Now Lord Belial is not what I would label masterful black metal, and The Black Curse adds fuel towards the fire, if you will. The group reflects their modernized gimmicks mainly upon super-clean production, which appropriately steals raw riffs into enchanted slices, dirty drumming traded for triggered percussion, and vocals screeching over all. Even worse, most of the riffs are generic chops made of tremolo picking and boring notions that feature melody above everything else. Also, this record's cuts seem stuck on predictable alterations; makes for a good game if you are bored. I actually nailed a change during "Inexorable Retribution" without any previous listens. Anyway, Lord Belial has declined a bit with these selling points, and now they appear to be following other feeble acts like…Dimmu Borgir, maybe? Where are the Highlights? We have one song---"Trumpet of Doom," without a doubt. Anything else? Sorry, the store is closed.
Sometimes though, it seems Lord Belial wants nothing more than that place in Valhalla, and what happens when those nice thoughts begin tickling your brain? Well, semi-disaster, in Lord Belial's case. Do we honestly need vocal chants during "Antichrist Reborn," or have substance stripped down from random piano interludes? No, we do not. In fact, it seems these instances run The Black Curse from the shadows, always popping up right as the band turns around on positive perimeters, just so those annoyances can punch us all in the nose until bleeding inaugurates. Lord Belial should have just established a nice agenda; instead, our gentlemen went too far with unneeded philosophies.