Sin Origin - In the Presence of a Dread Magician (2005)

Sin Origin hails/hailed from Canfield, Ohio USA, which isn’t exactly a large breeding ground for extreme metal, especially not the blacker side of the genre. These guys play epic high speed black metal unlike really any other I’ve heard before. Sin Origin writes unbelievably lengthy songs (shortest song is fourteen minutes) that are largely blistering fast black metal compositions, but they also show influences from thrash and doom metal all interwoven perfectly. There are also these sudden break downs in the blackened rage, which lead to calmer parts or some of their other influences.

While guitarist Funeris manages to play some of the absolute most catchy and head banging riffs imaginable his raw pulsating trebly tone is one of the strangest I've ever heard too. Then there’s the other half of the band, Nemesis, whom is a very talented technical drummer, possibly one of the best black metal drummers I’ve ever heard. Funeris also handles the evil shrieks, which I must admit somewhat remind me of the vocals Ihsahn from Emperor was using on their Prometheus album, but Funeris adds a bit more wickedness to them.

Choosing favorites from this album is no easy task since the whole thing is godly, but seriously the sixteen minute piece, ‘The Devil, with seven more evil’ is one of the sickest black metal songs ever. The riffs in this song are massive and that drum roll solo at about the ten minute mark, goddamn brilliant! But ya know what after this song things just keep on going strong, the awesome riffs keep coming, Nemesis continues to pound the hell out of the drums, and Funeris screams out his evil poetry in a truly malicious manner.

Frankly one of the things that always disappointed me about the American black metal scene is the way to many bands from here always just copied the Scandinavian ones and never stopped to think up their own ideas (i.e. Sothis, Black Witchery, Thornspawn, etc). Sin Origin isn’t one of these cloners though, there’s only one Sin Origin, and their debut album ‘In the Presence of a Dread Magician’ has remained one of my personal absolute favorite black metal albums since its release

Lastly, I remember in mid-2005 I was going through a bit of a departure from metal by exploring other genres like neo folk and martial industrial, but after I got my hands on this album I had a complete revival and interest in metal once again. Unfortunately it seems, In the Presence of a Dread Magician will remain as the bands one and only album since its been nearly five years since its release and news around the band is completely non existent. I truly do hope these guys get together and record a new album someday but if not I'll always have this one gem to blast loudly and head bang to.