Hellspawn Records, 1999
Genre: Black Metal
1. Requiem (The Coming of the Age of Satan)
2. Wrath of the Infernal One
3. Storms of Armageddon
4. Under the Hellsign
Blackmoon has been pretty
quiet over the past years ever since he departed from Dark Funeral. In every band featuring this guitarist I have
always stated that I have enjoyed his guitar work immensely and he certainly
does not disappoint this time around. Blackmoon
has returned with quite a bang by creating a very impressive super group of
musicians as you can see in the line-up.
I was surprised to see Themgoroth resurface to handle the vocal tracks
on this and needless to say he has not lost any of his skill as a
vocalist. I actually enjoyed his vocal
performance on Dark Funeral’s “The Secrets of the Black Arts” so I was
surprised to see when he did not stay with the band. I often wondered what he would end up doing
in the future and was pleasantly surprised to see him work with Blackmoon
again.
For those of you out there
who were fans of the “The Secrets of the Black Arts” sound and atmosphere you
may seriously want to look into getting this release. Essentially this has a faster, furious and
more evil atmosphere, but you can tell it is the musicians that worked on “The
Secrets of the Black Arts.” The song
structure as a whole is a bit more complex than the other Dark Funeral
material, but Blackmoon may be working with more highly skilled musicians on
this effort. I never viewed Ahriman as a
guitarist possessing a vast amount of technical skill, so it comes as no
surprise that with Impious (David Larsson) from In Aeternum complimenting him
the songs are more complicated.
This is one of the few times
that I am actually glad I waited so long to review this release. This album has taken some odd forms that it
is tough to keep up with and I do not even think it is currently available as I
write this review in 2005. It first
started out as a mini-CD released on Hellspawn Records, a label highly
associated with the band, in fact I think it is Blackmoon’s label, but I may be
wrong on that. They got distribution
through Hammerheart records, one of the more well known labels around. However, Hammerheart then proposed they do a
split with Dark Funeral and they would put Dark Funeral’s first mini-CD on
there as well. The problem with this
whole idea is that both albums had been released separately, so this would
become an annoyance factor for those who had one and not the other. Then for whatever reason Hammerheart Records
went under and now are under the name Karmageddon. It is not the same label, but a lot of the
same people run it or something. Now for
whatever the reason they continued to release the Dark Funeral mini-CD, but
this time it was a split with the Von album.
The Von album had been released twice already in more recent times. I do not know the whole politics behind the
situation, but that Dark Funeral mini-CD has been released four times in
various forms and this Infernal album doesn’t appear to be available anywhere
for the moment.
Some people may find this album
generic here and there, but I just enjoy this particular guitar tone and
approach to Black Metal for whatever reason.
I realize this is mostly based on opinion and is not a very objective
approach to this release, but I enjoyed this album a lot. There really isn’t anything new being
presented on this release, but what can I say, I have been following
Blackmoon’s work for a while now and I simply enjoy it quite a bit. Anyway, for those who want a more furious
Black Metal approach to the essence on the early Dark Funeral material this is
something that you should seriously listen to.
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