Review by Jeger
Flame – Ignis Draconis Daemonicus
Record Label: Primitive Reaction
Year: 2026
Rating: 9.5/10
Satan – The Dragon… A spirit as old as time; one that predates any Abrahamic religion. The great Faustian spirit! A spirit of power, passion, strength and knowledge. Draconian Current – Typhonian Tradition – to stream with what is known as Draconian Current, one must be adept in magick and experienced in the Dark Arts or else chaos will ensue. There are a number of Occult-powered Black Metal projects whose players are also Practitioners and the idea of Satan – The Dragon along with the practices involving Draconian Current have been detailed with much fervor by bands such as Greece’s Serpent Noir with their “Death Clan OD” LP (Serpent Noir’s Yiannis Ktls is a member of the Swedish Cult Dragon Rouge) and fellow Grecians, Acherontas alongside Sweden’s Ofermod and Poland’s Black Altar who released “Drakonian Elitism” in 2023 – a three way Split LP created in honor of The Dragon and in reverence to Draconian practices and the strength therein.
Now, as the blackest Suomi night takes hold in the land of Winter, overstaying its welcome. From within the hallowed Halls of the ever-fertile Finnish Black Metal Underground emerges Flame – ambassadors of both Black Metal and Occultism who began their scourge in 1998 during the onset of the New Wave of Black Metal that saw the birth of bands such as fellow Finns, Satanic Warmaster, Sargeist and Azaghal; placing them in fine company indeed. A Thrash-inspired band like Norway’s Svarttjern, but not quite enough to constitute the Black/Thrash label. True Finnish Thrash-inspired BM and on September 25, Flame released “Ignis Draconis Daemonicus” via Primitive Reaction.
Flame
Calculated, air-tight and lethal… Like a mass shooting being administered by a Navy Seal. Blasts rain, double-bass currents like .50 Cal. Machine Gun rounds tear through your psyche in the same way that a Chimpanzee will tear through your genitalia. Just a merciless onslaught until the following track, “Spellfire”, takes its looser, groove-driven grip. The definition of a banger, man. Trying not to gush. Influences ranging from Gorgoroth and Tsjuder, with a touch of old-school Kreator, provide depth in both style and era. The latter rears its ghastly head throughout the entirety of “Mystical Voice of My Demon Master”…
Behold now as the promise of storm holds the night in suspense as ritual’s whisper binds in spell the innermost workings of the Eve – the relinquishing of oneself over to the darkness complete. A ritualistic soliloquy: rain-drenched and utterly enchanting. Just before the aggression of a hundred Panzers unleashed and tearing through the Countryside; bullets blazing and cannons fucking blasting unfolds. Sonic warfare in the form of “Sethanic Sorcery” – a deadly alternation between galloping grooves and more of those precision riffing patterns set to yet another myriad of highly sophisticated yet devastatingly powerful percussive arrangements – keeps you rock hard and locked in. Save some for the next album, boys! Setting the bar high, Flame and reaching the mark that they themselves established here with “Ignis Draconis Daemonicus” will no doubt prove to be a challenge. And finishing fucking strong…
The title-track takes us out to some epic compositions, some mid-tempo’d torque and it’s upon Dragon’s wing we ascend! A song of alchemy and of summoning, of ancient powers and of necromancy. Musically, a patient affair but sweeter than Yoo-hoo: just hammering the riffs, bellowing out the olde Heathen chants and draping it all in velvety melody. Piano… Storm… Dragon… The End.
The Occult is a vast interwoven network of different ideological entities that when explored, can send you spiraling in many different spiritual directions, so I will not say that “Ignis Draconis Daemonicus” has much of anything to do with my personal understanding of The Dragon, but it’s the spirit that binds: the baseline, the current, the tradition. For Devil worship or for Luciferian enlightenment! For storm or for starlit nights, it’s upon the ancient spirit of rebellion, of rage and of ecstasy where we draw our vitality. A true-to-its-core Satanic Black Metal record that you will listen to time and time again. Hail!