Another killer blast of French black

metal, this time courtesy of Battle Kommand, who are continuing to bring the goods with each new release in their catalog. Formed in 2003, Obscurus Advocam

is made up of members of established black metal outfits Wolfe, Temple Of Baal, and Glorior Belli; Verbia Daemonicus is the band's debut full

length, an intense, surreal vision of existentialist black metal poetry and armageddon visions given form through a dissonant, eerie mid-tempo BM assault

that's inflected with the bent, otherworldly weirdness of fellow French acts Blut Aus Nord, Antaeus and Deathspell Omega. The album boasts a powerful, clear

production, everything is full and thick and crushing, which serves the album well as the thing that really sets Verbia Daemonicus apart is the way

that the band has incorporated bursts of loping, midtempo rock and searing emotional blues-based solos into their doomy, dissonant metal. Those bluesy,

soaring guitar solos are freaking transcendent whenever they appear, a la Nachtmystium's Instinct:Decay, and it really makes Obscurus

Advocam stand out from their French BM peers. Yeah, there are definitely lots of blazing blastbeats, charred thrash riffage, and torn-throat croaked vocals,

as well as a couple of detours into Slint-y post rock that always seem to appear on French BM albums, and dark, droning bowed-metal ambient interludes, but

man, the solos on this album just kill it. Another crucial, hallucinatory French BM experience, with awesome bio-horror themed album art from

Aurelien Police.