Reviews:

From Chain D.L.K.: (by Maurizio Pustianaz)

  TenHornedBeast return on Cold Spring Records after the split with Marzuraan on Aurora Borealis and after the self released E.P. "Titan Death", with a new full length titled MY HORNS ARE A FLAME TO DRAW DOWN THE TRUTH. The album starts where "The Sacred Truth" ended as it contains three tracks that offer a revised and different edit of the sounds that your find on the previous album plus two new tunes. The album begins with a sort of gong sound on "Ruins Son" and since that first moment you have to prepare yourself to sink into the black atmospheres created by Christopher Walton. The five tracks of the album have mesmerizing atmospheres formed by echoing loops, drones and treated sounds (guitars that sound like hurricanes or like a grinding drones machine). Often the track develop starting from a semi quiet state to end with a Dionysian banquet of sounds. With "The sword was our Pope" the atmosphere gets even darker thanks to choir echoes, a ritualistic slow drum beat and low frequency guitar feedbacks. The album closes with "Fenris wolf", a tune made of low-fi slow guitar drones that will scratch your eardrums. To me MY HORNS ARE A FLAME TO DRAW DOWN THE TRUTH confirms TenHornedBeast as one of the best of the genre. If you love extreme doom and industrial drones, try this one.

From Medienkonverter: (by Veit)

  Christopher Walton war ein Teil des Dark Ambient Duos Endura und geht nun mit seinem Projekt TenHornedBeast eigene Wege. Nach zwei veröffentlichten CDRs erscheint bei Cold Spring nun das erste reguläre Album namens "The Sacred Truth", nachdem TenHornedBeast auch schon auf dem Cold-Spring-Sampler "Swarm" vertreten war.

   Das matte und minimalistische Digipack und die relativ kurze Tracklist lassen voreilig auf eine EP schließen. Dem ist aber ganz und gar nicht so, denn die fünf Tracks bringen es auf eine Spieldauer von über 65 Minuten. Christopher Walton stößt uns in dieser Stunde in tiefste Abgründe. Drone bzw. Death Ambient auf die Spitze getrieben. Synthie-Strings sorgen bei "Oppression Sacrament" für die Melodie, infernalischer Gesang, der sich so anhört, als ob ein Dämon in der Tiefe der Erde trauert, Pauken-artiges Donnern und verzerrtest Dröhnen lassen jegliches Licht verblassen. Doch das war nur der Anfang. Mit dem 18-Minüter "Our Lady Of The Lightning Bolt" fängt die diabolische Reise erst richtig an. Bedrohliches Dröhnen und hohe, leicht kreischende Töne geben sich ein kontrastartiges Auf und Ab. "Strength Through Fear" beschränkt sich auf Cello oder Kontrabass-Strings, die von ein paar hallenden Geräuschen untermalt werden.

   Der mit 22 Minuten längste Track "In The Teeth Of The Wolf" legt den Fokus wieder auf hohe Feedback-Töne, die von einem metallischen Grollen begleitet werden. Gitarren-Riffs und ein Schlagzeug, das eine Art Marsch trommelt sowie tiefe Töne lassen sich den Song im Laufe seiner Spielzeit verändern. Der letzte Track "Christus Nox" lässt die aufgebaute Spannung frei und bildet mit waberndem Dröhnen einen gedämpften Abschluss. "The Sacred Truth" ist ein ungewöhnliches und sehr intensives Album, das Aufmerksamkeit fordert. Die dargebotene, abgründige Tiefe ist sicherlich nicht für jedermann, aber für diejenigen, die sich darauf einlassen, eine nachdrückliche Erfahrung. (5/6)

From Orkus: (by Martin Kreischer)

  Was ist das eigentlich, Black Metal? Geht das auch fast ohne Gitarren, also ohne Metal? Kann man einfach ein Konzept so anlegen, dass es Black Metal wird, ohne dass es wirklich auf eine klassische Metal-Instrumentierung zurückgreift? Christopher Walton, ehemaliges Mitglied bei Endvra, scheint es darauf anzulegen, in Form und Ausführung in den Black Metal vorzudringen, ohne sich jedoch einer traditionellen Genreinstrumentierung zu bedienen. So bleiben Cover, Aufmachung, Konzept und dunkle Einsamkeit voller Verzweiflung und düsterer Visionen. Der Ambient wird immer wieder durchdrungen von vorbeiziehenden Flächen und kann daher zwar das Genre um wirklich innovative Ideen bereichern, zumal sich My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth durchaus bei einigen Sounds des Vorgängers bedient – aber schließlich soll dies hier die Schwester des Erstlings sein und erreicht eine drückende Schwere, die zwar sicher nicht auf Black Metal mit anderen Mitteln hinausläuft, aber durchaus eine Berechtigung für die verdammten Momente des Lebens hat. (8/10)

From Gothtronic: (by Fabian)

  TenHornedBeast is the solo project of Christopher Walton, known as ex-member of Endvra. Where Endvra was dark-ambient with sometimes a lighter touch, TenHornedBeast is pure evil. Now he is back again after his highly acclaimed debut ‘The Sacred Truth’. Less a completely new album than a companion piece to his first one, because three of the five tracks are remixes/variations from ‘The Sacred Truth’. Even the artwork looks very much like that of his debut. This album is rounded out by two new tracks.

  The sound on this album is again utter evil blackness like we have heard on his debut, though a bit more minimal in style. With the use of a lot of deep and dark guitar drones, the sound is somewhat similar in style of that of MZ.412 and Deadwood, only without the excessive noise. It does have the same kind of black ambient mentality. What is very striking is that the album also veers into tribal passages, like the fourth track ‘The Sword Was Our Pope’, which sounds like we’re in the midst of a creepy and dark ritual.

  An interesting black ambient album, which is an essential requirement if you also own ‘The Sacred Truth’. It has a great nihilistic evil atmosphere which clings on to you like moss on a rock. Also fans of MZ.412 and Deadwood definitely have to pick this one up.

From Musique Machine: (by Roger Batty)

  My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth is the second album from grim & ritual ambient endeavour Tenhornedbeast that’s the project solo Christopher Walton one half of the now defunct ocultic dark ambient, neo-classical & ritual percussion project Endvra.

  Mainly the album features stripped, dragged and grimed-up versions of tracks from his first album; through you’d be hard pressed to compared them to the originals as Walton has hollowed and carved out the original guitar and feedback elements to create five tracks of bleak and barren ebb and flow. It's best described as doomed drone with slight and subtle ritual percussive elements entering here and there. But for the most part this is very barren, lost and greyed sonics leaving the listening often feeling like the characters at the end of Fulci's The Beyond starting off into a grim changeless landscape which every way they turn. But that’s not to say the tracks don’t vary from one to another they do; it’s just the vibe is very subdued, muffled and bleak through-out.

  Having very much enjoyed The Sacred Truth ,the first Tenhornedbeast’s album, I was a little sceptical when I’d read this was seemingly a re-hash of the first album. But this is far from that as Walton breaths new grim light into each of the old tracks and offers up two new tracks too that fit perfectly into the slowed shifted doomed hopeleness of the album.

From Ritual: (by Paolo Bertazzoni)

  Dopo due anni, Christopher Waltons realizza quello che, a tutti gli effetti, potrebbe definirsi un parto-gemmazione del suo debut: le cinque tracce di 'My Horns...', infatti, sono date da due composizioni inedite, alle quali si aggiungono tre rielaborazioni di brani estratti dal precedente 'The Sacred Truth', rimaneggiati in modo da ottenere un album nuovo di zecca. Un lavoro contraddistinto da un denominatore comune: la dilatazione e la sospensione, una dimensione lineare delle composizioni in assenza di beat (eccezion fatta per 'The Sword Was Our Pope'), in cui drone, drill, tintinnii e interferenze sono come livellati, a creare una materia sonora stabile e coerente, per quanto aerea e impalpabile. Un ambient depressivo e angoscioso, in cui ogni brano raggiunge la sua più totale efficacia solo se ascoltato insieme agli altri, e che sottolinea il carattere insistente del ritorno di Waltons alla luce oscura della prima incarnazione di questo progetto.

From Hierophant Nox: (by Dave Waite)

  2007’s "The Sacred Truth" was a fearsome venture into the avant-garde with elements of dark ambient, death industrial and neo-classical orchestration all boiled together in an outstanding package from UK act TenHornedBeast. Released once again through the highly prolific and well-respected Cold Spring, new album "My Horns are a Flame to draw down the Truth" features three "remixes/ expansions/ contractions" of tracks taken from the debut (plus two new ones) that seem to linger in far darker places than the often harsh bombast of its predecessor.

  More traditionally based in dark ambient, these long, cinematic pieces draw rather than drag you into the murk, with layers of ghostly feedback, ominous drones and subtle yet obscure orchestrations providing dense ritual odes to the deepest caverns of the earth. Letting you really become part of the music instead of an outsider listening in, tracks like "Ruins Son" and "Black Walls Rising – Black Stars Falling" showcase the vast expanse of the nightmarish world Christopher Walton seems effortlessly to conjure, rising then cascading but always flowing along a current that drifts with the ruin and rust of modern man. Can it possibly get any better?