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Under the Sign of the Black Mark is the third album from the legendary Bathory. It starts to slowly incorporate symphonic elements. For example, Woman of Dark Desires apparently is about the woman whom Bathory took its name from – Erzsébet Báthory. There are also considerably more melodies hidden within the brutal arrangements than on the previous record. It’s not quite as wild all the time as last time around. It’s a delight when the...
I would argue that Blood Fire Death is less extreme than its predecessors. The sound quality is still pretty poor, but there’s much more variation than on the earlier albums. Additionally, the musical style has shifted somewhat, at least partially, and the intro to the album suggests, at least in hindsight, that the transition to the Viking Metal that would characterize later albums was underway even here. Overall, the melodies are longer than what we’ve...
The Return is the second album by legendary Swedish Black Metal pioneers Bathory. It’s a violent musical odyssey and feels in many ways like a more refined and well-produced record than the debut. Unfortunately, it becomes very repetitive, and it doesn’t feel like the music matches the vocals; it just becomes chaotic. Now, this is probably intentional as it somewhat fits the nature of the style, but it’s not something that resonates with my ears....
The somewhat legendary Black Metal band Bathory ‘s first album is a violent musical journey that came to influence an entire generation of musicians. It’s not hard to find the elements that later became some form of standard, at least within the early Black Metal movement. There are fast guitars and drums with a dismal “singing” produced with a truly awful sound. Which back then became the archetype for how this type of music would...
Wight is an EP by the band with the same name. Apparently, there’s also at least one other band called Wight. And to make the confusion even greater, they both perform Black Metal. It’s no secret that I have a hard time with Black Metal too. Often the voice is.. well.. like black metal voices usually are. I don’t know if they go for the demonic possession kind of sound or if they want to...
I should have realized that Aamongandr was a black metal album when I saw those upside-down crosses in the unreadable logo. But I didn’t. I just thought that Satanic Warmaster was a cool band name and that the werewolf image was nice artwork—enough to get me interested. And, donät misunderstand me; I don’t have anything against black metal. It just takes a little more for me to enjoy it. It’s usually the vocals that ruin...
(BOLT) and their album (05), I guess the parenthesis is part of the name. I don’t know where I found this. I don’t own a physical copy of it that’s for sure. It’s some kind of Black Metal which might be very hard to like sometimes. A lot of stuff needs to sound right for it to work for me, starting with the vocals. If I remember correctly, I could barely hear them but there...
I think that From the Very Depths, was the first album that I really listened to after I was discouraged by one of the more commercial albums where Cronos wasn’t present. I can’t remember which one though. But back in the day I really didn’t like it. But on the other hand, I didn’t really like the Black Metal album back in the day either. And, I don’t know why I started to listen to...
Black Metal was the first album I ever heard with Venom and I think that the anecdote I wrote about in the Welcome to Hell review was actually about this album. It’s not hard to recognize the sound created on the first album and the quality is still pretty bad. Yet, it’s lightyears apart. You can actually hear what’s going on, on this album. I’ve always loved the title track and I believe that is...
Not at all bad and Welcome to Hell is an interesting piece of Venom history. Add to that, that they may have the coolest logo ever! My personal opinion of course but I really love this album cover. But even if itä’s not musically bad in any way, the sound quality is so bad it’s almost painful to listen to it. Ok, it was made in the early ’80’ and it was legendary recorded in...
It’s not always easy putting a label on the more extreme kinds of metal. I’m actually not sure if Transilvania qualifies as Death- och Black Metal. There are deep growl/hissing vocals which I really don’t like. But the music is pretty nice. Not so riff-based but certainly aggressive. Toe aggressive for me to really enjoy it. Needless to say, I didn’t even try to hear the lyrics and it soon become too monotonic for me....
