Subterranea editor Jonathan Selzer has a world exclusive listen to 3 tracks from the new Behemoth album!

As soon as we heard that Behemoth frontman Nergal was mixing his forthcoming album album, ‘Evangelion’ in London, we hotfooted it up to the Moloko Studios in Kentish Town to hear the fruits of his labours. Thanks to our genial host, we got to wrap our lugholes around three fully completed tracks, ‘Ov Fire And The Void’, ‘Shemaphorash’ and – a world exclusive, seeing as it was fresh off the desk when we got there – the album’s closing track ‘Lucifer’, based around a 100-year-old Polish poem written by one Tadeusz Micinski.

Our first, flabbergasted impression is that this is going to be huge step up from 2007’s ‘The Apostacy’, bringing in a new sense of space and dynamics alongside Behemoths’ classic, in-your-face militaristic barrage.

‘Ov Fire…’ destined to be the album’s first single, is a multi-faceted, carefully constructed monster, its series of rapid, convulsing riffs opening up into vast spaces as Nergal’s unmistakable forceful war chant brings a diabolical choir into its orbit, touches down in the rapid groove-ridden land of Smash Your Fucking Head In and then burns off its excess of testosterone with potent, Eastern-tinged riffs.

‘Shemaphorash’’s charged, gaping atmosphere builds up into colossal riffs as Nergal’s voice would make the god Mars sound like Woody Allen. Amidst another swathe of background, eerie voices a lighting-conducting lead breaks out, pushing until it gives way to the heaviest of rampages, Nergal chanting the song title until it dissolves into flurries of sitar.

Most surprising of all is album closer, ‘Lucifer’, finding Behemoth at their most atmospheric and atypical. With its doom-laden intro, this is the Polish death metallers finding utterly new ways to crush. A hyper-ventilating guitar break is driven on by a climbing wall of guitars for a weary but resolute ratcheting up of tension that paces itself on a slapping, far-from-blast groove and descends into all manner of cinematic effects before cutting off suddenly as if to snap you violently out of your trance.

This sounds as though ‘Evangelion’ is going to be Behemoth’s most far-reaching album yet, and we’re slavering in anticipation like a lion sniffing a cartload of Christians being delivered to its den.

Watch out, too, for a forthcoming Metal Hammer podcast with Nergal himself!

Behemoth will release ‘Evangelion’ through Nuclear Blast on August 10th.