A year or so back, I went to my local CD store looking for nothing in particular, and came out holding a CD from a band I had never heard of before. After looking them up on the internet, I found that their albums are considered extremely rare, since the band broke up shortly after the release of this album. (I'm one of 3 members of this site that own it). With growing interest, I started to listen.
First off, I want to commend the album for the skillfull combination of death metal and black metal. The familiar dark atmosphere that I enjoy in black metal records is present, and same with the flowy death metal riffs that can only be from Sweden. Funnily enough, if you've ever watched
Terminator 2, you'll recognize the beginning of this album. It's the soundclip from the scene where Sarah Connor envisions the apocalypse while watching a girl on a swing. No, I'm not joking. It's REALLY weird to hear as the intro to the album, but it fits perfectly and makes for a good intro. The songs on here have a dark, brooding atmosphere that reminds me of
Burzum (heck, even the cover is similar to
Burzum's debut album). The production is crude, so classic death and black metal fans will be happy with that, but the quality is done in a way that you can clearly make out every instrument, including the bass. They all compliment each other really well. The guitars are my favorite thing about the album, though. They flow in a way that is sometimes solo-like, and the riffs progress in a way that deepens the atmosphere and moves the music along nicely. I think that if there's one thing that holds the music back, it's the vocals. They're not terrible or anything, they're just average. They don't seem to be able to change pitch or hit any other notes. They do sound more death metal than black metal, though, so I guess it's somewhat expected. They do sound cool at first, but sometimes I get tired of them before the album finishes. I think that maybe the album does go on for too long, and maybe one song should have been left out.
The songs that stand out for me are
Obliteration,
Anarchos, and
Eternal Sleep. "
Seducer of
Pain Divine" is a mid-paced, catchy song that somehow maintains being dark but also stretches the limits of being almost... uplifting. The riffs are great, and there's a solo section in it that I just love. "
Anarchos" is a 2 minute instrumental that I think would have worked better if it had been the first song. It starts with quiet guitars and steadily works its way up to being a really good metal riff, with soloing included.
Eternal Sleep is another pretty good one, and I like how the two guitars work off each other here, especially in the intro from 0:15 to 0:55. The singer also seems to have more range for this song, switching from growls to shrieks, and I checked the CD booklet, and he is indeed the only singer in this song.
So in short,
Anarchos is nothing extremely special or amazing, but it's definitely a very underrated album, and it was good to hear something like this without ever hearing about it anywhere else first. I guess you could say that it's black metal that really flows. It's unfortunate that this band split up, because they were very competent, and if I ever see any of their demo releases, I'll buy them. I think that anyone who likes the old black metal or death metal will be a fan of this album, and I think that if it had had more circuation on the time of it's release in '97, it would have gotten the recognition it deserved, at least in underground metal circles. Considering this was released after the "Downfall of
True Black
Metal", this is a pretty good album indeed.
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