Artist: Sargeist
Country: Finland
Label: W.T.C. Productions
Format: CD
Year: 2025
Yes, we are late to the party. After all, the latest Sargeist record was already released at the end of May of this year. Obviously, this wasn’t a record that we carelessly cast aside, as both FelixS and I have a longstanding appreciation for one of the innovators of Finnish Black Metal. Despite starting to discuss the record at length immediately after release, it simply didn’t come to a review. Yet. Now it feels it is finally time to dissect the sixth born full-length, ‘Flame Within Flame’.
One undeniable reason for the delay, at least from my side, is that Sargeist underwent some significant change in personnel. In 2023, after the release of the ‘Transcendental Black Magic’ split with the Greeks of Serpent Noir, the band parted ways with bass player Gruft, drummer Abysmal and vocalist Profundus. A substantial shift, that reminded me of 2016, when long-term members Horns, Hoath Torog and Vainaja departed. This time around, the tandem of guitar player VJS and founder and band mastermind Shatraug responded by recruiting Spanish drummer Nur-i-siyah and bass player Spellgoth. While Spellgoth is a gifted multi-instrumentalist that plays for instance keyboards in Chamber of Unlight and guitar in Trollheim’s Grott, he is of course best known as vocalist for Horna. Yet in Sargeist, he does not assume that role, presumably because they wanted to avoid Horna and Sargeist to overlap too much. A wise choice. And thus, instead of Spellgoth it is Shatraug that, after appearing as vocalist on the demos in the early years of the band, has assumed the position of main vocalist once again, together with his guitar duties.
When Hoath Torog left the band, getting used to Profundus’ vocals wasn’t easy, and it certainly impacted my initial thoughts on ‘Unbound’, the first record with that new line-up. But on the ‘Death Veneration’ EP and in particular that ‘Transcendental Black Magic’ Split, he managed to thoroughly convince me he was the right man for the role. So obviously, the apparent shift in vocal styles is something to get used to about Sargeist anno 2024. Shatraug employs a hoarser, less varied vocal style that quite frankly needed some time to get used to. Now, many months and spins later, it feels I’m ready to fully appreciate ‘Flame Within Flame’.
The darkness, the yearning, the ingrained sadness, it has all been part of the Black Metal formula of Sargeist since the very first day. At face value, ‘Flame Within Flame’ is exactly what you would hope for in a new Sargeist record. Melancholy has always been their game, and their latest album has an incredibly deep sense of it. The opening track ‘An Eternal Dream Beyond the Accursed Portent’ immediately convinces with a strong, catchy subcutaneous melody that hooks into your brain from a first listen. And that catchiness is certainly one of the strongest qualities of the record. That sweeping yearning of the opening riff of ‘Incandescence of the Funeral Pyre‘, the pulsating shifts in ‘To the Mistress of Blackest Magic‘ or the wonderful meandering glory and strumming of ‘Behold, Our Temples Arise’ are just examples of songs on a record that can be considered uniformly impressive. Sargeist does so with an instrumentation that as a whole feels submissive to the melancholic beauty. Melodious without going to far, it is rather with subtlety that melodies crawl under your skin and go straight to the heart. In that sense, the more monotonous screams of Shatraug give the lurking melodies more space, allowing us to focus on the building tension is the riffs.
Going through the entire discography of the band working up to this review, it is evident that the immense quality has always been there. Yet out of the five albums the band released prior to ‘Flame Within Flame’, ‘Satanic Black Devotion’ and ‘Let the Devil In’ are by far the most memorable and evocative and my clear favorites. However, I’m very confident to say that with ‘Flame Within Flame’ they have managed to come awfully close. It’s a simply splendid exercise in melancholic Black Metal that shows once again that whatever adversities Sargeist may encounter, it only makes them stronger.
