Note from the start that 122 Stab Wounds is not your average black metal bands just because they're from Norway and because their music is laden with black metal traits. Norway mustered some mighty fine black metal bands but surely, Norway isn't the first country to have joined black and death metal. I know because at the time, the blasphemous Canadians and Australians were engaging with Satan at rapid pace, releasing records like ''Fallen Angel Of Doom'' or ''Vengeance War till Death''. But just because Norway didn't have any remarkable death metal acts to present, doesen't mean that they still can't deliver some dominant black/death metal, very well played and composed all around.
122 Stab Wounds deals with some of the less common attributes and elements involved in black/death. War metallers like grind up their captives ruthlessly with their raw incursions of primal, savage black metal with a death metal influence showing good prevalence. However, this band leans more on the death metal side and even adds some thrash crunchiness on top of it to spice things up. 122 Stab Wounds includes members of Forlorn and Gehenna, which are both quite convincing black/death acts. The riffs spastically incorprate furious death metal tremolo picking and crushing thrash metal stomping into them, and all of that raw power perfectly blends in with the bestial black metal atmosphere that roams over all the riffs. Tremolo picking has never sounded so serious, as the guitar tone is crisp and clean and the razor sharp tremolo bursts constantly sink into the listener's flesh, like raws of serrated sharp teeth clenching a prey by its neck. Despite all the dark atmosphere that it succesfully attains and the horrific landscape that it manages to produce, ''The Deity Of Perversion'' has a lot in stock in the energy department. All the riffs are played in forlorn sense, yet their bitterly sharp taste enables energy to spawn out of its veins.
As if all that wasn't sufficient, the music comes with more than just chainsaw ripping tremolos and vigorous bursts. Three songs on the album are weird ambients of some sort, so that leaves us with only seven proper songs. Fortunately, the number is quite adaquate considering that all the songs are quality ones, with little exception. Of course the guitars don't make up the whole anatomy of the album, and the album comes with an abundance of decorations to compliment the riffs well. The drumming is precise yet never that intense, and always keep a steady pace no matter how fast the riffs get. Some may find that intimidating or irritative but actually considering the album emphasizes on dark atmopsheres and mellow feelings as sort of a side attribute, it is actually quite the opposite. The riffs are quite melodious - the tremolos all played on the lower sections of the frets and the depressing feeling always on top of everthing. That's when the efficiency of the vocals kick in. The vocals are treuly perfect for this type of black metal, eerie rasps and incedibly low tones. I love the vocalist's shreiks and high-pitched growls on ''Holocaust Breed'', displaying both epicness and depression.
122 Stab Wounds are so obscure and no wonder. Over the years they have been crushed and stumbled upon numerous times, all thanks to the abnormal fame that the Norwegian black metal masters have. This album is a stellar burried treasure that I myself found out totally by luck, and I'm even luckier that the internet provides all sorts of information, and hopefully bands like this and many were more that were lost in time will be discovered once more. Though before you start your search, I would like to warn you as the band changed into the name The Deviant, shortly after their annihilation.
Highlights
''Divided Thoughts''
''Hunting Humans''
''The Torture Art''
Final Rating
Almost a Masterpiece [8.9/10]
