Enthroned - XES Haereticum

*=Staff's pick	Crimson Legions* Dance Of A Thousand Knives* Last Will* Blacker Than Black Vortex Of Confusion A.M.S.G Daemons Claw* Night Stalker Seven Plagues, Seven Wrath (XES Revelation) Hellgium Messiah*

Genre	Black Metal	Sabathan	Vocals
Tracks	10	Nornagest	Guitar
Runningtime	44 Min.	Nguaroth	Guitar
Label	Napalm Records	Sabathan	Bass
Release	01 Nov. 2004	Glaurung	Drums
Country	Belgium	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Ancient Rites, Desaster

Belgium's Enthroned are here with their sixth studio album XES Haereticum, released on the Austrian label Napalm Records. Produced by Harris Johns at Spider house studios. I haven't been to keen on listening to this band earlier, some songs from various compilations are my best experiences regarding Enthroned.

XES Haereticum contains Black Metal with a touch of old school heavy & thrash metal. Parallels to early Bathory and Kreator are obvious. Enthroned presents a good flow through their songs. Here are no meaningless cut-offs filled with keyboard or samplings present. Just a furious attack in a very convincing way. Mid-tempo vs. blast parts that goes just fine along, makes it a good mix together with nice riffs & melodies.

Some really good songs to mention are Dance Of A Thousand Knives, Last Will, Daemons Claw and Hellgium Messiah. The latter must be the title track of the year, according to me. A good production, but could have been a bit heavier over the whole sound picture. The vocals could been more powerful, tends to be very "light" some times, but I guess that's a minor thing to complain about. A real good album.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	7	8

Summary
8 chalices of 10 - Tim