There’s something weird going on in flavour country. Blood Cult initially come across as a black metal band, and ‘My Forest Home’ certainly doesn’t disappoint in that respect; coming across like the chill Arctic wind fanning the flames of a church on fire; a feeling only slightly let down by the extended Skynyrd-alike guitar riff closing the song out. That’s okay though, because we have moved on from the glory days of the Inner Circle. Right?
Well, maybe. Part of the trouble with black metal production is that in return for the amount of money you save on production value, it demands a certain amount of intensity, or po-facedness, depending on degree of cynicism, and this just isn’t present in Blood Cult’s work. While last year’s ‘Swarth’ by Portal was a masterpiece, due to a continuous barrage of misanthropy, this album doesn’t yield the same result. Second track ‘Devil’s Sabbath’ sounds like a live bootleg of a Dead Kennedy b-side, which is a bit of a disappointment to those of us who cut our teeth on the likes of Mayhem and Immortal, and sets in a depressingly predictable precedent: a passable black metal track, followed by appalling knockabout pish.
Take for example, ‘Illinoisan Altar’. It’s nigh on eight fucking minutes of the same dreadful polka and Southern widdling, which is about eight minutes too long. Having said that, even the more conventional tracks are an exercise in blandness. It’s not that it’s especially bad, it’s just sheer mediocrity: ‘Serpent’ might well have a driving high-key riff and urgent military drumming, but it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere whatsoever. And again, the same for ‘Necromance’’: no matter how loud you turn it up, there doesn’t seem to be a way to extract an ounce of excitement out of it.
It’s such a shame that after the hefty opening track, the rest of the album trails off into nothingness, with only ‘Seeds’ rekindling your interest at the halfway mark. And then you’re plunged into a general feeling of apathy – which is precisely the last thing you want from black metal. A wasted opportunity.
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