Switzerland’s Schammasch made quite stir last year with their second album, Contradiction (it made my 2014 year end list), so Prosthetic Records has reached back and dug up the band’s 2010 Black Tower Productions debut Sic Lvceat Lvx  (meaning ‘Thus, let the Light shine’), given it a nice new mix and remaster and new cover.

And while you can hear the band’s ambitious approach, (though not 2 cds and 1 hours 20 minutes plus ambitious like Contradiction),  with a brooding dark, ritualistic throb, it’s clear that band was far more influenced by Behemoth in 2010 than the slightly more expansive, doomy, almost Tryptikon vibe of last years effort.

You can hear the promise though as the shorter songs ( though the album does close with a 10 minute number), but its hard to deny the much more direct, burly Zos Kia Kultus/Demigod/Evangelion rumble in the likes of “He Whose Face Is Made of Entrails”,”Chaos Reigns” and opening throes of “No Light From the Fires”, especially in the throaty bellows of vocalist of Chris S.R.

But certainly the band’s more expansive, ambitious leanings start to seep thorough towards the end of “No Light From the Fires” as well the slow burn of the hypnotic “INRI”, before its as well as the killer, 8 plus minute “Black But Shining” and the monolithic ten minute closer “The Venom of Gods”, which really teases the band’s development for Contradiction , as you get a much more doomy, lumbering builds and atmospherics woven amid the Behemoth-isms.

Certainly not as enthralling or developed as Contradiction, but a nice little completionist  album showing a band’s growth and a nice touch by Prosthetic to allow listeners to hear an earlier incarnation of one of their best current bands.

 

[Visit the band's website]

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