TIME IS THE SULPHUR IN THE VEINS OF THE SAINT...

"Time Is the Sulphur in the Veins of the Saint - An Excursion on Satan's Fragmenting Principle" is the 8th full-length studio album by Austrian black metal act Abigor. The album was released through End All Life Productions in January 2010. Abigor were very active in the years between 1993 and 2003 releasing several demos, EPs and full-length studio albums in that time span. All releases were more or less in a raw traditional black metal style. In 2003 Abigor split-up only to reform again in March 2006. "Fractal Possession (2007)" was the first release after the reformation of the band and displayed a departure from the raw black metal of the past. Instead it introduced an industrialized (slightly avant garde) black metal sound not far removed from the style on the last couple of Dødheimsgard albums.

...that´s also more or less the case with "Time Is the Sulphur in the Veins of the Saint - An Excursion on Satan's Fragmenting Principle". This time around the band have composed two nearly 20 minutes long tracks, which are both adventurous and overall quite challenging. You´ll find blasting drums, dominant use of dissonance, tempo shifts and raspy vocals here. In addition to that it´s no surprise, given their lengths, that the two tracks are quite complex in structure. This is not the type of album you put on one time and memorize upon first listen. This is a rather demanding listening experience. The technical level of playing is really high too, so the album is intriguing on many parameters.

The sound production is professional and powerful and suits the music well. The drums may be a bit too high in the mix and the guitars too low but objectively seen it´s more a matter of aquired taste than it´s a matter of bad production values.

So overall "Time Is the Sulphur in the Veins of the Saint - An Excursion on Satan's Fragmenting Principle" is a pretty strong album by Abigor but it doesn´t exactly reach the high quality level of the best releases in the genre. There are simply parts of the 20 minutes long tracks where my attention wanders. Maybe because the tracks lack some truly breathtaking moments or maybe because they lack a bit in the memorability department. So it´s not a perfect album but still way above average and full of intriguing ideas and that still warrants a 3.5 star (70%) rating.