Sarrgh

Sarrgh - Black Hate and Doom
Christhunt Productions, 2005
Genre: Black Metal

1. The Last Northern Warrior
2. The Path of Despair
3. Ancient Sky
4. Black Hate and Doom
5. Cold Winds of Grimly Forest
6. Die Kalte Klinge
7. Satanischer Zorn
8. Salute to Christ








I ran across this release when I was looking at Maniac Butcher's page and found that Vlad played bass in this project. Naturally, I missed out on this release when it first came out and didn't delve into it until 2018. It truly is hard to get all the releases out there when they're first released, but I tracked this down and got the copy recently. This CD is limited to 666 copies, but I'm sure there are many still floating around since this release didn't exactly tear through the scene as a must have.

As you can imagine this is Black Metal of the raw variety, it truly has that early 90's production, but it's made well enough to hear everything. The mixing is a bit suspect and the cymbals sound weird at times. The vocals are probably the worst part of this album, they're really blown out and don't sound very good at all. Other than that, musically, this reminds me a lot of the German material that was coming out in the late 90's, but with some more Heavy Metal moments thrown in more in line with Darkthrone's combination. It's more than just sawing away at a guitar for five minutes on every song, so in that regard Sarrgh is a bit more interesting to listen to. However, as far as a debut release goes, the material isn't that bad and the songs capture that cold ancient atmosphere from the early era of Black Metal.

I would never say Sarrgh is a must have and you rush out and buy it right away, but it is a cool little release that does a good job of paying homage to bygone era. If Sarrgh had continued to release material I do wonder if this project would have improved a lot, since bands that start like this tend to improve their writing a lot more as they continue on. Unfortunately after this they only released a 7" that I have yet to track down and we haven't heard from the band since.