UMUR
"Celebrate the Dead" is an EP release by Finnish black metal/dark ambient music act Beherit. The EP was released through Kvlt in May 2012. It bridges the gap between Beherit´s fifth full-length studio album "At the Devil's Studio 1990" (2011) and their sixth full-length studio album "Bardo Exist" (2020). As "At the Devil's Studio 1990" is in fact a re-release of Beherit´s until then unreleased debut album from 1990, "Celebrate the Dead" is more rightly a companion release to Beherit´s fourth full-length studio album "Engram" (2009).
The EP only features two tracks but they are both 13 minutes plus long. Both tracks are actually demo material solely recorded by Nuclear Holocausto Vengeance in July 2008 and a re-recorded version of "Demon Advance" would be included as the closing track on "Engram". This demo version of the track (which features a professional and well sounding production) is slightly more ambient than the version on "Engram", but it´s equally as heavy, doomy, and repetitive. The second track is the EP title track, and it´s a 16 minutes long track, which is also a slow, darkly atmospheric, doomy, and repetitive track. It´s blackened drone doom or something like that...It goes on and on and on without many changes, although keyboards are introduced (playing what almost sounds like a Depeche Mode keyboard theme) and the song becomes more and more layered and chaotic as the minutes go by. About 9 minutes in the song stops and a new ambient, dark, and minimalistic theme is introduced without distorted guitars and later some melancholic clean vocals kick in. The heavy riffs never return and the song ends after quite a few minutes of dark ambient music.
I can understand why Nuclear Holocausto Vengeance felt that there was enough quality here to warrant releasing these demo recordings as an EP, and if you enjoyed the heavy, doomy, and ambient atmospheric "Demon Advance" from "Engram" and want more of that from Beherit, "Celebrate the Dead" may be worth your time. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.