Merciless Trap of Civilization

It’s been exactly two years since the first full length album of Czarna Magia from Poland was released and Balrog returns with a new one. The new album is called ‘Merciless Trap of Civilization’ and it was released in digital format independently and in limited to 500 copies cd format by The End of Time Records, in January of 2022. The album consists of seven tracks in the same style that Balrog introduced to us by his previous releases too, and its duration is about forty four minutes. I really can’t think of a better title, to describe the album so accurately, both musically as much as lyrically. 

If you have listened to the previous release, be reassured that nothing has really changed here. The band continues to play their primitive, old school Death/Black, paying their respects to the first wave of Black Metal combined with a lot of Doom and some Heavy influences. A band that came to my mind while listening to ‘Merciless Trap of Civilization’ was Goatlord from the U.S.A. In general, the band has simple riffs, mainly of medium and slow tempo, though there are some blasting parts, and the atmosphere is dark and primitive. However, if I compare this to the previous one, I feel that here, Balrog tried to add as many of his ideas as he could and that has created two results. The first one is the duration of the tracks, which is not different from the previous release, almost each track lasts five to seven minutes, however some of them are too long and tedious. The second one is the phenomenon that you listen to a nice idea and suddenly a change, passage or even a solo comes in with an irrelevant to the rest of the track idea, sometimes a quite uninspired one, and reduces the quality of the track and makes the listener lose his focus.

On the other hand, regarding the performance, Balrog is the one responsible for all the instruments, the vocals but also the production and the mixture. The guitars are bassy and loud, played with passion, they express the feelings vividly. The bass is audible in this one too and adds depth and a very nice darkness to the final result. The drums are a lot better than the previous release as they have nice lines, they are full of energy and the most important thing is that there are no timing mistakes. The production is primitive and bassy and along with the balanced mixture, they give a dark, primitive and raw result, matching perfectly the overall style. The lyrics are also written by Balrog and the majority of them are written in English apart from one song that is written in Polish. You can find them inside the booklet of the cd along with a few information about the recording. As the title says, they speak about modern society, mankind, modern slavery and mainly about system related themes.

The second full length album of Czarna Magia left me with a bittersweet taste. Of course it is a great improvement that there are no mistakes regarding the performance of the drums. Also, the straightforward, old school sound is still here and quite better as an overall result regarding the mix and production. However, the band has fallen into the trap of using most of their ideas, even the ones that are not so good. So, I guess the one thing that they should work on the next release is how well they filter their ideas. The songs that I liked most are Merciless Trap of Civilization, Ecstatic High of Non-Existence and All Human Words Are Lies. Those of you who liked their previous one, I guess that you will find this one interesting too.