Review by Vladimir on February 16, 2023.

Italy isn’t a country well known for its black metal bands, but you certainly can’t deny that it didn’t give us some good ones throughout the years. It’s hard to tell if its scene is underrated or not, although it would seem fair to consider that a lot of Italy’s bands are quite underappreciated. The band I will be covering is Argesh and their debut full-length album Excommunica, released by Nero Corvino on September 14th 2021. The band dub their style as “Apostate Black Metal”, which they credit as a style inspired by bands like Behemoth, Dimmu Borgir, Mephorash, Schammasch, Deathspell Omega and etc. 

The album starts with 'Abiura', an instrumental track with a dramatic intro and spoken word, telling you that you’re about to get ear raped with blast beats and tremolo riffs from the get-go once the next song starts. It certainly turned out to be so with the next track 'Suffocate In Oxygen', which started out exactly as it was predicted, apocalyptic tremolo picking, blast beats and harsh shouting vocals that switch to growls. While the first track is indeed a “blaster”, the second track has a slower mid-tempo double-bass drumming that switches to a metalcore-like breakdown in the middle. This metalcore-like breakdown trait would make a return on fourth track 'Apocalypse 20.7-8-9'. It might be too early to jump to my opinion on the album itself, but I feel like it’s crucial to say what I think about Excommunica as a whole and what stops it from being great. First and foremost, it’s the drums. Although HHG is credited for doing the drums besides the guitars and backing vocals, it was obvious from the get-go that the drums were programmed since they sound way too artificial to be real, especially because of the kicks which sound more like clicks if you ask me. The artificial drum sound isn’t the only thing that bothers me a lot, but it’s also the fact that the drums are so loud that they completely bury the guitars in the mix, while the vocals somewhat manage to stay on track. The band’s musical style approach with its apocalyptic and satanic feel isn’t bad by any means, it’s actually well done, especially on the last track 'The Elohim's Mark' which might be my favorite of the bunch, but unfortunately, I was unable to fully enjoy the experience with the sound production being way to mishandled in my opinion. 

I can’t say for sure that it’s a bad release since it’s definitely a serious work with a lot of dedication and sweat put into it, just with a mishandled turn if you ask me. Although the sound production of Excommunica is obviously not a work of a total amateur who would probably crank everything up to 11, it could have used more touch up in the mix and master and ended up way better than it did. I don’t know what the future holds for this band, but I am certain that Argesh will fix these mistakes and continue to “sacrifice lambs in the name of Satan”, since the music is indeed very reminiscent of bands such as Behemoth and Deathspell Omega. 

Rating: 6.4 out of 10