DECAYED - Hexagram

\r\nDecayed (formely Decay) comes from Portugal and the band was born in August 1990 playing at the time a mix of Black, Thrash and Speed Metal. After a demo ‘…Thus Revealed’ in 1992 and a 7”EP ‘The Seven Seals’, they released their splendid debut CD ‘The Conjuration of the Southern Circle’, which demonstrated a sound advancement further into the realm of Black Metal and being the greatest Black Metal release ever made in Portugall. The future looked promising yet departures and lineup changes (JM, their vocalist and bass player and JB, perhaps the finest and fastest drummer in the Portuguese Underground at the time left the band) within this great up-and-coming band caused an irreparable damage in the natural development of the group. Until now they have released about 27 recordings most of them Split CDs/LPs and singles and never completely lost the underground status. "Hexagram" is their seventh full length album. Their sound approaches clearly the old school black metal with lots of pure blastbeat fireworks, double bass attacks and dirty sounding guitars while there are also plenty of mid-tempo resets and even some doomish moments incorporated from time to time. Also at some points they approach a more thrashy attitude and DISASTER, DARKTHRONE, (old) IMPALED NAZARENE are some of the names that could describe their music. I should mention also that after the departure of JB they never really found a replacement and they only use drum machine for the gigs and their recordings a fact that for many caused the lack of their original tremendous power in the early days along with the absence of JM’s impressive black metal vocals. Advancing again to the album there is also the addition of a few keyboard parts that however keep a very low and insignificant role in their sound. Overall, "Hexagram" is a nice black metal piece of work, far from calling it a masterpiece but surely a strong sample of what this band could really have accomplished if they were more lucky in terms of a steady full time lineup. \r\n

\r\n

\r\nVaso Prassa \r\n

\r\n