(1)     Intro only – not applicable...

(2)     Atmospheric sound / drags a bit / heavy...

(3)     “Busy” sound...

(4)     See above

(5)     Cool Jazzy beginning... Mathcore-like technicality but drags towards the end...

(6)     Mostly nothing more than an instrumental...

(7)     ?? (BORING / EMPTY... WTF?!)

(8)     See above

(9)     Ditto

(10) Industrial vibe / “busy” sound / abrupt time changes...

(11) Instrumental only...

(12) Very heavy/intense at start... drags later on...

(13) Great song! More mid-paced with effective mix of male & female vocals a la THERION...

Those are the notes I jotted down whilst listening to NAUMACHIA’s latest album “Callous Kaghatos”. As you can see I wasn’t all that impressed with what I heard and my initial impression persisted even after numerous listens. Now, I’ve been painting these past few days and in the process I have inhaled a rather inordinate amount of spray-paint fumes, not the best thing I’m sure as I’ve been coughing like a beast and feeling fuzzy in the head ever since. The absence of a mask may have slowed my usually perfect cerebral functions (ha!) but I know a shoddy album when I hear it and this album is way shoddy. “Callous Kaghatos” features that typical Polish sound – shitloads of synths, keys, clear and harsh vocals, a bit of Death, a bit of Black, and two hundred metric tons of “spooky” sound effects.

Yeah, it’s solidly produced and all very tight but at the end of the day this album is all flash and no substance. There’s just too much going on here and barring a few instances of promise (“Centurion”, “Deadly Threshold”) most of it doesn’t make the songs any better. During its better moments this album isn’t that far off from what SEPTIC FLESH and ZYKLON are doing but at its worst (which is 90% of the album) it comes off as a poor take on the VESANIA/LUX OCCULTA schtick. So all this really boils down to is this: buy this if you’re personal friends with the band members (to stroke their egos see...), otherwise avoid this like the plague.

(Online July 17, 2008)