Untitled Document

First of all, I like the drumming much more on this album than that on Ill-Natured Spiritual Invasion, although the praised Gene Hogland is banging on that. On INSI the drum sounds are too much in the background, drowning behind all the symphonic layers; only some beat cymbals are clinging up in the front, which is never a sign of good mixing. As a matter of fact that’s what bothers me on Born Of The Flickering, too: the cymbals. Something’s wrong when all you hear from the drums is cymbals, heheh….. exaggerating a bit. But still. On Revelation 666 awesome-sounding blastbeat is there already from the start. After all, this drumming done by Tjodalv and another drummer doesn’t differ too much from the latest album where there’s Nicholars Barker playing.

I’m a huge fan of this kind of extremely well-produced, melodic black metal. And this is one of the top albums of that genre. All the colourful puke of diversity is dashed on the listener’s face like with a compression pump - there’s plenty of SPEED in the music, which always warms the heart of a 80’s/90’s thrash metal fan. In black metal it’s a typical trick to use superfast blastbeat drumming so that all other playing is rhythmically slower, though; and there’s that on this album, too. It makes the song sound chaotic and, ehm, black, but so far I’m not fed up with it. And there are also fast guitar riffs here. A thing worth mentioning are the several cool guitar solos, that being something that many black metal bands aren’t at their strongest at.

The lyrics and song titles are somehow of poorer quality than those of many of OMC’s Norwegian fellow bands. But who cares. Of course it’s impossible to hear what is being sung, and the lyrics are printed with such a font in the cover booklet that the reading is hard anyway. And that’s the spirit with my black metal listening otherwise, too. I just put the album playing and let it go through. The black metal albums are at their best as whole entities, even individual songs aren’t that important. If I had to name a favourite song off this album it would be the boringly entitled mid-tempo heavy headcrusher called Obscure Divine Manifestation.

Neon Nights / May 2003

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After the great master's Galder act of joining the brother-band Dimmu Borgir and especially his statements according to which the Old Man's Child band would put an album out only because of the contract obligations with Century Media, I guess nobody was expecting something good or even decent from them. Well, the fifth full-length discographical step of the Norwegian black metallers that had the curse errr... excuse me... the name "In Defiance Of Existence" was a real defiance against the existence of all of us non-believers! This album I would dare to say that is by far their best and above all darkest effort after of course their legendary 1996 debut album "Born Of The Flickering"!

Having this time his eternal partner Jardar on the guitars (with the exception of "Ill Natured Spiritual Invasion" album) and the huge Nicholas Barker (Cradle Of Filth, Lock-Up, Dimmu Borgir) for the first time behind the Old Man's drum-kit, Galder offered us one of the absolute dark masterpieces of the year. A dark manifest of the purest misanthropy and hatred, coming straight out of a deep hellish abyss. This album carries on 100% the Old Man's Child pervert seal from the first seconds of the album until its very end and that's why the comparison with their debut was forementioned. Mister Barker with his death metal influences on the drums does the finest job this band has ever experienced (yes, even better than the session appearance of Gene Hoglan!) which gives a huge credit to the tracks' aggressiveness and power. All the composals in the album are very good but with a big try, maybe I could choose the self-titled and "The Soul Receiver" as the most good ones, without any intention to imply anything negative for the rest of it.

Beeing myself a fan of more traditional black metal style, "In Defiance Of Existence" was for sure a very big surprise for 2003, especially coming from a band that nobody was expecting much... Their previous album "Revelation 666: The Curse Of Damnation" maybe contains some of the best productions ever made in a modern black metal album indeed (Peter Tägtgren is a big ace for any band), but its incredible similarity to Dimmy Borgir (especially since Galder joined them from a point and after), was not leaving many opportunities for something good to come up. Thankfully the album with which they came up, broke anything left off these negative expectations and set an unholy fire on our black sinister souls.

KJP / May 2003

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