The latest slab of black metal from Belgium’s Enthroned is pretty much what you would expect from this band - a crushing, razor-sharp aural assault with excellent songwriting and top-notch musicianship. With Lord Sabathan having left the band a few years ago, Enthroned is now completely devoid of founding members, and while this album may not be quite up to the level of some of their earlier albums, it was certainly a pleasant surprise for me, with some pretty killer tracks.

After a couple listens you pretty much know what to expect; Pentagammaton is straightforward, fast and scathingly aggressive black metal. Constant blasting, infernal vocal screams and jagged melodies hidden in a storm of tremolo picking and frenzied riffing are the main components of most of the songs here. Fortunately, Enthroned are gifted enough songwriters to change things up every now and then. Songs like ‘Ornament of Grace’ and ‘Nehas’t’ throw in some brutal palm-muted chugging riffs to contrast with the barrage of tremolo-picked noise, while some other tracks mix in slower sections, nifty drum work or well-crafted lead work. Opener ‘The Vitalized Shell’ is particularly sinister, while the lengthy final track ‘Unconscious Minds’ is a hard-hitting, mid-paced song, kind of an unexpected way to finish up the album.

Vocalist Nornagest seems to be a point of contention among some of the band’s older fans, but I found his vocal work to be more than adequate. He uses a mid-range black metal scream with enough emotion and variation to give the songs some extra punch. Really I wasn’t expecting to like this album too much, because after awhile most aggressive black metal albums like this start to sound pretty similar, but Enthroned do an impressive job keeping the songs on Pentagrammaton from getting boring. If anything, the album felt a bit short despite its 41-minute running time.

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