Thornium Sweden

"This release makes me appreciate that I am not really an expert in black metal. It has received some negative, and even scathing, reviews criticizing it for being a lame and boring and much too predictable modern black metal release and for having a much too polished sound. I attribute my non-negative experience of this album to my lack of expertise in black metal.

I agree that the production is polished and defined, but that's not necessarily a bad thing to me, because it allows me to hear everything that is going on misucally, but, of course, it also sacrifices a lot of atmosphere.

The riffage is often a combination of aggressive and primitive onestring patterns and slightly odd and mildly dissonant chords, while the drumming is aggresive and fast and quasi-technical, making use of blasbeats and fast double bass drums. This may be bland run-of-the-mill modern black metal to the experts, but I have no problems with it, which can be taken to be an indicator that this release would be a good entrypoint into the genre for those who are interested but not ready for the "real thing" yet.

There are a lot of cheesy elements on this album, most of which consist of spoken word - in a processed voice, to make it sound more demonic, I presume - accompanied a by pseudo-atmospheric musical backdrop, and I am not a big fan of the vocal style itself, although I appreciate that the vocal delivery ensures clarity of the lyrics.

Personally, I do not think this is a bad release at all, but this may be because of my ignorance of what "true" black metal should sound like.... on the other hand, I don't give a fuck about what's "true" or "false".

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"