KALI YUGA BIZARRE

"Kali Yuga Bizarre" is the debut full-length studio album by Italian black metal act Aborym. The album was released through Scarlet Records in April 1999. While an Italian black metal act coming out of nowhere usually didn´t turn heads, the case is a bit different with Aborym, as "Kali Yuga Bizarre" features the vocal services of prolific Hungarian vocalist Attila Csihar (on three tracks). At that point former vocalist of Tormentor and more notably Norwegian legends Mayhem. Such a stunt is always bound to attract attention.

The music on "Kali Yuga Bizarre" is black metal with symphonic sounding synths. The drums are programmed but are overall pretty well programmed and suits the music well. The vocals are raspy and delivered in a convincing manner. The material are generally of a decent quality, but it´s an album featuring little material that stick out. The production is raw but not too raw and primitive. The synths provide the polish that means the album isn´t really raw sounding. The lyrics more or less cover the usual occult/anti-Christian subjects that most black metal acts cover (with an occassional added Hindi theme though in tracks like "Wehrmacht Kali Ma" and "Tantra Bizarre"), which is also obvious when reading songtitles like "Horrenda Peccata Christi", "Darka Mysteria" and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus".

The musicianship are on a decent level too and "Kali Yuga Bizarre" is upon conclusion a pretty good release by Aborym. It´s not exactly an album that makes my blood boil, but it´s an alright start to Aborym´s career. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.