Ever tried mixing Baileys with orange juice? Take it from someone with experience, you don’t want to. Once desperate for an alcoholic beverage it seemed like a good idea to throw the only two types of drink into a glass and, well, the outcome looked like something I’d thrown up on the pavement after a heavy night and tasted even worse. Lesson here is that some things just do not mix, and much like Christianity and black metal, these drinks should be kept as far away from each other as the fridge will allow. Now, with an intriguing cover coupled with words “file under orchestral Viking black metal” this literally leapt off the virtual CD shelf at me and after a couple of listens I took the liberty of researching them on t’internet to discover that to my horror, I had been tricked into listening to music that is designed to subliminally implant the good word in my brain…and it burns me like holy water.
Perhaps I’m being just a tad melodramatic with that last part, and I’ll admit that to some extent I am simply being my usual sardonic self. There are times when I simply have to laugh at the desperate attempts by some black metal bands to out-evil one another and prove their dedication to the big red dude downstairs, and so I am by no means saying that black metal has to be about praising Satan and denouncing Christianity in an outright way at all times. The black metal bands that often stand out to me are those that have more to talk about in their songs than sacrificing goats and spilling blood of Christ; history, nature, war, etc. But black metal is supposed to be grim and necro and about exploring darker and sinister (black!) themes, and perhaps more importantly it’s a sort of statement against herd mentality and thus I just fail to see where bleating and praising the Lord fits in to all of this.
Still, despite my own aversion to all things bright and wholesome it’s not like I can hear any real hallelujah, praise the lord going on here and it’s easy enough to listen to this without feeling as though you are being lectured or preached at. With a song title like ‘Immortality’ you can guess there is a certain religious aspect to the lyrics but the music more than makes up for it. This track in particular has the kind of atmosphere to it that pulls me in and the mystical keyboard lines that sit in the mix along side heavy guitars retain my interest. I really like the clean vocal lines here, which have a melancholic despondency to the delivery while the Spanish acoustic guitars add a layer of warmth to the sound.
There’s definitely a black metal current running through these five tracks although the way they are integrated with pompous, overblown arrangements gives it that operatic appeal that will really speak to fans of Turisas and perhaps Dimmu Borgir. The classical inspiration is very clear, especially on the rather striking ‘Warmagaddon’ which comes in with a totally apocalyptic march while the disc ends on ‘Veritas Vos Liberabit’ which literally makes me wonder if I had found myself on BBC Radio 3 by accident. The styles are interwoven with a degree of sophistication and executed beautifully although there does seem to be something lacking in their sound and I can’t quite put my finger on it. These boys are still young and have plenty of years ahead of them to work on their sound and I’m sure their next one will go down like a Vodka and Red Bull, rather than the aforementioned cocktail.
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