With their fifth full length release, BESATT, another satanic horde from Poland, again strikes against Christendom. Their new album is entitled Black Mass, and that's exactly how it sounds like, most of the time. Six of seven tracks contain harsh and cold black metal, as we are used from the band’s history. Lyrically, BESATT are still devoted to the fight against all religions, especially Christendom. Their current style reminded me a bit of the 2006 Koldbrann release Moribund. BESATT put out all the stops of the black metal repertoire. There are furious and angry speed attacks as well as dark and slowly grinding riffs. Altogether, there's everything to find you want to have on a strong modern black metal album.
Too bad, that Black Mass has not only those six tracks. The fifth song, Son Of Pure Viking Blood, was created as an homage to Bathory mastermind Quorthon. The result is a Pagan/Viking Metal song with clean vocals, acoustic guitar and epic song structures. That sounds quite nice, and I really like that song, but it's completely misplaced on this CD! I would have understood, if they had placed it at the end of the album, e.g. as a bonus track. But right in the middle, it simply does not fit into the atmosphere the other tracks create, and the ten seconds blastpart at the end is not enough for a proper transition back to the black metal style of the next two songs. What a shame! In my opinion, BESATT really crabbed a great album with that misplaced song. I now rate it 6.5 out of 10, without out that "slip" it had been notable more.