Of Great Eternity is not my favorite Iscariot album (that would be Thy Dying Light), but this is the only one I have been fortunate enough to pick up recently. Even though this one is not my favorite it is still a damn fine album and captures the essence of what Judas Iscariot is about.
This is raw black metal, from the United States. When these albums first came out this style was almost exclusively limited to Scandinavia, particularly Norway. The fact that something of this quality was coming out of semi-rual Illinois of all places is quite unexpected.
The music that Judas Iscariot put out on Of Great Eternity is the perfect example of how you achieve more with less. The music is sloppy. The drums are out of sync with the guitars, there are missed notes all over the place, the tempo changes randomly when it feels like it shouldn't. This is just a mess to listen to... and it's glorious. The fact that the music is so unpolished only adds to the appeal of the music for me.
This is extreme music in more than one sense of the word. Black metal by it's nature is extreme, but you put in a harsh production and it adds to the extremity. On top of that you make it sound like the musicians are amateur, it only makes it less accessible. The riffs repeat over and over and over - for what seems like way longer than they should.
...I Filled with Woes of Passing Wind... goes on for six minutes, contains two riffs and no drums. It could have been disastrous, but it builds the atmosphere in such a way that those two riffs work their way into my brain and never leave. All the songs on Of Great Eternity are similar. The music is meant to drive people away, the ultimate fuck you to convention.
Judas Iscariot was only around for a few years. But in those few years Akhenaton managed to create some of the best black metal ever created in one of the most unlikely places on the planet. Fucking amazing band.
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