Meilenwald, drummer of the Black Metal pioneers Nagelfar too early laid to rest, supplies us with a bit over 80 minutes of darkest, mystical black art. With I Raised This Stone As A Ghastly Memorial THE RUINS OF BEVERAST immediately take us down almost 11 minutes to the gloomy abyss of the creative head Alexander von Meilenwald, who proves on his third album that the so called orthodox Black Metal utterly fertilely and regularly produces musical pearls. Slow and tenacious, but never dispensable or boring suspense is built up, the vocals switch from grand chorals and deep Death Metal grunts with a high recognition value – a felicitous beginning, which occasionally reminds of the criminally neglected German Death Doomsters Torchure on their stroke of genius called Beyond The Veil or of very old My Dying Bride. In the course of the album Meilenwald cleverly and rousing changes the tempo, at times the sound flows tenaciously and brutally doomy through the ear canals (such as the gigantic epic Mount Sinai Moloch), at times THE RUINS OF BEVERAST rush Black Metal-like (like the furious God’s Ensanguined Bestiaries) or both elements are mixed like in inauspicious album highlight Kain’s Contenance Fell.
If you consider beyond that that Meilenwald is responsible for recording both all instruments and the vocals and the string and drum fraction sound very homogeneous the purchase decision for Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite – the ideal companion for the dark season – should already be done.