Black Cilice - "Banished from Time" (Iron Bonehead Productions, 2017)

Band: Black Cilice
Title: Banished from Time
Genre: Noisy Black Metal
Year: 10th March 2017
Time: 37 min
Rating: 74/100













Black Cilice did it again! It's incredible but this band release every album always after 2 years from the previous one, so this "Banished from Time", anticipated one year ago by the EP "Nocturnal Mysticism" reviewed on these pages, isn't an exception. But, at the same time, it is an exception. In fact, "Banished from Time" is the first album by this mysterious Portuguese kult including only 5 songs and not the 6 ones of the previous full-lenght efforts, as if they ended their trilogy based on 666. In addition, it has a cover artwork on grey scale while the other albums were presented through a cover artwork in an impenetrable black and white. But, for the rest, "Banished from Time", released again by Iron Bonehead Prod, is in pure Black Cilice-style, 666% guaranteed, so prepare to listen to something very painful!


In fact, as everyone into Black Cilice knows, also "Banished from Time" is characterized by a production so lo-fi to be noisy and disturbed (and disturbing). And you have to consider that the vocals, that ranges from terrifiyng howlings to mangled screams worthy of a spectre which is suffering unspeakable torments, are a lot reverberated and also overshadowed compared to the other instruments. Ergo, I recommend to you to not listen to this album through a pair of headphones, or else your ears will be surely burn because of a very cacophonous production!

Also musically speaking there are no real differences between "Banished from Time" and the previous albums, just I realized basically a more lenghty duration since the opening track "Timeless Spectre" (a title, a program!) lasts even almost 10 minutes. Anyway, we are talking about a very primitive black metal characterized by an extremely melancholic riffing supported by an infernal storm of blast-beats interrupted, here and there, by some mid-tempos but there are also some doomish passages. The approach is so primitive that a song like "On the Verge of Madness" (almost 9 minutes of lenght) is focused on a single riff while its first 3 minutes, without counting a short and slow start, are dominated only by wild blast-beats! But "Banished from Time" has also some good atmospheric moments, exemplified especially by the conclusive "Boiling Corpses" (a track more dynamic than the usual and strong of some melodies very curious for a band of this kind), and without forgetting the ritualistic 2 final minutes with clean vocals (but are they really clean vocals???) and tom-toms' dances by the drummer listenable in "Channeling Forgotten Energies", maybe the better song of the entire album.

In general, this album seems to be a combination between the magical violence of "Mysteries" and the more reflexive and mid-tempo oriented approach of the EP "Nocturnal Mysticism", but I realized a less inventiveness by the drummer about the mid/slow tempos compared to the same "Mysteries", that's, for me, is slighty superior than the new one. In addition, "Banished from Time", in classic Black Cilice-style, is a very difficult album to digest also because, apart a production that makes appear the music a hell of pure noise, has its own truly particular atmosphere that you have to absord after many listenings so to feel it inside you. So, Black Cilice continues with extreme coherence their painful path perfect for every maniac obsessed with Mons Veneris, Candelabrum and Wóddréa Mylenstede, all insane entities that love to torture the listeners with inaudible productions and a totally hostile way to conceive the black metal music heavily inspired by the infamous LLN.

Tracklist:

1 - Timeless Spectre
2 - On the Verge of Madness
3 - Possessed by Night Spirits
4 - Channeling Forgotten Energies
5 - Boiling Corpses

Line-up:

unknown

Iron Bonehead Productions: http://www.ironbonehead.de/