Veneficum - Enigma Prognosis (2003)

I first came to know the Orland Park, Illinois, USA based band Veneficum back sometime in 2001 and I recall being greatly impressed with them through their debut MCD, 'Dysphoria' as well as simply the fact that a band playing in this style was fairly close to where I lived.

Veneficum and their '03 debut full-length, 'Enigma Prognosis' follows the coattails of Scandinavian symphonic black metal bands such as Limbonic Art, Dimmu Borgir and Emperor rather adequately even though its not direct copycatism on display here all the typical elements are present. However where Veneficum stood out amongst the crowd of SBM clones is that their music was produced decently with all the instruments being audible whereas many bands in this genre constantly thrived solely on the synthesizers to draw attention.

Surely though the synths performed by founding member Antarktis are beyond exceptional with a keen sense of darkness and atmosphere in his work, but there’s a more beautiful side as well to this album whether it be during the main songs or the couple purely ambient tracks that grace this record. In any case its full on symphonic black metal keyboard work here just like your favorite Scandinavian bands were doing before them and whether or not that's a good or bad thing is entirely up to you.

The guitar work of Aric and Chris is exceptional with plenty of perfectly audible and catchy headbanging riffs as well as a few well placed guitar solos. The drums, bass and lead vocals are handled by G. Reymond and although his drumming mostly consists of blastbeats there are some interesting fills here and there as well plenty of drum rolls, while his bass work is audible, but doesn't make a dramatic overall impact on the work, but its his vocals that I've always admired which bring this record to extra levels of excellence. He screams with a screechy throat lacerating howl, occasional low growls as well as a few spoken parts which just seem to work perfectly with the music on this album.

In the end, 'Enigma Prognosis' is over seventy minutes in length through eleven different songs and although I wont claim it to be better then their Scandinavian heroes it is along with fellow American Symphonic Black Metalers, Vesperian Sorrow, some of the finer sounding SBM 'round these parts.

Throughout Veneficum's history, which dates back to 1999, the band has had constant line-up issues, but it seems after a huge delay they finally got a steady crew together and released their second album, 'In Tranquil Absurd' late last year, which definitely makes me curious to hear.