BEHEMOTH

The Shit Ov God

For decades, Behemoth has meticulously crafted its legacy in the space of twisted blackened extreme metal into something feral and unforgiving. That being said, it’s hard to ignore the creeping sense of predictability over the last few albums. Despite their undeniable craftsmanship and incredibly massive reach, the songs often unfold in familiar shapes—measured tempos, theatrical peaks, and neatly structured crescendos have been the rule of the day. What was once vomited out like a demon purging centuries of bile onto a burning altar eventually segued into Thelema.6 reimagined as yoga class ambience. The inferno became a smoulder, carefully tended for safe consumption. At the end of the day, it’s an impossible task to summon darkness from a stage lit by spotlights.

The band’s thirteenth studio album, The Shit Ov God, has poised itself to become the beast that claws its way back into chaos, rediscovering the primal force that made them such a threat to begin with. This isn’t just a return to form—it’s a relapse into violence. The album title alone is a heretic’s psalm, spat in the face of orthodoxy. It’s heresy with purpose—designed to offend, disrupt, and unmask, both musically and thematically. This return to savagery is sanctified by the sonic alchemy of Jens Bogren (Emperor, Kreator, Enslaved), whose production isn’t just another polishing of Nergal’s knob—it serves to consecrate the chaos, with every sear-marked riff and sacrificial roar anointed in ash… a sacred rite birthed in flame and filth. ‘Sowing Salt’ begins with a crushing Morbid Angel-like riff, which then gives way to some off-kilter, punk-infused black metal that is not dissimilar to Peste Noire‘s ‘Le Dernier Putsch’. In fact, there is a riff and vocal pattern in the song that is so similar that I can’t help but think Nergal included it as an homage to the controversial French black metal band.

By this point, it’s clear that this is no mere album, but a summoning—songs such as ‘Lvciferaeon’, ‘Nomen Barbarvm’, and ‘ O, Venvs Come!’ convulse like the brutal-yet-refined compositions found on the band’s 2004 masterpiece, Demigod. While other tracks, such as ‘To Drown The Svn In Wine’, feel burdened by the weight of ancestral gloom, with Nergal’s shrieks reverberating like a frost giant’s melancholic howl echoing across frozen plains long abandoned by the gods. The album’s final track, ‘Avgvr (The Dread Vvltvre)‘, is the closest you are going to get to a full-on second wave of Norwegian black metal song from contemporary Behemoth. The result is less like a tribute and more akin to a ritual reawakening. As with this song and much of the album, when the guys strip away the pomp and circumstance, there exists a frostbitten and glacial-like sound at their core. The riffs here shatter like frozen relics—less performative, more pestilent.

The Shit Ov God is an album that refuses to be embalmed in its own legacy. For Nergal and his blasphemous brethren, it’s evident that the path forward is no longer one of ascension and accolades, but transgression; a declaration that soul rot and artistic cannibalism equate to death, and only flames and hellfire can warm what’s gone cold. When you are as iconic as Behemoth, each new rite must spill more blood than the last, or risk being thrown into the pit of imitators—forgotten bones in a temple long lost to the ages. The Shit Ov God acknowledges this burden, and rather than ride a wave of past glories, they’ve dug deep into the lore of their respective genre and have awakened a primordial force, writhing with the ecstasy of forsaken divinity.