Metal Underground.com

Black metal has spread far and wide in the long years since its inception, rooting itself in every nook and cranny of the metal underground. From a particularly dark and fog-ridden nook in the Turkish underground comes Zifir, a project from Onur Önok and Onur Sülen who have joined forces from various other underground Turkish bands. The result is ten tracks (including intros) of homage to black metal in "personal, musical and doctrinal terms" - make no mistake, Zifir means business.

Although intros are normally all but an annoyance most of the time through "You Must Come With Us," opener "Interrior" portrays the darkness and obscure malice that only black metal can, and the genuinely dark air sees Zifir off to a good start. It's nice to see that musical darkness can stand on it's own without any fire breathing or forest posturing.

On to the guts of the album: it is clear Zifir isn't looking to redefine black metal on this release. "You Must Come With Us" provides a fairly meat and potatoes approach. The line Zifir straddles is closer to the melancholic French black metal sound rather than a brutal Norwegian approach, but either way it's the blueprint we all know and love. In this way Zifr can at least be likened to Mutiilation or Darkthrone, so don't expect an overly melodious affair.

Notably though, "You Must Come With Us" sits at a fairly mid-ranged pace throughout, which is unfortunately a real killer. As the material plods along you can't help but wonder why you should listen to this over any other black metal clone, or why in the world you'd want to listen to a clone band at all. It's not until towards the end that they pick up the pace on "4," where Zifir strangles out some originality with some speed and haunting vocals. While in each song you can hear efforts to pull themselves out of the endless sea of modern black metal bands, the feeling of "been there, done that" is one that permeates the release. If you've heard black metal, then you've heard Zifir. In that light, there's literally nothing wrong with this album - the vicious vocals are actually great, the riffs are mostly solid and enjoyable and everything else seems to sit where it should. However, in today’s metal world memorability and originality are oversights that can't be easily forgiven.