Satanic North : "s/t"

 I figured despite this album being a self-professed blast fest, I would check out this band's debut. Two members of Ensiferium are at the helm of this. The first track pretty much just blasts with a 1349-like thrashing rage at you. They care about how it sounds, so it's not a cvlt affair, though not many bands are still putting out shitty-sounding music on purpose unless they are punk bands pretending to be black metal bands these days/. Still, considering most black metal bands from Finland follow in Horna's boot prints it's easy to expect this to be rawer than most. It's not it sounds more like a Gorgoroth album in terms of quality, though the guitar sound is not as dark or biting as Gorgoroth's. 

"Hatred and Blasphemy" is the first song with a riff catchy enough to make me pay attention as the rapid-fire attack and uniform shriek of the vocals that is almost Cradle of Filth-like fades into the background as it begins to all sound the same. They gallop a little more for "Four Demons". The guitars follow the colo by the numbers black metal progressions. I am not sure that black metal is about even conforming to black metal, if it was then it would really be the outsider genre of metal like it should be. Unless it's February I am making a concerted effort to not review two black metal albums in a row, or really two from any genre, unless I am in a month that is dedicated to that genre. To their credit, they make more purposeful choices with the vocals on this song. 

"Behind the Inverted Cross" sounds like Watain if they threw themselves into a frantic hyper-fast blast. Things get more deliberate and marginally more melodic for "Vultures" which is better than the previous song by far.  In fact, it might be the album's best song, even though they do give into the need for speed there has been enough done to create the needed dynamic contrast. "Wolf" falls on the other side of the spectrum and is driven by double as thrash-hungry guitars race before it. This makes the song a one-dimensional obsession with speed and tension. This album has more song-oriented moments, though the vocals become tedious before it's over. 

They are high-caliber musicians all the way around with their lead screamer as the only weak link. Their eponymous anthem closes the album. The vocals are well produced, just a one-trick pony. I think they prove to themselves here the best songs are under three minutes when playing at this tempo. I will round this album down to an 8, it's well played and they do care about songwriting, but this style of black metal has been done better a thousand times, yet as it stands in 2024, these guys prove capable of keeping the dark flame burning.Drops April 19th on Reaper Entertainment.  

pst181