Year: 2024
Label: The Cursed Order/Folter Records/Korpituli Productions

Curse Upon A Prayer are one of those bands I’ve always seen mentioned and have heard vaguely positive comments about, but for some reason haven’t gotten around to checking. So when the digital promo landed in my inbox and I needed something in between bouts of hillbilly and western swing, I figured it’s high time to check these Finns out.

With a 14 year career and three previous albums under their belt, the Finns seem to have carved a small but stable niché for themselves. Not the biggest fish in the pond, not even the Finnish pond, but far from the smallest. And, I suppose, with that much experience under their belt, one is right to expect more than juvenile fumbling. Let’s dig in and see…

The album makes its entrance with a very nice, darkly gothic, neoclassical intro. I actually wouldn’t mind listening to more of this stuff. However, afore long, the album proper kicks in with speedy drumwork and sawing, melodic guitars. The first few minutes of the album introduce its core elements: fierceness combined with melody.

The sawing tremolo riffs are indeed quite melodic. But The Worship: Orthoprax Satanism isn’t just melodic; it’s outright light.

I realize I need to expand upon the above. What I mean by this is simply that though possessing all the usual trappings of black metal, some of the melodies on the album clearly nod in the direction of far lighter forms of extreme metal. Blood Poetry wouldn’t be out of place on a gothic metal album; for example, Cradle Of Filth. The vocals even remind me of Dani Filth on this track. At other times, there are nods to melodic death metal – maybe not quite In Flames, but a bit of earlier Amon Amarth maybe. Worship I: Patior could almost be a track lifted from some early noughties dark metal artist like, I dunno, Throes Of Dawn.

The Crade Of Filth comparisons run deeper than just the one track, but that one is pretty blatantly, uh, cradleoffilthey. There’s a certain dramatic, theatralic nature to The Worship, which is not at all dissimilar to what the British vampires do. This is offset by lots of classic black metal elements, and a distinct lack of synths. And versatile vocal work, which is decidedly rawer than anything Dani Filth has done in years.

I’m a bit torn about the end result. There are moments when I find myself really digging the album. A lot of the time, Curse Upon A Prayer combine the gothic flair of drama of Cradle Of Filth and the occasional melodeath melody with rather traditional black metal quite skillfully. On the other hand, with the tracks being rather winding pieces consisting of multiple parts, at times it almost feels like Curse Upon A Prayer get lost in mazes of their own creation, and the tracks become a bit meandering.

Ultimately, The Worship: Orthoprax Satanism is one of those “close but no cigar” cases. It does a lot of things right, and I’d even go as far saying that in the context of what’s going on in black metal currently, it even has a somewhat original sound. But on the other hand, none of the songs really grip me. And in the end, that leaves the album floating somewhere in fair to middlin’ territory for me.

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