Saturday, February 7, 2015

Black Metal History Month-Satanic Warmaster:"Fimbulwinter"



Not sure why but this my first time really giving these guys much of a shot. Some of their past material that I heard in passing on Last Fm, was too raw and straight forward me, which is also one of the staples of Finnish black metal.  This album seems to a little more mature and have more texture to it.They give the blast beats a slight breather at the on set of "Funereal Wolves". The vocals has a very distinct Nazgul like rasp to them. It does begin to get a tad repetitive by the three minute mark, until they go for an school galloping thrash breakdown.

They find their way into some melody on "Korppi" , though it is short lived as they always return to the blast beats. The drive is fast and straightforward here , yet their is a slight thrash like groove until the blast beats are poured on again. By the time we get to "Where Thunder's Hail" it is beginning to blur together and the songs are less distinguishable. It took four and a half minutes into "Dragon's egg" to hear anything that made it different from the previous song. The kind of Bathory vibe to "Winter's Hunger is probably the album's best moment,as it's not being blasted at you at a million miles an hour. There is also some ambiance to "Silent Call of Moon's Temples."However this never goes anywhere and just drones on.

So I guess it's clearer to me why I didn't give this guys much of a shot to begin. But now that I have, I can say I respect the intensity they possess, but don't consider them to be any where close to being the greatest song writers in the genre as they rely to heavily on the feral element to drive the songs past you before you can hear there is not much going on as far as dynamics or layers. There are some impressive moments and this album is not terrible so I am giving it a 6, as these guys know what they are doing I just find it a bit one sided.
Th

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