(Here is NCS writer DGR’s take on the assembly of songs released by Behemoth, Massacre Records, and Nuclear Blast in September under the title of I, Scvlptor.)
Even though yours truly is personally knee-deep in slowly trudging through a backlog that is forever growing for a series of articles that have rapidly spun out of control, one cannot take a fully ascetic approach to music and its releases.
The difficulty that arises in reviewing stuff from months ago is that there are always options and things to explore that’ve come out more recently, and sometimes the distraction is enough to reset one’s brain and get the gears back in motion.
Subject matter is just as important and sometimes the theory is simple: If it caused my brain to wander and wonder about the music therein, it might be a source of good discussion, and even though it may seem like all the reams in the world have run dry of their ink and all discussions have been had, Behemoth and their continual artistic pursuits is something that people seem to love to talk about.
Photo: Grzegorz Gołębiowski
Any band that has seen a long and healthy career likely has a few EPs to their name in the vein of Behemoth’s newest release I, Scvlptor. A gathering of material from all areas of the group’s career; a few live cuts, a demo, some newer songs, a re-recording of early work, all united and tenuously tied together under the overall EP umbrella.
Bands will use EPs for a smorgasbord of reasons, from experimentation to future teases to resurrection of an older style, but like mentioned above, any band with a long-running career likely has an EP in the same vein as Behemoth’s latest offering, one constructed largely for completionists, leaving little on the table from a previous album’s sessions and adding a neat addendum to the halfway point of a prior album’s life cycle.
I, Scvlptor is constructed out of a variety of different building blocks to be jammed together for forty minutes of overall music. The probable selling point for most people will be the small collective of “new” songs hailing from the previous album’s sessions, but Behemoth have seen fit to smash a couple of reimagined early works into the mix as well as two cover songs, though the choice made in regard to one of them is suitably bizarre in the terms of what is actually on offer.
Behemoth include a rough mix of the second song on I, Scvlptor as well, at the end of the EP, for those who are interested in hearing a song in its most embryonic form, but an initial pass of it – other than the initial acknowledgement that yes, it is the same song, just a lot less sheen to it – only seemed to reveal that it is one second shorter. But hey, I, Scvlptor then gets to be eight songs long and isn’t that fun for some sort of occult silliness somewhere?
What if we then take I, Scvlptor and expand it out into its separate parts? We can create a neat little diagram of the EP as a whole with the pieces broken off into their own spheres – because in all honestly, like we’ve mentioned above, this is an EP that is riveted together out of unheard songs, re-recordings, and live songs, so the overall sequencing is easily tossed into traffic the way one would discard a gas station soda cup in favor of adding new material to the overall count.
This is expressly good for those who love to put a whole discography on shuffle, or if you’re more mercenary, for those who want to pick out three to four songs they feel would complete an album. While a little underwhelming, Behemoth’s The Shit Ov God with three more songs from the I, Scvlptor EP is neither hurt nor helped by the added time. If anything it is reflective of how Behemoth have found a solid median this deep in their career; they aren’t going to blow the doors off blackened death metal these days but moving along at a “steadily enjoyable to occasionally great” is a decent form of existence.
Behemoth and Amon Amarth both having new releases in 2026 is a fun coincidence, as both bands have become consistently good gateways into the deeper worlds of extreme metal. Obviously inhabiting different reaches of said extreme metal gate, given their differing genres and artistic targets, both bands’ continued existence on the good-to-great scale has allowed them far wider reach than one would’ve initially expected as the bands came to prominence in the early-aughts.
They exist now to shock and surprise those new to the genre just as much as they make enjoyable music for those of us who’ve long lost perspective as to what is heavy for those who don’t live, breathe, and die this sort of music. For us, Behemoth and Amon Amarth releases have evolved into pleasant if unchallenging listens, in a weird inverse on the usual metal-music-to-listener relationship, relaxing in a way. It is a known quantity and we mostly know what we’re in for.
The foundations of their sound long ago poured and turned to solid concrete. That doesn’t mean the groups are incapable of getting a furious mosh pit or a good circle headbang that en masse could dry off a large buffalo after it fell into a lake, but the initial novelty of these bands being so stunningly dedicated to their sound has long passed.
“I, Scvlptor” is the latest evolution and issuance from Nergal as a frontman, which has seen him blazing a path positioning him as mad preacher, exhorting to the world the greatness of the dark, full of self-aggrandizement and zealotry. The idea of Behemoth as bulldozer has long been past and in its place is a creature born of their The Satanist release: Mid-tempo stomp and massive-sounding guitar chug.
Straightforward and simple to understand on a lyrical front, “I, Scvlptor” is an introductory Behemoth course. If “I, Scvlptor” and its hypnotic pacing is your first exposure to the band then you have a bevy of treasure available to you, as songs like “I, Scvlptor” have been the Behemoth staple for a decade-plus at this point.
“Begotten” – midway through this EP – takes a similar tact but is perhaps more interesting by virtue of its being uptempo and more ferocious from the start of the song. Both of these songs have roots in The Shit Ov God’s recording sessions, so the twisted melody that winds its way through the song or the overall hard-charging approach of the song will be familiar to anyone experienced with Behemoth’s release last year. The reasoning for a song living on an album remains nebulous as ever, as these two would’ve slotted in well alongside the rest of that album – the punchy, punk-rock snare would’ve been welcome amidst the wider run of the album if not just to turn heads.
Perhaps more interesting are the two re-records and one brand new song contained within I, Scvlptor. “Lord Ov The Horizons” is interesting for being a much wilder swing than you might expect from Behemoth. Noses may be upturned at the presence of clean vocals, but EPs have often wound up as experimental ground, so a song such as “Lord Ov The Horizons” has a little more leeway to be delightfully strange; the song even contains actual black metal rasps for a few brief seconds in its introductory moments.
Behemoth close out this EP by including a rough-mix of the song as well, if you’re curious about its more primordial state. It’s not the biggest overall change; if anything it will likely cause people to double-take if they’ve let their attention drift before you realize that it’s the second song from the EP again in rougher form.
“Rise Of The Blackstorm Of Evil” and “In Thy Pandemaeternvm” are re-recorded takes of much earlier Behemoth songs, updated to bring them in line with how Behemoth approach their music now. They’re both interesting because they diverge so much via the benefit of higher-budget production and pacing than their earlier razorblade-and-scraps incarnations.
You’d never guess either were a couple of decades old when they lay within the collective of I, Scvlptor. “In Thy Pandemaeternvm” in its newest metamorphosis is welcome if not just to hear Behemoth descend into unceasing blastbeat territory for a bit, which given the sort of steady and slow mesmerizing speed the bulk of the songs on this EP have, breathes some vitality into it until you reach the cover songs portion.
Behemoth are no stranger to cover songs, and while there’s been the occasional misfire, for the most part they’ve done well in bending a song to their will. The two tackled here have by circumstance become oddly more relevant than one would’ve initially guessed when recording them.
Photo: Kobaru
What was initially a testimony to the greatness of Venom’s “In League With Satan” now becomes a tribute as well, given Cronos’ recent passing, with the song itself receiving the full corpsepaint brush treatment and guest vocals from Dimmu Borgir’s Shagrath for an expanded and rumbling take on the song. The core of “In League With Satan” is hard to deny to begin with; if anything the bigger surprise is that one might wonder how long the idea of tackling the song was sitting on Behemoth’s desk. It seemed an almost natural fit by title alone.
The same could be said of the cover of Bathory’s “The Return Of Darkness And Evil” which appears in live form here, allowing Rotting Christ’s Sakis Tolis to join the band on vocals. There is a studio take on the song that has been out for a bit, as it served duty as the theme song for this years Mystic Festival.
If anything, Behemoth’s cover surfaces just how much “The Return Of Darkness and Evil” can be bent to sound as if it were a blasphemous take on Motörhead’s “Overkill”. As fun as it is to hear one of the most distinctive voices in black metal as Sakis blast through each verse of the song, it’s still difficult to tell whether the studio version would’ve been preferable just to have the low-end available to you in the song.
While it is basically a neon sign blasting your vision by this point and we’ve hammered on it over and over, an EP like I, Scvlptor is going to make completionists the happiest. The multi-pronged direction in which this EP travels across three different ideas puts it in jack-of-all-trades territory. Anyone coming to this EP will likely walk away with two or three songs they really enjoy, and the Behemoth faithful will find plenty to appreciate in the newest addendum to The Shit Ov God.
It’s not a world-rending take on Behemoth’s music though, just a solid collection of “more of it”. I, Scvlptor won’t change minds – or piss off my spellcheck any less at this point – but it will solidify the idea that current-day Behemoth remains an enjoyable gateway into a wider world of darkness and destruction in music form. Perhaps the mask and spectacle make them into fantastic pied pipers. Either way, Behemoth’s I, Scvlptor is a good example of having a little something for everyone.
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