Sometimes it's good to be reminded of all that evil dwelling inside you. Everyone has it in there, inevitably lurking in some shady corner behind all those good deeds you've done for the day, thirsty to claw its way out to the surface to eat something small and defenceless. There are few bands out there that remind me of this primal desire to kill but when I find one, I'm always pleasantly surprised.

It is with great pleasure then that I have been introduced to PRECARIA, a fairly new three piece Death Metal band that seems intent on raising at least one Dark Lord from eternal slumber with their heavily blackened style of brutality. Their first full-length album release came out in the latter days of last year and it went relatively unnoticed but is now gaining the recognition it deserves.

As much as I love obscenely aggressive Metal, I'm not usually a fan of mindless noise, but this is one band where something cuts through the noise. The guitars tear their way through the songs at almost light speed but there are moments of clarity in there that allow just enough time for you to get an impression of real thought that has gone into the writing. The rest of the instruments follow the faster side of this pace and at points, the maelstrom becomes almost too much to decipher and simply slips into a void of noise. This is a real shame, as they are clearly all talented musicians but this cacophony of sound drowns out most of the audible examples of this.

The overall theme of the album is one of the darker shades of humanity and the forces gently guiding the actions of those around the world. It's difficult to listen to an album like this from start to finish without digging out the old cultist robes and knocking off a few verses from the Satanic bible into a chalice of goat's blood. This is a testament to what PRECARIA are trying to accomplish though and I don't thin for a second that they want anyone to listen to this and say "Hey, that's a great album". If this was their intention then they have failed miserably, but as it stands, they have succeeded in creating a piece of occult magic fit for Mr. Crowley himself.<