After listening to so many examples of Black Metal music, this particular album surely did the trick for me when it came down to innovation. At first it sounded like someone has been messing around with a Metal subgenre that has something deep, cold, evil, sometimes underworld satanic, and raw patterns, but after a while it became clear that an important step was taken in order to shake things up to become a little more unique than usual. SVYATOGOR, a rather awkward name though I think it probably has a meaning for its creators, is a Ukrainian Black Metal band signed to Svarga Music. "Doctor Veritas" comes as their third album after releasing two in the last five or so years since their emergence. I would say that Black Metal got a kick in the face but still maintained its form but with extra additions to its bleeding corpse painted face. It might have looked like a wild card at first, but SVYATOGOR came through with a good result.

Within their material, SVYATOGOR implanted other sensations that they have been attempting to enhance their music with such as Progressive Rock / Metal, Jazz, a little Blues. On "Doctor Veritas", subsequent to these indistinct additions I mentioned, the band's raw like Black Metal mainframe kept on breathing clearly yet with a little restrained manner without endless blast beats, though there were a lot. For one thing, and for the first time in this kind of Metal subgenre it didn't bother me that much, it wasn't flowing at all as it kept on shifting its moods towards various of directions. There were points of pure Black Metal aggression with speed, octave melodies, harsh vocalic blisters and roars while all of a sudden there was a swift alteration into something that sounded to me like Balkan style of rhythms. There were other sections where I was surprised by a Saxophone that began howling around the crude, filthy, dark riffing as if it was a lead guitar instrument. Isn't that cool? And I am not mentioning this to the side of what you probably heard in the last couple of IHSAHN albums, nothing in what SVYATOGOR did on this album was to be expected. Furthermore, listening to the tracks made me feel that the band crossed between several of languages. I think that I heard something like Russian, or Ukrainian maybe, English and possibly French, or at least it sounded like French, especially in the beautiful semi dark ballad track of "La Concupiscence". While the English was a little tough to handle when it came out of the mouth of Arius, which probably wasn't that fluent in English in the first place, there was something sensual in the way he spat out the lyrics and that made me interested even more in what he was singing about. You know what, maybe I will ask him about it.

I think that "Doctor Veritas" serves as wonderful examples of how wacky an artist can be. It seemed to me that SVYATOGORdidn't give a rat's ass about what people would say about their material and their bravery, if I can actually call it that, was worth it. I dim this album as an interesting piece of music that shared both a passion towards that darkness that has been making Black Metal so untamed along with a sense to become unique in way that I don't assume that many would have chosen in the first place. I say trust the doctor, it may hurt at first but with "Inevitability", "La Concupiscence", "Awoke Incoming (Antarctic Solitude)", "Doctor Veritas" and "Reincarnation Of Thoughts", later on it will consume you.