Oh look! Another band from Greece! Yay! Seriously though, I love everything from Greece and I’ve heard several albums this year that add to the legend of the country’s metal scene. LUNAR SPELLS’ “Sacraments of Necromantical Empires,” is another one to throw onto the ever growing tapestry of extreme metal that lines the annals of the country’s musical history. LUNAR SPELLS is a black metal band who formed in 2020 “Sacraments of Necromantical Empires” is their third full length album, in addition to having released an EP and a split.

This raw and bleak black metal, cold and destitute. It isn’t overly dynamic nor is there a lot of variety but if you want 100% unadulterated raw black metal, then you are not looking for those elements in the first place. With that being said, all six songs do sound the same but that just means you can press play and enjoy the entire album even if there are no true standout moments. It’s also only 36 minutes long, which is exactly the limit of being able to listen to this without getting bored. What I appreciate is the songs are more riff based this time around, cutting back a bit on the role of the keys/synths. Those elements are still presented but they are more subtle in their directing of the atmosphere instead of being the actual atmosphere.

I’m not even going to bother talking about more than one song because, like I previously mentioned, if you like any of the six here, you’ll like them all. The title album opens with the title track, showcasing exactly what you will get for the rest. The drums are fast, furious, and add a lot of intensity to the songs. The riffs are balanced between tremolo picking and melodic tinges. The keys are in the far background, adding enough atmosphere to lend the songs a cold and frostbitten vibe.

The passages alternate between being led by shrieking blackened screams or near complete synergy of riffs and keys where they enterwine into a hypotonic force. It seems the band purposely checked off every box on the black metal list but that’s fine with me because it just means they did their homework and really love what they do.

All in all, LUNAR SPELLS’s “Sacraments of Necromantical Empires,” is a solid listen, if unremarkable. If you like raw black metal, you could do worse than listening to this album.