Introducing you to SCHAMMASCH, a Black-Doom Metal from Switzerland. I have to give a credit for the mystery, I had no source of reliable information about this band what so ever, except their origins and the music itself. The facebook page is very summarized, even the band members names are cut short, goes only by their capital letters. The official page is a One-Page format so it has no bio. One of my principles, I have to know the bands nature before I get to know their music. Thanks to Prosthetic Records, for providing some bio, now we know that SCHAMMASCH is the God of the sun from Akkadian / Babylonian mythology, judging from the general art work for both "Contradiction" and "Sic Lvceat Lvx album" albums, the influence for this type of culture is very strong.

My first impression from the reissue of the "Sic Lvceat Lvx album" album, starts actually from the 5th track, "Black But Shining", something about its name caught my attention and I decided to start with it, comparing the rest of the album, this track is pretty confusing, it's opening rather Dark Stoner Metal then Black, there's nothing Doom about it at first, very slow with a low tuned guitar and slow drum beat, slowly develops to more Doom/Black, extremely dark atmosphere with rusty rough vocals.

The main development for this song takes place at 3:15, the distortion lowers down while oriental guitar part comes in and paces up the rhythm, at 4:00 the true Black Metal burst up. As a first impression, I was very impressed and delight by the master mind behind this band. For 9 minutes, this song has so much to offer in one track. The first track for this album is very short, if you compare it with other songs for this album. If so, I can confidently call it an intro. Very dark, with short amount of lyrics, mostly speaking with a creepy dark voice. Gives you the right amount of information about what's coming next to you.

Although the first track doesn't connect to the next, 2nd track, "He Whose Face Is Made Of Entrails", one of the fast tracks in the album, takes it to the Black Metal side with fast blast beats and dark vocals. This song is also pretty short, but loaded with a lot different elements, through blasts to breaks, from slow and diminished to fast and sharp.

"Chaos Reigns", is the 3rd, and it taken the Doom Metal side, slow and heavy, it doesn't have much of the faster pace development, pretty depressing and slow, with doesn't make it worse, in the contrary, it has its own character.

The last in this album is "The Venom Of Gods", 10:35 of pure Black Metal mixed with Doom, with the right combination of fast Black Metal rhythms and slow depressing dark atmosphere of Doom metal, but suddenly the track stops, with complete silence for 3-5 seconds, I thought that this is the end for this track, but shortly, the drum part comes in, slowly the track turns into breaks. The thing is about breaks, somehow, nowadays, almost every band has to shovel this freaking element, which mostly belongs to... Core.

Due to its popularity and its charm to embrace the audience with heavy tunes and its contribution to the song's development, breaks are everywhere! And it's kinda blows my mind. There were some songs I had pass on them, mostly because they're similar to other songs in this album, although they're not bad songs, and not boring or repeatable, you'll just have to discover them yourself.

This album, could take from 8 to 10 out of 10, but im giving it 7 out of 10 for a couple reasons. The sound in this album was not for my taste at all, there's a reason I called it Stoner Metal in some parts, it's mostly the guitars that are too heavy with diminished and very low tuned. This is what happens when you mix Doom with Black, in one hand you want it dark and sharp in other, you want it depressing, low and slow. I'm not saying that it doesn't go hand by hand, but something is wrong with the general sound in this album. Even the drums are low and too in a back ground, while you need those blasts, mostly in Black Metal.

It's a shame, because for my opinion, comparing to the album "Contradiction", which is perfectly balanced but with the same influences, the sound is completely different, "Sic Lvceat Lvx" sounds just wrong. Maybe I just don't get the heart of the artist, maybe it's intentional. As I read in some of their info, "Sic Lvceat Lvx" is a reissue for their first album, maybe they wanted to go back to the roots and make a raw album, there could be many reasons for this misunderstood sound.

But I have to leave it aside and to give a huge credit for composition, it's awesome, interesting, with a buildup of a dark, drawing atmosphere. It is also very calculated, whoever stands behind this masterpiece, probably took a time to write it down.