To write a deeper analysis on an old album can be a dangerous thing. We need to understand about the time of the album's release, the features and maybe some of Metal history of that period to be just. With Black Metal, it becomes a very difficult task, because the genre bears a particular sound from the beginning of the SWOBM on the 90's until our current days, and other bands uses a clear and modern insight. To review "Ashes of Purification", the first album from French band MERRIMACK.

This album was originally released in 2002 (when LLN times were already ended), and this reissue was done due the success that their latest album ("Omegaphilia", from 2017). Here, we find a crude form of Black Metal with strong roots from the 90's. Obviously, it would be hard to demand from a beginner something astonishing in musical matter. But they're pretty good, with fine harsh musical arrangements, although they're not presenting something extremely new at all. On the production of "Ashes of Purification", we find that the band's sound quality is like many others from the past, with that rusty and crude insight of the "ugly aesthetics" that the ancients from Norway used (you can have some info about what I say on the documentary "Until the Light Take Us"). But for Black Metal fans, it's not a reason to complain, except for pride, so we can say that it works for them. It's raw, but it's good as well.

Even the number of tracks of the album is old fashioned: eight tracks. But their best moments as heard on "Paedophilic Orgasmatron" (very good rhythmic work, with good variations), the more traditional Black Metal insight presented on "Noigel", the sharp guitar riffs heard on "Live the Lie", and that nasty and oppressive SWOBM atmosphere of "Ashes of Purification". So we can say that in 2002, "Ashes of Purification" was a very good album, and it was carrying the seed of a musical promise. MERRIMACK really deserve a chance, so let me go now and hear their latest album to see how things worked out with them.