Artist: Azahel’s Fortress
Title: The Chaos Kingdom
Type: Album
Label: Bloodred Horizon Records

This is the second full length from Austria’s Azahel’s Fortress, following on from their 2005 effort Secrets Of The Forest. The gap in activity can be explained by the fact that Azahel’s Fortress is essentially a one man project, with Demonstorm Azahel handling pretty much all the elements of the band in the studio scenario and he’s been off playing with Alastor and Ewig Frost. Anyway, back to The Chaos Kingdom... The album gets under way with ‘Slave Of The Throne’ which ably combines jagged rock riffs with bleak, discordant black metal...and sounds great. Who knows, maybe the time spent with the irreverent Ewig Frost has helped to nurture this gloriously disrespectful attitude? Whatever the source of this broadening of scope it has given Azahel’s Fortress a sound of their own, making them stand out from all the other carbon copy black metal outfits.

While black metal purists might turn their nose up I’d say that the black metal elements of Azahel’s Kingdom’s sound are so strong that they can only be augmented by the rocking additions, rather than diluted by them. ‘Mankind Misery’ continues the theme of absorbing driving rock sensibilities into a smothering mass of black metal before ‘Dark Forest Kingdom’ adds a great slithering groove to the whole affair. All of the songs here have such individual character and atmosphere. This is certainly not an album where you’ll be checking the display on the CD player to be sure of which track you’re listening to. ‘The Pagan Sun’ is a more traditional sounding blasting Viking/heathen tinged black metal epic and perversely the least exciting track on the album due to its adherence to more accepted forms. ‘Entkrist Pyromania’ follows hot on its heels though, mixing a brilliant range of colours and dynamics to the bedrock of ferocity and ‘Behind A Mirror Of Chaos’ and ‘Days Of Tyrants’ are equally spiky, twisted, exciting listening experiences. The album ends with the atmospheric, acoustic led ‘Nachterwachen’ which brings to mind Tiamat’s Wild Honey, albeit in a rather darker and more unsettling manner. It’s a surprising but effective left field way to end this little gem of an album. If your tastes run to Satyricon’s latter day efforts then you should have no trouble accepting Azahel’s Fortress’ stretching of the black metal boundaries. Well worth investigating.

http://www.myspace.com/azahelsfortress