum Cum Diabolus” and I suggest you to listen to it. This may be the motive for you to start searching the scene of Slovakia.