Review by JD on November 10, 2008.

Black Metal is the type of music that when it is done right, it is some of the best metal around... if it is not done well, it is nothing but garbled noises that no metal head wants to hear. That said, getting this EP from Chicago Black Metal band, Ditheist... I now had to make that determination either way.

This short album has only four songs in it’s silver hold, but is packaged amazingly good for such a short album. The artwork made by someone calling himself Tatomyir and is absolutely incredible and seems to set the tone for the EP itself, at least visually. This is one of the best album covers I have seen in a very long time, and that made me hope that Ditheist "Seduction Of Demons" was going to be as good as that was.

The CD opens with the track ‘Vengeance Is Mine’, and it automatically sucks me in like a raging whirlpool of heaviness and destruction into the pits of hades... assaulting me with such an unholy orgasm of thunder of guitars that harken to the old school BM and has a touch of death metal in there for good measure. In turn, ‘Thrown Into Oblivion’ and the title track explode out and solidify that these guys know what it is to make truly sick and twisted Black Metal. It simply flays tour mind with razor sharp yet heavy laden guitars and blasting drum beats that seems to be stoked by pure hell-power.

By the time the last track on this album fades off, you are going to really know that Ditheist is a Black Metal tour-de-force that is to be taken seriously. It does not break new ground, true... but they still are showing all of that great promise in a small package. My only hope is that they will actually put out a full album, rather than waste valuable recording time doing another Extended Play CD. The only drawback to the whole thing in my opinion... was that they put out a EP.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 8
Atmosphere: 8
Production: 8
Originality: 7
Overall: 8

Rating: 7.8 out of 10

Review by Jeger on January 29, 2025.

On the brink of the spiral do we who have not yet taken the final plunge drift. Swirling over the passing years of our steady inglorious demise in vessels of depression, frustration and anger as realizations of life's many deceptions are solidified through each season of suffering. Sounds pretty black metal. Actually, it sounds very post-black metal, which is exactly what this is. Black metal, but more cathartic and beholden to varying outside influences that are generally distant from black metal. Panopticon, Harakiri for the Sky, The Spirit and Vintras are a few of the predominant names that are spearheading the movement. The latter will release their debut Timescarred LP on March 27 via Void Wanderer / War Productions.

Music that is as hopeless and crafted with as much tunnel vision as Mgła: focused, honed and locked into the task at hand - the manufacturing of misery in the form of song, but with a remarkable silver lining. The titular track unfolds to all of those familiar depressive melodies and exudes similar levels of nihilistic cachet, but as we venture in further, we find ourselves set adrift over the fog upon grande majestic passages; voluminous compositions that draw from deep within the gut the faintest sense of hope just before we're plummeted back to surface level at melancholy's mercy. Like the feeling of dread you feel once the victim in a horror flick is captured again after making her daring escape only to be returned to the torture block for cleansing.

Youth is wasted on the young! And once we get to a certain age, life is nothing more than a struggle against the tide. We know it's coming but we try to distract ourselves from it as best we can through shit like work, partying, social media and the reveling in our many accomplishments, but it's right there in the mirror… We're dying and no one gets out alive. This sense of impending doom and of deathly foreshadowing is thick here in the throes of Timescarred. Even as accessible as tracks like "The Wretched Wanderer" can be, there's just no escaping the existential dread of it all, the weight of the matter. Heavy and rhythmic, anthemic and just massive - too bold to be labeled anything close to true black metal. Transcendent! Yet grounded enough to where you have no choice but to take it heavily to heart.

Bands like Vintras and individuals such as ourselves aren't fucking fooled. We are here to suffer. Even as we do whatever it is we're doing right in this very moment, we are suffering in some way. The world is not a beautiful place and there is no escaping the inevitable. We simply ride the snake through varying levels of depression, anxiety and false hope until we reach the end of the line. I wouldn't wish life on anyone… I would encourage you to listen to Timescarred. Like a dance with despair under silver moonlight or a glass of wine with death is this record and every bit as romantic. A toast! To your remaining years. May they be full of ignorant bliss instead of staunchly conceived realizations of future suffering and grim death. And here's to Vintras - a proud new entity on the UK post BM scene. Very powerful debut.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10