Supremo Die

Flamen is the collaboration of two people with many years of experience inside the underground Black Metal of their countries. That is that the one half the band comes from Italy and the other half from Bulgaria, it was formed during 2012 and in the end of January of 2013, they released their first EP which contains four tracks of about half an hour of duration. The beautiful cover leaves no doubt that the band plays epic Black Metal and the epic, instrumental introduction comes to confirm that, creating the appropriate environment for the two following, epic, Black Metal tracks, and to finish the album with one more instrumental track.

Their music consists of beautiful and simple epic riffs which create that epic atmosphere and pictures of the medieval battles that the band describes. They are mid paced and monotonous but quite interesting, while their simplicity and their technique reminded me much of the more recent works of the Dutch Countess. Also we come across other times to some epic, other times to atmospheric passages. However the compositions become quite tedious because of the long duration of the tracks, about ten minutes each track, and their structure which is not so good. The guitars, although they are played with accuracy, are so much distorted that the sound is changed and the result isn’t good. The lines of the bass can’t be heard but you can understand that it fills the sound well. The drums have simple patterns and mainly they keep the rhythm without doing anything remarkable.

What make a good impression are the keyboards which are used where and when they should, their sound changes depending on the sentiment from powerful – epic, to melancholic or dark. The vocals are dirty, heavy and dark Black Metal vocals that depending on the part they change their way of expression. The band has cared much about the production and the mixture, so the sound that comes out is quite massive, clean and quite powerful, it fits to the style of the compositions. The lyrics are written in Italian and they are contained in the cd. By the pictures and their style I think that they narrate epic battles and historical events but I don’t speak Italian to be sure about it.

The first effort of this newborn collaboration has its positive aspects but also its negative. Flamen can easily create pictures and emotions to the listener. On one hand they haven’t managed yet to construct their tracks correctly so as not to become tedious. Also they haven’t reached the point where they can understand which of their ideas are interesting and worth to be in a track and which are bad and boring and should not be used. In any case the first samples are rather positives and for sure the following releases will show if they deserve our attention. Listen before you buy.