BEHEMOTH Thelema 6 (2000) CD

By 2000, Behemoth had already shed their raw black metal skin and were mid-transformation into something far more savage. Thelema.6 is the pivot point, the album where Nergal's obsession with Aleister Crowley and ancient Sumerian mythology started bleeding into the riff structures, and the result sounds like a theological crisis set to blast beats.

This is Behemoth before the stadium-level production of Demigod and The Satanist, when the dirt was still under their fingernails. The songwriting is more angular and unpredictable than what came after, and tracks like Antichristian Phenomenon and Christians to the Lions carry a genuine menace that a lot of polish, pun intended, can sometimes smooth away. The bonus tracks make this edition worth hunting down for anyone building out a serious black death metal collection.

CD with bonus tracks. Full length album. Polish black/death metal, released 2000 on Avantgarde Music. Reissue via Rocket.

Fans of: Vader, Marduk, Rotting Christ, Dimmu Borgir