Coldworker - The Doomsayer's Call (2012)

Coldworker is an act that has to date impressed me with both its prior full-lengths, but what I most find fascinating about this group is how they remind me of 80s English proto-grind acts like Napalm Death and Carcass and how they evolved their sounds into a structured, accessible brand of death metal, which for the time felt modern. To a large fraction of the audience, that was a good thing, and to a smaller number, a source of endless dismay, but thanks to such evolution, we have bands like this one who are unafraid to exchange some of that cult-punk credibility to expand their personal boundaries as musicians, explore a more dynamic stratum of metal without abandoning the core values of brutality.

Coldworker was never meant to be Nasum Mk. II, despite Anders' involvement, but its own distinct entity, yet some of those modern Swedish grind roots clearly shone through on the first albums, and to a lesser degree they remain. However, The Doomsayer's Call is easily the band's most diverse offering yet. Though I didn't ultimately find it so compelling as Rotting Paradise from 2008, it's an example of near flawless technical execution, not from the perspective of pure proficiency or wankery, because most of the riffing is appreciably down to earth, but the brick house polish of the rhythmic guitar punch and the ability to shift between grooving, angry mires of psychological death/thrash ("A New Era", "The Walls of Eryx") and explosive barrages of dissonant, blasted matter that teeters more on the 'extreme' ("The Reprobate", "Violent Society"). There are still bursts of that recognizable Nasum death/grind in a tune like "Vacuum Fields", but they're balanced off with tremolo muted sequences, sparse arpeggios and pensive spoken word vocals.

The influences are all over the place, from the dark octave grooving of "Flesh World" which will recall post-Altars Morbid Angel, to the sheer velocity of "The Glass Envelope" which Napalm Death might have recorded in the past decade, but Coldworker mix it all into a cohesion that continue to engage the listener through the full 13 tracks. That's not to say that I loved the album entirely: in fact I found it's the sort of fare that, while exciting to experience up front does not leave a huge impact in the memory. But this is not due to any lack of trying. They are metric boat loads of riffs here, and no song rests along some simple course, instead packing each minute with precision for both moshing and neck breaking. Anders Jakobsen is on fire, shifting tempos with mechanical ease and challenging himself far more than his own backlog, and the vocals of Joel Fornbrant are themselves quite percussive, though his delivery is often monotonous and familiar enough that I wouldn't call them a highlight of the recording.

In the end, though, The Doomsayer's Call does a heck of a lot right, and I'd easily recommend it to fans of Napalm Death, Benighted, Lock Up and Nasum. Don't expect the same sort of self indulgent brutality you get from a lot of the Californian tech DM bands so prevalent in this day and age, but if you're more into the manageable skill and beating that bands like Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation never fail to wring out of their recordings, then there's no reason you should not at least give this Swedish alternative a chance. A solid, dynamic and entertaining third album that strengthens their legacy.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.coldworker.com/

Magnetron - A Measured Timeframe (2011)

While I recognize works of brilliance in every metal sub category, and feel equally at home in nearly any of them, I don't think it's a secret that thrash is a particular field I hold dear. The 'Golden Age' of this medium (let's say 1986-1990) has produced more of my absolute favorite works than perhaps any other in the metallic spectrum, and it's had what must be the most profound influence on my own writing and musicianship. So it's ever an honor to hear a band like the Dutch Magnetron, which manages to pay libations to various late 80s sources while eking out a niche of its own, maintaining an undeniable level of enthusiasm and sense of humor without writing itself into the same corner of nostalgic stupidity that so many of these faceless retro bands settle for.

Granted, these guys have been around the way a few times, forming in 1996 and producing a string of demos in a grind style before ultimately reforming to join the thrashing crusade of the 21st century, but clearly they've got an incredible grasp of the music they've pursued here, which is namely a merger of US and Germanic thrash. The intense, harried nature of the riffs is largely reminiscent of albums like Terrible Certainty, Release from Agony and Persecution Mania, but there's also a melodic, crunching current coursed through the compositions which brings to mind the West Coast second stringers like Forbidden or Defiance. The vocals have a bit of Tom Angelripper blitz to them ("Nice Teeth", "Compulsory Communication"), perhaps due to the accent of their author, but the pitch is a bit brighter, bloodier and more garbled. Gang shouts are used percussively and appropriately to maintain the excitement and velocity of the music, and to give it more of a street level appeal rather than the surgical Destruction vibe that the technical merits of the guitars might otherwise conceive.

Not all the progressions and patterns are 100% winners, but it's almost impossible not to get caught up in the flurry of aural violence and intensity that manifests through a track like "Born Witless" or "For Your Life Let Justice Be Accused". Rapid, dynamic and organic drums blast and fuse their way to the punctuation of the mute-streams in "A Bit Consideration" and "Right to Dislike", and there is constantly the sensation of something important happening or about to happen. That said, if the band lacks in one department it's probably the choruses, which never seem to burn themselves across the memory like those influential counterparts of old. Riffs will heighten and collapse, expand and contract all over the surface of the songwriting but they're not necessarily designed for emotional impact, just to keep the limbs flailing and heads banging in a step nearly impossible to follow without an acrobatic appreciation for the genre. The lyrics are a mixed bag, all relevant and meaningful, but occasionally a bit too cheesy and 80s ("Nice Teeth", or the Tankard-like "Rob a Bank, Buy a Tank").

Speaking of 'cheese', I was rather surprised by how much I liked the cover art. Has a very 80s feel with the simpler illustration style and the old school logo, but there's a great visual spin there which juxtaposes the role of human to vermin. I, for one, welcome our future space-rat overlords and hourglass brains, but more importantly it mirrors Magnetron's ability to imbue their nostalgia and humor with an actual message. The production of A Measured Timeframe is quite humble, with thin but effective guitars, never dowsed in any excess of effects aside from a tinge of reverb, so you get a very organic, jammed out feeling to the music which gives it a feel somewhere between Xentrix's For Whose Advantage? and Defiance's Product of Society. In the end, Magnetron offer reaffirmation that thrash can be fun without being dumb, exciting without pandering to the lowest common denominator, and old school sensitive without facing an immediate dead end. One of the better Dutch thrash bands of the 21st century to date, and one worth experiencing for its authenticity, if not for its good looks.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (rectifying previous conquests)

http://www.magnetronthrash.nl/

Bathory - Requiem (1994)

Requiem doesn't feel so much a 'new Bathory' as one that branched off into an alternate reality at around the time it might have followed Under the Sign of the Black Mark, then somehow found its way back to the natural chronology of the band. After the pair of rather lacking Jubileum compilations, I would have taken just about anything new and original from the vaunted Quorthon, but was not expecting an album which clung so tightly to the pure thrash aesthetics one would expect elsewhere in the scene. Essentially, Requiem is what we might have gotten had Quorthon decided not to delve into his self fulfilling prophecy of viking majesty, but instead attempted to trade blows with a lot of the grimier, aggressive US and German thrashers that dominated extreme metal in the mid through late 80s.

As such, it's not all that poor of a choice. This was a musician unafraid to reinvent himself, who in doing so helped give birth to a number of sub-genres that remain massive today. Requiem is not some monotonous, point for point impersonation of Exodus, Slayer and Metallica, but there is clearly a bit of US street thrash influence circa Anthrax, Dark Angel, Exodus and S.O.D. in pummelers like "Suffocate", "Requiem" and "Distinguish to Kill", some of which even feature rock out solo breaks that also remind me of the more down home, contemporary American thrashers. The tone used on some of the meatier guitar lines is fairly boxy, redolent of the Finnish band Stone, but the fact that Quorthon sticks with his ghastlier black metal vocals through much of the disc does help it stand out from most of the other 'modern' thrash metal that was spewing forth to an unwelcoming audience in the mid 90s.

Unfortunately, I found them to be the least distinguished and charismatic of Bathory's repertoire to its day, with little but their dry, raw timbre to really propel them. Little of the memorable, vile slather of the Bathory s/t or Under the Sign of the Black Mark. The album inevitably becomes a potpourri of a few finer, choice moments and a bunch of average thrash riffing which, while not even bordering on incompetence, might not have even been effective if it arrived when that music was at its peak momentum. I really like the atmospheric intro to the title track with its distant tolling and eerie synthesizer, and Quorthon wrings a lot of corpulent thrust out of the ensuing, palm muted frenzy, but the riffs just aren't that memorable. Another piece I mildly enjoy is "War Machine", for the simplistic, swift flow of the central guitar and the use of sirens to create a belligerent atmosphere, but even this one has a filler riff in the chorus. "Apocalypse" has a bold, churning martial appeal to it, with some subtle melodic overtures that hint towards Blood Fire Death or Hammerheart, but it too falls shy of perfection.

Hell, even the cover image, while not terrible, is underwhelming, but I don't think I could argue that it didn't capture the stripped down aesthetics of the record. Requiem is the Bathory that might have been, were Quorthon not so inspired and inspiring in the first place, but just another in a sea of thrashers so crowded that some of its most brilliant European authors failed to garner the audience they deserved. This album was a little late for that boom, with most of the thrash audience moving on to hip hop, alternative, grunge and other 90s genre giants. It still sounds like Bathory, just not the one that would launch a thousand dragon ships and etch itself into the annals of immortality. A hollowed out headbanging experience, the aggression dialed up and the atmosphere available only in small pockets. It could get worse, and maybe it will...

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (now more dead than living)

Bathory - Jubileum Vol. II (1993)

If it's not painfully obvious just how conniving Jubileum Vol. II seems in the long term, just take a brief glance through the track list. You'll find more tracks lifted from the same albums that the first volume outsourced the year before, and other rarities that were held back. Had Boss and Quorthon decided to just release the 4 obscurities there and the three here as a single EP, or perhaps tossed on some other unheard material, it might have felt a lot less cheap. Fuck, if they had just kept it in their pants until the later 90s, they could have combined the unreleased material from all THREE Jubileums to produce a single, comprehensive collection that would have been both mandatory and highly anticipated by their original fans and the many that joined the procession through their individual discoveries through the emergent black metal genre earlier that decade.

Nah, this just feels like an incomplete 'half' to shove on your shelf next to Vol. I and forget all about it. As proof of this, look at how they've included Bathory's OTHER track from the 1984 Scandinavian Metal Attack split, "The Return of Darkness and Evil". Granted, both of their contributions to the release appear elsewhere in the Bathory canon in a form that does not greatly diverge in quality, but I'd rather have these remnants in one place. The other gems here are "Burnin' Leather", a straight black/speed/thrash blitz from before the Blood Fire Death album was released with Quorthon's most Germanic, Mille Petrozza presence perhaps in all his legacy (not only for the voice itself but the syllabic patterns); and "Die in Fire", which was taken from the same 1983 demo recordings as "You Don't Move Me (I Don't Give a Fuck)". The vocals are a little more hacked here, but I still quite enjoy the primal riffing and think that element alone is just another of the myriad reasons Bathory has been such an influential band. Try and count how many of these throwback speed/black bands today owe their very existence to a tune like this...great that we can finally hear it.

But that's where the value ends to this collection. The rest of the tunes are just lifted off the full-length albums. Two more from Twilight of the Gods ("Bond of Blood" and the title track), which seems rather silly. It was their most recent record and yet now we've got 50% and 30 minutes of its content reprinted within 2 years. From the first three albums, there is a small contingent including "Possessed", "Raise the Dead", "Total Destruction" and "Call from the Grave", and then more of their Viking fare in the form of "Shores in Flames" (Hammerheart) and "The Golden Walls of Heaven" (Blood Fire Death). So, yes, now 5 of the 9 tracks from Blood Fire Death are also repressed for these two compilations...if anyone is THAT interested, why not just buy the damned thing and experience its full, consistent glory.

Alas, the same frustrations apply here to this release as they do for every other largely needless printing of plastics and paper that I've experienced, and it's difficult to regard Jubileum Vol. II as anything more than an incomplete commercial venture targeted at collectors and fanatics who will purchase this on its logo/brand name alone. Two of the unreleased tracks are worth hearing, as they'd not been available to those who bought the original pressings of the full-lengths. But the remainder of the content does not flow any better here than it did in its original configuration, and to most of good taste, Bathory's a good enough band to drop the 60-80 bucks on their exceptional backlog anyway. As it stands, the net worth of this particular collection is about as long as it takes to rip "Burnin' Leather" and "Die in Fire" to your portable mp3 player or desktop folder and then sell it off to some other sucker.

Verdict: Fail [3.25/10]

Bathory - Jubileum Vol. I (1992)

While Quorthon has been on record to discuss his varying levels of involvement with Black Mark Productions and his relationship to its head of operations, Boss Forsberg (who also produced some of the Bathory albums), I don't think there's any dispute that Bathory itself was more or less the flagship act for the imprint. Through the years, I've often enjoyed the Black Mark signings, for example the Swedish psychedelic/doom troop Lake of Tears, who have released some of my favorite albums of the past 10-15 years. But really, if you consider how much of a cult following Bathory has developed over the years, and what a demand there has been for special editions, re-releases, vinyl and so forth, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that Quorthon was the label's primary source of income.

To that extent, it makes sense that the label would and will release all manner of collections and compilations documenting the band's evolution, and Jubileum was the first series of such. The aim here was to provide a good portion of the band's previously released material to prospective audiences, and then jazz it up with a few unreleased gems so the diehards had a reason to pump out the coin for them. Granted, Bathory is such a 'scene status' godfather for the black metal territories that damn near every fan owns their albums in some incarnation, and the last thing they really need is rehashed, redundant material when they would prefer demos, rehearsals or those few old live recordings that might have existed. But alas, this describes about 70% of the contents of this first compilation (and its successor), which is ultimately a lot more useless than not. Also, considering that that both Jubileum volumes I and II are both drawn from the band's early catalog (first six full-lengths), it's a bit lame that they were released independently and not as a 2-CD set...

11 of the track are re-pressed from the prior full-lengths, and the selection is nothing to scoff at in terms of sheer quality. "Blood Fire Death", "Dies Irae", "Odens Ride Over Nordland" and "A Fine Day to Die" all represent the very finest of the band's hours, and their finest album (Blood Fire Death), but they also incorporate a smattering of earlier pieces: "Enter the Eternal Fire" and "Equimanthorn" from Under the Sign of the Black Mark, "Sadist' from The Return... and "War" from the 1984 s/t. Hammerheart earns one proxy ("Song to Hall Up High") and the more recent Twilight of the Gods earns two ("Through Blood by Thunder", "Under the Runes"). So it's clear that Quorthon's choices here were biased towards the more viking themed material, a bias I share only in that it grants Blood Fire Death so much berth, but might not best convey the balance and evolution that the band exhibited in their formative years.

Of course, who gives a shit, because most of us who gave a damn already owned all these songs, and would only be interested in the rare bits. There's a version of "Sacrifice" here that was originally featured on the 1984 Scandinavian Metal Attack split (Bathory's proper debut) with other hopefuls like Finland's Oz and Sweden's Trash. I think we all know who got the best of that deal. Then, more importantly there are some rarer tracks like "Rider at the Gate of Dawn", a lush choir/synth instrumental of about 80 seconds that would have felt right at home on Blood Fire Death with its grim, warlike mount-trotting implications. "Crawl to Your Cross" is a dense and explosive black/thrash piece with a meaty, violent guitar tone somewhere in between the US bands Exodus and ZnoWhite. For 1989, this track was somewhat out of character for the band, since Quorthon was honing in on his viking/pagan medium, so it's understandable why it would have been left out, but I am glad to finally have heard it.

Lastly, you've got a real oldie, "You Don't Move Me (I Don't Give a Fuck") which was recorded in that total old school filth speed metal style that was further evolved on the Bathory s/t. Raw, spiteful and grimy, it's amazing to me just how much this nearly 30 year old piece sounds like the stuff you'll hear the Japanese band Abigail write today! My favorite thing on this comp, and the bass, vocals and licks are all superb despite the humble 4-track production. I can only imagine how much value Jubileum Vol I. would hold for me if there had been more material like this involved, but sadly it's just an exception to the rule. There's a lot of great music on the comp in general, but I can't think of a single reason it would be more appropriate to experience here than in its original landscape. It might have been a total bust, and been 100% rehash, but at least they felt some compulsion to pepper the contents with a few carrots on sticks for the jaded.

That said, this is still pretty useless if you're not a collector or completist. As a 7" with just the unreleased material, it might have shined. As it stands: no. Not the most shameless cash grab I've ever witnessed (check the stupendously redundant Lake of Tears compilations that Black Mark released far later), but kind of a missed opportunity nonetheless. If you DO happen to be one of the fourteen or fifteen interested parties on Earth who haven't yet experienced Quorthon in all his morning glory, then save the shells on this album and instead dive straight into Blood Fire Death, Bathory '84, Hammerheart or Under the Sign of the Black Mark, depending on your preference for his Satanist or Odinist epochs.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

Bathory - Twilight of the Gods (1991)

Over the Christian skulls, and through the waves, to Grandfather Odin's house we go. Twilight of the Gods, the 6th Bathory full length, would see the Swedes' transition to full-on Viking folk metal completed, and all within the span of a year since Hammerheart. Not that this would be the last evolutionary stage for Quorthon, who will continue to place the band on divergent paths through the mid 90s, but I don't think anyone could question that a good number of his albums from the Blood on Ice era and beyond felt like reiterations of the concepts and atmospheres he originally explored on the Viking 'trilogy' of Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart and this Twilight of the Gods.

This chapter is by far the most accessible in all of Bathory's history, and that's due to the high levels of friendlier rock polish in both production and composition, plus Quorthon's decision to focus almost exclusively on a cleaner vocal tone. Personally, I was saddened at this fact when I first purchased the CD, because I did rather admire the coat of grit he had applied to its predecessors, since all but abandoning the snarling and rasping pandemonium of the early albums. As I've mentioned, I find the man's pure singing voice to be inconsistent at best, as he was never blessed with the broadest range and seems to often stumble over his accent, but even at its worst there is a particular character to his floppy, cutting tone that is easily distinguishable from anyone else (sort of like the charm one might find in 'Engrish' bands, though this is not of grammar but delivery). He can hit a certain thread of melody in "Twilight of the Gods" or the soaring symphonic anthem "Hammerheart" which proves he's no hack, but there are a number of passages throughout this album, like the slovenly verses of "To Enter Your Mountain" in which further refinement and editing should have been mandated.

Musically, the focus is all on slick, clean and catchy chorus sequences and simple flowing rock chords, supported by choirs not unlike those found on Hammerheart. Bathory was no initiate to the use of the acoustic guitar, but here it was most heavily implemented as a base component of the musical landscape. It's nearly everywhere, and tracks like "Under the Runes" and "Blood and Iron" wouldn't be the same without the brooding, folksy undercurrent it creates. So much of the album is slow that it reminds me of a Viking Pink Floyd. Perhaps not so psychedelic, unless you're a raven or six-legged horse, but certainly as airy and atmospheric as that comparison would imply, with an assured, steady flow to the music that centers heavily on the simplicity of the rock chords and the flow of the vocal arrangements. The aim was to appear glorious, and even though this is far from a personal favorite in the Bathory repertoire, that end result is not one I could ever deny.

I almost wish that the use of voices here had been restricted to the choir sequences, though, like the drudging harmony used in "Blood and Iron", because when Quorthon breaks away for the lead vocal lines they often feel relatively shabby and off-kilter. With Hammerheart, I felt as if the man were riding some squall on a dragon ship and beseeching Ægir to let he and the crew pass the towering torrents around them, but here his presence seems to break up the smooth flume of the musical procession and there are cases like "Through Blood by Thunder" where he just feels like an emo suffering from a hernia. I found my earlier exposures to the album grating at best, especially in such spots as this, but through the years I've at least learned to tune them out and just focus on the underlying music, which, while rarely exemplary, at least serves for positive background noise to atavistic ruminescence or dorkier pondering. Though interestingly enough, there's a slightly contemporary slant to the lyrics (in particular the title track).

Ultimately, it's a good album, but not a showcase of Bathory at peak performance. I do like the meandering, fell majesty and tribal power of the drums, the constant kneading of the acoustics into the roiling, simplified chord structures and the sobering choirs, but at times I feel as if they're all being conducted by a drunkard. Still, this would be the safest to share with your dad, uncles and granddads over a mead. But your mom will still hate it. I can recall that this was supposed to be one of several swan songs for the band. It's solemn disposition certainly reflects that finality, and I'm sure that there are a great many Bathory fans who wish it had been the case, judging by the divisive reactions towards its successors, but it's not as if all the ensuing efforts were total refuse. Twilight of the Gods should be judged as the album which plied the safest waters in terms of a general audience, but it was quite risky at the time for the more specialized metal audience who at the time might have been more desiring of heaps of entrails and Satan. But then, they had Deicide (and many more) to whet their carnal appetites.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (we maintain we are in control)

Bathory - Hammerheart (1990)

Hammerheart and its successor Twilight of the Gods were unique to me in that they were the only 'growers' I experienced in the whole of Bathory's body of work. Most other albums prompted immediate satisfaction or indifference, but Hammerheart took a span of years to accumulate its value when I was flooded with so much else at that precise point in metal history (1990), where thrash had churned out some of its most impressive and enduring works, and death metal was just digging in its heels. Of course, this was an instantaneous purchase much like anything else on the Noise Records roster, but I listened to it a few times, found that it was not as good as Blood Fire Death, put it on the shelf for a few months, extracted it, enjoyed it a fraction more, rinse and repeat for another two decades.

It's almost as if Hammerheart grows better not only with its own aging, but with mine. These days, as white threads being to poke out through the hedgerow of my facial hair, I've taken on a new level of appreciation for this trudging, Viking monolith, which nearly completed Bathory's transition from thrash and black roots to one of the forefathers of the pagan/folk metal advent that took a firm hold in Europe through the mid to late 90s. You still get a bit of rasped edge to Quorthon's cleaner tones, and the riffs possess a similar, inherent glory to those of Blood Fire Death that feel so legitimately atavist and Norse in nature, but the material here is slower, more atmospheric and drawn out. Tracks like "A Fine Day to Die" and "Blood Fire Death" itself were given plenty of space to breathe as they surged forth in their belligerent majesty, but here we experience pure paeans to the land and sea of the Sagas, tributes to the world not only of, but BEYOND the battlefields, and as such it's rather refreshing.

My favorite component to the music is the interaction of the horn sounds with the undercurrents of distorted guitar and the vocal arrangements. Some of this was carried forward from the fourth album, and yet here the orchestration reaches a new level of prevalence in that it's almost a rule and not the exception. The opening sequence to "Valhalla", leading up to the potent thrashing canter of its verse, is a fine example of how Quorthon has grown into a composer beyond the metallic instrumentation, and further evidenced by the soaring choirs he implements in this and numerous other tracks on the album. The tribal, measured Viking thrash of "Baptised in Fire and Ice" and the lurching, grooving bludgeon of "Father to Son" are other highlights, but I find that, considering the 55 minute length of the album, it's pleasant on the whole to experience, if not without some flaws. I could probably live without the obligatory ambient/choir outro, and the massive 11 minute opener "Shores in Flames" could have been slightly trimmed, but the majority of the compositions are compelling enough that I appreciate Hammerheart more than anything the band would put out later.

I've mentioned before that I've never been all that fond of the 'singing' Quorthon, but I should clarify that this is simply the limitation on the vocal chords the Gods granted the man, and not on his effort to better himself, to evolve through the process. He's no Celine Dion, but he works with what he's got. Through Hammerheart, really, you only get a taste of the cleaner tones (like the intro to "Shores in Flames"), and he largely adheres to the grimier, accented grit that was so prominent on Blood Fire Death, but you can surmise that he's further motivated by melody to match the atmospheres of the changes in the music. Hammerheart lacks the black metal core of its predecessor. What heaviness you witness here comes at either a doomed clip or a confident slower thrashing impetus, so it makes a whole lot of sense that the vocals needed to adapt along with this new vision.

In listening through Hammerheart, I like to imagine Quorthon as a skald, a minstrel-herald to the fire and wind who gives voice to and through the ice-rimmed storms that assail the ship on which he rides, and I'm sure this was the man's own motivation in choosing this style. And even where I don't love the delivery of each line, it's full proof of concept, which goes a LONG way to properly assessing and immersing oneself into the music here. The ideas might not have been all that unique, after all, we had Blood Fire Death a few years prior, and heavy metal bands like Faithful Breath, Thor and Manowar had already touted the Viking party line, but the 1988-90 Bathory era is without a doubt the point at which it was handled with what felt like genuine passion and enthusiasm, and not as a gimmick or excuse to wear helmet and furs, or to impress your groupies at the after party with the size of your 'axe'. To that extent, metal owes Quorthon another debt (in addition to that whole black metal thing), and this album, while not one of Bathory's best, indefinitely applies its titular implement to your beating hugr in a surefire, resonant succession.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (the rumours told of a man)

Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)

By the time Bathory's third full-length rolled around, thrash metal had produced a number of hallmarks in extremity which more than contested the Swedes' claim upon that end of the spectrum. Reign in Blood and Darkness Descends not only benefited from unforeseen levels of intensity and musicianship, but they were also incredibly volatile and pissed off to the point that they made almost anything outside of the German Big Three seem like turtles racing hares. That said, Under the Sign of the Black Mark was STILL a paradigm of aggression and evil, not through any sense of instrumental flatulence or compositional brilliance, but for the lack of all these things: the crass and compelling stench of darkness, filth and pestilence which permeates every lick played upon the album.

You wouldn't want Bathory (1984) or The Return... (1985) to hang about your local chapel or attend a family dinner, but when their successor arrived, it felt like every door and window in the village must have been shut tight and barred off, offerings of rams' blood smeared upon their wooden faces to ward off the evil that had strolled in upon a foul wind. This album is really that good, and in my opinion its pacing and structure placed the band firmly upon the pedestal from which Quorthon would never, and has never been shaken, despite the divisive evolutions that Bathory would endure in future years. Contextually, through my own perspective, I have long gone either way on the earlier albums in terms of their exact classification. They were thrash metal. Dirty Satanic speed metal. Death metal. Black metal. In retrospect, that latter category has since officially become 'a thing' of some importance, but one might still place them in all of these spheres at once and get no argument from me.

But Under the Sign of the Black Mark, at least for my humble self, feels like the point at which the levee broke on the top shelf of the Abyss, and all the damned and damning souls erupted through the crust, screaming in Bradbury-unison 'something wicked this way comes'. THIS is black metal, at its purest, borne on the nuclear zephyrs of thrash and speed and dawning into its own abominable, leering presence alongside another, more underground Scandinavian threat: Mayhem's Deathcrush. Bathory had to this point already been destined for immortality due to the spiteful, unapologetic atmosphere of The Return... and the vicious charisma of the self-titled debut, but Under the Sign of the Black Mark combines the two into a rapine rush of simple and effective buzzsaw riffing momentum, blazing fallen angel leads that cut the heavens with sighs of inevitable vengeance, and a rasped vocal so grimy and eternal as it barks through its acrobatic patterns that it feels as if Dead and Mille Petrozza found some arcane ritual through which to spiritually copulate in Hell and produce a slavering, ravenous offspring.

First, the decision to shorten the traditional intro piece was wise. Unlike "Revelation of Doom" or "Storm of Damnation", it arrives and departs swiftly with all its howling, scathing, and swelling ambiance, to the extent that I never felt myself thinking 'please get on with it' like the first two albums. And it morphs flawlessly into, "Massacre", one of the fraction of the tracks here that reflect the debut's sense for shoveling 2-3 burning guitar progressions at the audience and letting them stick like napalm. Simple, fast paced chords shift in serpentine cohesion while a louder, more disruptive, distorted bass tone (played by Quorthon) barrels below. The new drummer, Paul Lundberg is even more strenuous than his predecessor, and his performance here was a benchmark for the black metal genre as a whole. Unfeeling, callous mechanical human blast work with tunneling double bass, Lundberg makes it sound easy. All too easy. So maybe his technique wasn't on par with a Gene Hoglan, Bobby Jarzombek or Dave Lombardo: that's not the point of this, but to bludgeon you repeatedly like a burlap sack of bloodied coins.

What I find most amazing in listening back to the album is how the guitars actually somehow take a back seat to the louder vocals and drums, but the patterns are deadly, powerful and hypnotic enough that they catch your ear anyway. This was actually a process vaulted forward into the more glorious atmosphere of Blood Fire Death, but not many bands could make it work. The neck breaking, ominous grooves of "Equimanthorn", the chugging and oblique "Woman of Dark Desires", and the dire rocking fortitude of "13 Candles" are not fashioned from the most prevalent riffing sequences in the band's career, yet they forcefully carve their well deserved niches into the darker reaches of your mind with a haunting, hostile certainty. Speaking of Blood Fire Death, there's an even more prominent presage in the form of "Enter the Eternal Fire", a track that experiments with a grander, 7 minute structure and a lot of those flowing, Viking associated rhythms and hammer-drums that dominate their aesthetics in the near future. "Of Doom" is another of the many worth mentioning; the break and flow of the guitars here a tangible precursor to the sound that Emperor would master on their classic In the Nightside Eclipse in the ensuing decade.

The only, and I mean ONLY reasons that I can justify to give Under the Sign of the Black Mark a less than perfect score are simply that I found a teensy handful of the riffs (less than I can count on one hand) to be less engaging than the remainder, and the closing :25 outro as useless as the two that were on the first couple albums. Minor mars upon a near flawless countenance, but present nonetheless. That said, let them not dissuade anyone who has somehow evaded this album's infernal grasp to immediately correct that mistake, because Under the Sign is one of the most indomitable works of classic black metal, and hands down one of the greatest Scandinavian extreme metal works of the 80s. Period. No contest, with the exception of its next youngest sibling, an album I prefer due for its ability to transport me to a place I'd rather be. Whatever. Apples and oranges. Pikes and pitchforks. Own this, or suffer the consequences of your own, miserable, tasteless purgatory.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.75/10] (I stand at the jaws of the pit)

Bathory - The Return... (1985)

To dub The Return... a disappointment would be like condescending to a good massage after a fit of passionate, memorable intercourse. It sure feels good, but it just cannot match the climactic intensity and release you were experiencing just a few minutes earlier. Or in the case of Swedish abomination Bathory, a year earlier. Don't get me wrong: The Return... is a puerile, forceful and even brutal album. I'd state with a straight face that it was more savage, primal, atmospheric and barbaric than its predecessor. But the riffs here are just not as good, the energy level somewhat curbed and a bit more emphasis on the weight and rock-groove of the guitars than the sheer blitz of dirty speed metal that dominated Bathory. That album was a straight razor of sinister intentions, this is more of a vulgar machete with a mildly dulled edge.

The band was still in a trio format, though Andreas Johansson replaced Rickard Bergman on the bass. The intro and outro play out much the same as on the s/t. "Revelation of Doom" is a bit creepier than "Storm of Damnation" due to the more roiling torrents of guitar distortion and the pronounced, if distant looped screams, but I still feel as if it just goes on too long. Give me just a minute of this, or cause something more to happen, because even in the span of 3 and a half minutes I grew a little tired of it, and the hidden :25 second outro is too brief and useless to stir up any reaction. There are a few songs which I found spiritual successors to the first album, like "Bestial Lust" or "The Return of the Darkness and Evil", the latter having some similarities to a straight Slayer speed thrasher ("Chemical Warfare") with corpulent tremolo picking in primal but menacing patterns. Most of Quorthon's snarling and rasping is well in line with the identity he had manifest earlier, but I actually found that it had less of a ghastly, wavering character and more of a focused, cutting grimness to it that was marginally less effective.

However, he does occasionally add some spice to the mix like the expansive backup gutturals in the chorus of "Born for Burning", or the more ritualistic growls in "Reap of Evil". Considering how few bands were using the style at the time, it's no wonder that The Return... is cited an influence upon the death metal genre as well as the black. Back in the early through mid 80s, a boundary of distinction had yet to really be drawn, so they shared a lot with Hellhammer in that small class of progenitors that transcended simple categorization. But what I find pretty clear about The Return... is that it has a far more muscled punk or hardcore influence than its predecessor. Songs like "The Rite of Darkness", "Sadist", "Son of the Damned" and "Total Destruction" brandish a lot of open, grooving chords that crash back and forth along the axis of the semi-burst beats. They'll often incorporate some solid mid-paced pure thrash riffs ("Born for Burning" and "Sadist", for example), but I rarely found any of the note progressions here to be as searing or diabolically enthusiastic as a "Sacrifice" or "Necromancy".

Aesthetically, The Return... is brighter and more dynamic than the generally moody darkness prevalent on the s/t album, and here there is really no contention as to its influence on a metric shit ton of later DIY black metal recordings in the underground. Once more it's produced by Quorthon and Boss, so it stands out from the mainstream in that Bathory never had the purse or the desire for tracking down some big name producer and wider cultural acceptance. Almost messy in its determination to tear and bludgeon the listener's brain, but the bass a fraction less pronounced (in both volume and composition) than it had been before. The drums seem a lot more crashing akin to the later Blood Fire Death, lacking that subtler constant tinniness that permeated the debut, and I found that the actual structure of the guitars very often serves as a foreshadowing to that later, monumental masterwork.

In the end, though, this is really no more than a 'good' black/thrash metal album. Worth owning if you love Bathory, worth owning if you enjoy the primordial sounds that would stretch and settle into the style so many enjoy and emulate today, but it's not possessive of their best material. It's louder and about 10 minutes longer than Bathory, and the lyrics on par, but those are the only areas in which some physical aspect matches or exceeds its forebear. I can't think of any legitimate reason why I'd break this out over any of their other 80s full-lengths, but it's probably on par with all of those later works upon which Quorthon decided he was a 'singer'. Fun enough for frenetic sessions of head banging, appreciable for its place in the canon, but it's no Deathcrush, To Mega Therion or Under the Sign of the Black Mark.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (a sorcery written in blood)

Bathory - Bathory (1984)

To calculate the actual sum of influence perpetuated by the 1984 Bathory debut might prove inestimable to even the keenest of logisticians, because it's seething tendrils pervade numerous niches of the metal spectrum even today. I can't tell you how many bands I hear annually, via promos or research, that would be entirely content if the whole of their careers amounted to little more than an aesthetic tribute to THIS very album. To exist as nothing other than a shadow of the late Quorthon. Is Bathory the first proper 'black metal' record as far as the fundamental principles we equate to the genre today, disregarding the titular ownership via Venom? I do believe that a strong case could be made for such, at least as good a case as for any other particular work.

Of course, when I was young, and first experienced the Swedes' music, it was considered thrash or speed/thrash metal of a darker pallor than some of the popular Bay Area sounds. People had yet to kick around the 'black metal' tag as a proper sub-genre, and other favored progenitors like Destruction, Sodom and Kreator were clearly performing at a similar, vicious viscosity to Bathory's scathing inauguration. And yet the iconic, minimalistic cover, the classicist font of the logo and the repulsive timbre of Quorthon's youthful snarling best represent, at the very least, the birth of European black metal in its filthier format. That's not to say that Bathory was wholly unique even for its day. Clearly there are parallels to Slayer's rapid, hellish origins ("Hades" reminds me of "Black Magic") and a grimy punk rocking glaze redolent of the more extreme NWOBHM related acts like Motörhead, Tank and Venom. The Satanic/occult focus of the lyrics was also also not news by this time, as it featured prominently for several of the aforementioned acts. However, the fact that this was arriving from a non-German or American act was indisputably eye awakening.

Bathory was not an easy find for me at first. I combed the local import record stores with decent metal sections on a near weekly basis for such gems, squandering my paper route money on whatever was readily available rather than paying double for special orders. If they ever had the damn thing in stock, it was always gone before I arrived. I had to settle for a dub off a friend's cassette for years, and in fact I had purchased hard copies of Bathory's later efforts like Under the Sign of the Black Mark and Blood Fire Death before finally landing my grubby mitts on it (ironically, the only two albums in Quorthon's entire lexicon that I favor over this). Bathory was not a highly visible band in my neck of the woods. You heard mention in interviews or magazines, you saw a few of your favorite metal musicians wearing the T-shirt in photo ops. Metalians in my high school were busy sporting erections for Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, and most had very little attention span or funds to explore the thrash genre much deeper. If you encountered a guy or gal with a Testament or Nuclear Assault t-shirt other than yourself, you were blown over by the prospect of a kindred spirit. Meet your new best friend.

Funny, then, that of any of the 'second tier' of speed and thrash in the 80s, Bathory has left one of the most enduring and massive legacies. Few metal bands can match their aesthetic imprint count for count, and even some of the 'big' names owe Quorthon a beer in Hell. For example, you could lie to yourself and then try to convince me that Burzum's "War" was not a spiritual rehash of the track "Necromansy" (not Bathory's "War"). The riffing pattern is very similar. Or that Witchery's explosive black/thrash cut "The Reaper" was not an atavistic nod to this previous Swedish "Reaper", which has a decidedly familiar chorus. And what of the vocals in general? Cronos might have had a crude and carnal mean streak coursing through his pipes, and Schmier a more pinched and nasal wrath on Sentence of Death, but Quorthon's biting vitriol is like a musical Genghis Khan, its seed spread through countless tens of thousands corpse painted progeny who only rarely rival the fiber of their ancestor.

As far as its production qualities, Bathory was far from a highlight for '84. Glossier 'mainstream' efforts like Powerslave, Metal Heart, Defenders of the Faith or even Ride the Lightning proved that metal had come a long way from the toiletry of its demo years. And yet, Quorthon and Boss wrung out a primal and methodic sound here that too transcend into aesthetic immortality. Not as messy, raw and reductive as Venom's Black Metal, perhaps, but equally sinister. Stefan Larsson's drums have a thinner, backing tone that never intercedes over the concentrated acid of the guitars or the wretching diatribes of the front man, played largely in a punk rock fashion with loads of tinny cymbal crashes (though the supporting bass drums are noticeably thick). The bass of Rickard Bergman isn't dowsed in a load of bold distortion, but instead threads moodily below Quorthon's rhythms and leads; only rarely breaking away from the guitar progression, but where it does ("In Conspiracy with Satan", for one) it creates a warmer, morbidly glorious atmosphere.

But most importantly, Quorthon showed himself a relatively accomplished guitarist early on, and some of my favorite moments on this debut are when his frivolous leads tear off the rhythms in the bridge of a "Sacrifice" or the rocking "Raise the Dead". There is some degree of amateurish sloppiness in a few of the solos, or the riffing in general, but in general you'll be too hypnotized by the sheer cruelty and velocity. The song structures are relatively primal here, rarely featuring more than 2-3 riff variations, but none lack for a thriving infernal energy, and the brevity of the tracks average around 3 minutes never allows the listener's interest to wane. In fact, alongside Slayer's Reign in Blood, this is one of the best short playing thrash albums of the 80s, in and out faster than a desperate drunken tango with a prostitute. Slam, bam, thank you ma'am, the cash is on the dresser and I'll try not to trip on the sticky jeans around my ankles while I fly down the stairs. 27 minutes of sinful pleasure beget a lifetime of damnation.

It's not perfect. Personally, I find that the windswept, distant chanting and tolling of the "Storm of Damnation" intro could have been clipped in half to better swell the anticipatory momentum for the first metal track, "Hades". The outro could have been snipped entirely. A few of the later cuts like "War" and "Armageddon" never really hit me with an ace riff like the rest, though they are no less despotic and relentless than their neighbors. The lyrics are all appreciably extreme for the time, but some of them seem better ordered and paced than others, and certainly they provided fuel for a great number of faux Satanists and provided ample fuel for the genre's Christian right-wing antagonists. I always got the feeling that Quorthon was just doing the whole 'evil' thing for show, and that he never really had his heart in it, a notion that was enforced by Bathory's later switch almost exclusively to Norse/Viking themes. But, that said, who the hell WASN'T doing it for show? Maybe King Diamond and Cronos were serious about it at some point, but Tom Araya's a bleeding Christian.

You don't get a chance every day to formally review something that has left such an enormous impression upon such a huge chapter of your life in entertainment, and Bathory is clearly one of the cornerstones. Rolled out of the very depths of the abyss for your amusement. A ripping rout, unapologetic in its backlash towards the mainstream of heavy metal that was making headway at the time of its arrival. Some bands burned churches to make a name for themselves, but some, like this one, just burned your fucking ears off.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10] (where the cold and darkness meet)