Review by chrisc7249 on January 24, 2023.

What a cool album title.

And its contents are even cooler. Dark Heresy was a short lived avant-garde death metal band from the United Kingdom that graced the world with one brilliant album, and a few preceding demos which I both have not heard and do not really care to hear; but that’s besides the point. Their 1995 debut “Abstract Principles Taken to Their Logical Extremes” is, in and of itself, quite abstract. And pretty extreme too.

I always pick challenging albums to review, ones that are usually pretty experimental and off-kilter and this one is really no different, and it actually might be the most bizarre one yet. Dark Heresy’s sound is a bit hard to decipher. Imagine if Morbid Angel started listening to a lot of Babylon Sad, Phlebotomized and Pan.Thy.Monium and they decided to make an album in the style of those bands. The opening track is the most straightforward death metal you get on the entire thing, complete with crushing riffs, menacing grooves and killer vocals, and even as the most “death metal” song, the riffs are still pretty weirdly constructed and transition in an oddball fashion. Once you’ve made it through that one, it’s about to get a lot weirder from now on.

The tracks are usually pretty lengthy, with 6 of the 8 tracks spanning over 7 minutes long. That being said, these are not death/doom tracks. For as much inspiration as Dark Heresy takes from the aforementioned bands, those bands all have a heavy presence of doom that Dark Heresy lacks. Their death metal parts, as stated above, are reminiscent of Morbid Angel and the death metal parts are extremely thrashy and ferocious. Everything that surrounds the death thrash parts is… very strange. There’s use of keyboards on a fair bit of the songs, and the vocalist is not afraid to throw in some cleans in a few of the tracks. They blend with multiple different non-metal genres to create a bizarre atmosphere that’s ever changing as the song goes along. Sometimes it’s medieval, sometimes it’s upbeat, sometimes it’s gloomy, and no matter where a song goes, it seems to always be loaded with riffs and blast beats that are expected from the genre. It’s similar in idea to something like say, Phlebotomized, but its execution is completely different, and the two bands sound nothing alike.

The sound of the album fits perfectly with the music. Not too rough around the edges, not too clean, just right in the middle. I love the sound of the drums, personally, but I am not an expert on production and mixing so my ears aren’t nearly as trained as some of the veterans on this site.

Unfortunately, this is one of those albums that, although I’ve always wanted to review it and I have finally sat down and given it my all to describe this album to the best of my ability, this truly is just an album you’re going to have to listen to. It’s so chaotic, progressive, experimental and left field that you’d be doing yourself a disservice to not listen to it at least once. Definitely a gem in the genre, and one that hopefully picks up traction with age to become more of an underground cult classic - more people need to listen to this.

FFO: Phlebotomized, Carbonized, Morbid Angel

Favorite song: The Last Temptation of Pan

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review by Felix on September 10, 2019.

Spirituality is a feature which shows up again and again in broad parts of the Greek black metal scene. Vamachara is one of these albums that combine occultism with vehemence and metaphysics with harshness. As always, it is debatable whether the artists found the right balance between these characteristics. 'Abraxas', for example, has its own intro and outro with the effect that almost half of the song is lost. Nevertheless, the overall impression does not suffer from overly ritualistic, sensitive or otherwise non-metallic sequences.

Vamachara means something like behaving wrong or walking the left-hand path. The booklet describes it more poetically - "Vamachara stretches back to the buried past, regressing back when the Female Archetype was worshipped through the Cult of Vama..." and so on. Very interesting, but I have to pay my bills in the here and now. Anyway, the aura of the compositions conveys this meaning very well. All songs are painted in pretty dark colors and no signs of happiness or trust in God appear. The stormy title track sets a good example. The strict whippings of the drums and the crushing guitar leads are the ingredients of a hellish brew which is crowned by the commanding and conjuring voice of the lead singer. This mix triggers an enormous intensity. Moreover, it proves evidence that the dudes have a fine instinct for the typical form of the sub-genre they prefer, even though the track ends with a slightly dubious melodic part. However, maybe this is the nub of the problem: Acherontas have very good ideas and they create fascinating scenarios whenever they set their demons free, but they always fear to lose their melodic facet. Of course, there exist many bands that focus on total destruction exclusively. Nevertheless, sometimes I wish Vamachara would hold more sequences of unleashed black metal and so it is only logical that my highlight is the furious "Blood Current Illumination" with its great, charismatic vocals.

More or less pure tracks like the aforementioned highlight reveal the great potential of the group. The nearly perfectly flowing guitars set the right frame due to the comparatively warm and almost flawless production and the lead vocalist expresses pain and dedication. Nevertheless, the album suffers from a certain heterogeneity, at least to a certain degree. Or to describe it differently: either one accepts that the band also likes to perform slightly folkloric horror tunes such as 'Ohm Krim Kali' or one will struggle with the non-furious side of Acherontas eternally. From my point of view, the album cannot hide its minor flaws, but it scores with individuality and resourceful guitar work. Moreover, it has enough sequences that mirror the emotional attachment of the four musicians with the black underground. Therefore I can recommend it to every genre fan who is interested in bands that add a special flavor to the essential ingredients.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10