My alarm bells go off each and every time a band needs to promote itself by summarising with which bands they have played live shows in the past. As if they can only prove their capability in naming bands such as Endstille and Dark Funeral. The same goes for the German black metal band Unlight who has recently released their fourth full length Death Consecrates With Blood.

Death Consecrates With Blood can be described as an old school black metal album, but I sense a hint of death metal in the music as well. That’s probably caused by the fact that the album is terribly repetitive in structure of the songs and therefore pretty boring. By the time you listen to 'The Passing of the Black Storms' you feel like you’ve heard it all before and that’s a pity, since especially this song has the best atmosphere and is the most challenging musical wise of all the tracks on the album. Also this song has the most variety in riffs, tempos and vocals, which are elements that are more or less kept constant in the other songs.

It’s clear Unlight does try to make the tracks on their album worthwhile, but trying alone is of course not enough. During 'Becoming the Ungodly Sin' they put in some samples of church bells and a female having an orgasm. Look, Type O Negative can pull that off, but on Death Consecrates With Blood there’s no room for such additions, since it doesn’t complement the music at all.

For a fourth album, Unlight is not doing so well. If it was their first or second, I would mention potential to grow out into an interesting band. Unfortunately, they are still stuck at this level and they obviously don’t seem to be able to find the right path for Unlight to walk.