Medico Peste - "Herzogian Darkness" (World Terror Committee, 2017)

Band: Medico Peste
Title: Herzogian Darkness
Genre: Black Metal
Year: 30th March 2017
Time: 25 min
Rating: 72/100













Here you are one of the very rare productions that I can miracolously to review before its release. "Herzogian Darkness", released by the excellent German label World Terror Committee, is the new effort of the Polish band Medico Peste after a long silence since their last production (the debut album titled "א: Tremendum et Fascinatio") was released even on 2012. Now a quartet due to the departure of the bassist The Priest, Medico Peste (two of them plays also in the live line-up of Mgla - specifically, I am talking about the bassist/drummer ShellShocked and the guitarist E.V.T.), strong of the participation at the guest vocals into a song of Mark of the Devil from Cultes de Ghoules, are back with this new 4 songs' EP which renews their curious way to intend the black metal genre.


Yeah, Medico Peste have a particular black metal vision, and "Herzogian Darkness" show it through every song which is always more crazy than the previous one until a cover track very unexpected for a production of this kind.

The first episode is the same titletrack, a monolith of 10 minutes where are, indeed, the vocals of the aforementioned Mark of the Devil. This song starts with a mid-tempo full of hypnotic and repetitive arpeggios but then it explodes with some blasting moments spewing forth also a guitar solo. Finally, the track ends in a very pachydermatous way with the addition of some macabre arpeggios on the background.

The following "Hallucinating Warmth and Bliss" is another long song also if it lasts "only" almost 8 minutes. I appreciate it especially for some catchy mid-tempos while very peculiar is that lead guitar riff which terrorizes the listeners for long moments. But, unfortunately, I consider this song like the less impressive of the entire EP because, from a certain point, it fossilizes on the same things with the result to be a bit rambling.

To the contrary, "Le Delire de Negation" is, in my opinion, the better song of "Herzogian Darkness" because it is completely strange, also because it is the only number of this EP to has no blast-beats. In fact, its pace is very slow but, at the same time, contorted especially due to the nervous drums of ShellShocked. Instead, the guitars of E.V.T. and Nefar are overlapping with dark and lame riffs. And then there is Silencer with his vocals more demented than the usual and all this creates a song with a totally sick atmosphere fit for a morbid mental institution.

As closing track, there is surprisingly "Stigmata Martyr" of the goth band Bauhaus but, completely pertinent to the insane style of Medico Peste, it has been so reinvented in a black metal version to almost appear like a new song! Sure, the original version by Bauhaus is unmatchable but I consider fantastic when a band coverize a song completely extraneous to its genre of reference so to reject to play the yet another "Transilvanian Hunger" cover.

In conclusion, we are in presence of a good comeback from Medico Peste (the curious moniker is in Italian for "Doctor Plague"). Moreover, they have made the things in a great way since they introduced the EP through even two trailers for the song titled "Hallucinating Warmth and Bliss" and they are very useful to understand the morbid atmosphere recreated by the band (you can view the second of them through the following video). Now, I hope that Medico Peste will offer to us the sophomore full-lenght album able to devour our brains with no fuckin' mercy!

Tracklist:

1 - Herzogian Darkness
2 - Hallucinating Warmth and Bliss
3 - Le Delire de Negation
4 - Stigmata Martyr (Bauhaus cover)

Line-up:

Silencer - vocals
Mark of the Devil - guest vocals ("Herzogian Darkness")
E.V.T. - guitars
Nefar - guitars
ShellShocked - drums

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/medicopesteband
World Terror Committee: http://www.w-t-c.org/