This review has been a long time coming. For some reason or another it's taken me an absurd amount of time to get to writing it – not because Initiates Of The Great Work is a bad album, it isn't by any stretch of the imagination. It's more that it is just as dense and intricate as its wonderful album art would suggest. Initiates Of The Great Work is an incredible triumph of a record, an album that comes out with stunning solos, blazing drum beats and simply kickass riffs. Flashy, grim, demented, tortured and good enough to make a grown man cry, Quinta Essentia are coming for your skull. It's impossible to deny yourself of the high powered blackened death metal magic at hand. There is simply so much good stuff to pick apart and Initiates Of The Great Work makes it clear from the first track that you need to commit at least three or four listens to fully appreciate all that the band has pulled together.
What I love about Initiates Of The Great Work is the sheer scope of it. This is an album that pulls together a little bit of everything. It shows us dark moments of black metal fury but also counterbalances that with all manner of inspiring clean vocalled passages and thrilling guitar parts. It's an album that keeps you on the edge of your seat in a time when most metal is boring. That is not to say that Quinta Essentia are really setting up any new paradigms, they are just doing what they do, but doing it really fucking well. They have apparently mastered every aspect of their very unique and very weird blackened death metal polemic, so every song flows elegantly from start to finish, and though a few tracks might feel a bit too long, or a tad cheesy it's hard not to be impressed. It makes me wonder what this band could be capable of with more funding behind them. As good as the album is I feel like the production suffers here and there. Still – it's an impressive listen and one that is greatly improved by headphones There are a lot of layers here and Quinta Essentia are the rare metal band who would be truly fascinating to hear with an orchestra.
So come with me and get lost in Initiates Of The Great Work. I love hearing incredibly ambitious metal albums. It reminds me of the bombast that this kind of music is supposed to have. Quinta Essentia are clearly enamored with the burning flame of the Northern gods, and they will take you on a journey with them. They borrow from every era of heavy metals diverse and storied history in order to refine something magical. Initiates Of The Great Work is a stone cold stunner from a band who have been building up to creating a monstrosity like this for a decade. They understand the wonderful insanity of heavy metal and the raw potential and magic of the genre. They understand the raw darkness that draws so many of us back year after year. So come into a world of great secrets, potent spells, and travail so epic that none dare name it.
Score: 8/10
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