Metal Underground.com

Sathanas is an old-school metal band that has eight full-length releases to its credit and has been around since the '80s, yet remains relatively unknown in the scope of things. It's quite ironic, but maybe that's the way the band likes it. They promised they would never compromise their sound and continue to churn out underground blackened thrash, and with their new one, "La Hora de Lucifer," they remain true to their word. Can you picture them any other way?

With the predecessor and the new album, Sathanas has been progressively heading towards faster, thrasher-overload territory. "La Hora de Lucifer" quickens the pace from previous efforts, without diluting the rawness quotient or inundating the songs with too many blast beats. My personal favorites would be the title track and "Dark Conjurings," which have a more down-tempo feel and incorporate a variety of bridges to keep the songs flowing interestingly. From the punctuated leads to the stomping rhythm of these songs, it is easy to see why Sathanas is a prime example of the USBM scene. They invoke a very primitive, yet structured, sound that has its origins in early black metal.

Sometimes Paul Tucker's vocals, which have that higher pitched demonic wail, get mixed a bit too high over the guitars and rhythm. He has the type of voice that maintains a similar key during most of the songs and sounds best when shrouded by the music. His pitch is perfect with the more retro-sounding '80s numbers like "Engraved in the Book of Death," a really primitive outing of evil proportions. When you can take a song like "Forged in Eternal Fire" and segue it between a Bathory and a Darkthrone tune without missing a beat, you've captured the essence.

Sathanas doesn't try anything truly new, but continues a tradition of playing what people expect of them. In terms of speed, there are tracks like "Hammer of Demons" and "Blackest Hate" that regulate the rhythm in a more catchy flow, and others like "Battle of Bewitchment" that take accented, quick leads and break up all the thrashing with them. Other songs, such as "Nocturnal Reign," convey their message by clobbering out the pace in an all-out assault.

"La Hora de Lucifer" has plenty of moments of redundancy between one song to the next, making the memorability factor a bit lower on the less intricate songs. This is bound to happen with the songwriting in any of the extreme genres; however, Sathanas followers would drop like flies if they tried something too newfangled. They have put out another pretty solid slab of evil that listeners have come to expect of the band.