Black Metal History Month - Clandestine Blaze : "City of Slaughter"

This is the 9th full length from the one man band from Finland. It goes in step with many other Finnish black metal projects , being that it has a raw savagery to it. There is more of a pulsing throb to the opener and the second song defaults to more of your typical blast beat frenzy on "the Voice of Our Mythical Past". Production is a little rough as the amps the guitar is played through sounds like it is even more blown out than early Burzum. "Circle of Vultures" is another aggressive high seed jaunt that throws a wall of blast beats at you. There is more of wink towards Celtic Frost on "Return into the City of Slaughter" .  There is a more melodic interlude a couple of minutes into the song that takes it into a more sorrowful direction, which if you know my tastes by now is a direction I would like to hear this project delve deeper into. Perhaps he has , this s really my first time ingesting one of his albums whole. I do really like how this songs builds into a pounding climax in the final minute.

The vocals are in a mid-range ranting gurgle of sorts that is more along the lines of mid-period Darkthrone. If you are going to do lo-fi raw black metal the atmosphere that rings out of the opening riff to "Archeopsychic Fear" is the way to do it. Of course this gives way to blasting that reduces this to just another raw black metal song. The album closes with "Century of Fire" . There is more feeling in this guitar throb than what we have heard thus far in the album and might be one of the album's most well thought out songs.

I will give this album a 7.5, it has some great moments , but for it to be this projects 9th full length I expect a little more. If this was some kid screwing around in his basement, it would be a different story as the old saying goes "to those with much given, much is expected". There are some cool sounds and if you are a fan it's not going to disappoint, it is just churning waters that have already been sailed over.