Glorior Belli - "Meet Us At The Southern Sign

About.com Rating

The Bottom Line

Raw, uncompromising black metal that isn’t just a wall of distorted noise, soaring above most clichés the genre is known for.



Pros

• Raw production helps to maintain dark atmosphere.
• Band works well with many different tempos.

Cons

• Heavy on the instrumental tracks in the first half.
• Drags a bit at a few select moments near the end.

Description

• Released June 2, 2009 on Candlelight Records.
• Glorior Belli’s third album.

• Recorded over a three-week period.

Guide Review - Glorior Belli - 'Meet Us At The Southern Sign'

With their third album Meet Us At The Southern Sign, French black metal band Glorior Belli has once again given the listener a VIP pass to a tour through the inner circles of Hell, with Satan as the head guide. Not content to sticking to just constant blastbeats and rapid distorted guitar riffs, Glorior Belli adds elements of doom and sludge metal to their sound. This in turn adds a dark, mid-paced tempo to the majority of the album, a speed the band seems comfortable with.

Meet Us At The Southern Sign is drenched in atmosphere, as dread and hopelessness lay beyond every twist and turn. Since their 2005 debut Ô Laudate Dominvs, Glorior Belli has come into their own as songwriters, creating something that sounds fresh and dynamic. Songs like “Fires Of The Sitra Ahra,” “In A Blood Red Moon,” and “There Is But One Light” work wonders due to the evil blend of Infestvvs’s raspy growls, stellar guitar interplay, and multi-faceted drumming.

The album clocks in near the 50-minute mark, but Glorior Belli keeps the momentum strong throughout. The only major drawback on Meet Us At The Southern Sign is that the first half leans heavily towards instrumental tracks that are adequate mood builders, but ultimately just add unnecessary padding to the album. The band pulls it together in the end with the almost eight-minute epic title track, a slow burner turning into a full-on demented jam session that fades into a fiery oblivion.

Glorior Belli is fast becoming one of the big players in modern black metal, a band not afraid to step outside of the box and create music that isn’t as one-dimensional as a lot of contemporary black metal. Meet Us At The Southern Sign isn’t perfect, but there are moments throughout the album that affirms that Glorior Belli has what it takes to one day write their magnum opus.