Anyone even remotely familiar with these monolithic Polish brutalists should well know what to expect from the band's latest album, "The Apostasy". For years now BEHEMOTH have focused their considerable collective efforts on crafting definitive, unrelenting, unhinged technical insanity permeated by the unsettling essence of an evil far more ancient and oppressive than any modern concept of Hell could invoke. The music herein is the next step, carrying the listener that much farther into the darkest depths of the abyss, through blood soaked landscapes of godless decay, desiccated and ravaged by the brutal, malevolent wind where BEHEMOTH stalks its prey on blasphemy's black wings.

In a continuation of 2004's "Demigod" album, the overt brutality and technical composition of the songs remains heartily intact, but there is an elevated emphasis on a heathenistic, unholy atmosphere instilled through eerie chants, orchestral chaos and morose choral incantations, well placed throughout to enhance the unshakable sensation of having just come face to face with evil incarnate. When fused with the furious, blindingly frenetic yet crushingly groovy guitar bombasts of Nergal and Seth, Orion's skull rattling bass thrums, Nergal's instantly distinct, vicious vocal vehemence and the ever-constant, pummeling barrage of masterful drumming by one of Extreme Metal's most dynamic icons, Inferno, the result is, as has been the case with this band for many a year now, a first hand education in the true meaning of heretical brutality; a brutality so infinitely dominant that it cannot be truly fathomed until one has been baptized in the flames at the hands of BEHEMOTH.

With "The Apostasy" BEHEMOTH have managed to surpass most of their previous efforts, with the likely exception of "Zos Kia Cultus" and perhaps "Satanica", manifesting their distinct musical mastery in particularly succinct invocations like "Be Without Fear", whose driving riff, accompanying solos and insane drum delivery make for the most neck thrashing, bone breaking composition since the legendary "No Sympathy For Fools". "Libertheme" is another exceptional offering of fret ravaging fury of the highest order, and the band truly expand their ability to channel the essence of purest evil through "Inner Sanctum", due in no small part to the vocal presence of NEVERMORE's Warrel Dane, whose unique sound is an ideal vehicle of nether worldly possession that plunges the music farther into the depths of deepest evil than even BEHEMOTH has ever been before.

"The Apostasy", this renunciation of religious faith and denouncement of its tenets, is a pinnacle of achievement and an ideal reference point of penultimate brutality both in essence and in form, further solidifying the indisputable fact that BEHEMOTH are worthy marshals of malice in this paganistic parade down "Christgrinding Avenue". "Drag me through the mud, blind my whitening eyes, that I may see darkness in the tunnels ov light."