The Flame of Sodom

Evroklidon is a God-send for the unblack scene in my opinion. This is black metal for purists, old-school and yet with some amazing flourishes of acoustic guitars thrown in the mix to give the listener a brief break before the next onslaught.

I wouldn't place this album in the same vein as bands like Wintersoul, however. It's intense and dark, but not necessarily brutal per se. Take old Burzum (Hvis Lyset Tar Oss) and mix it with a little Opeth-like acoustics, a little "De Mysteriis" era Mayhem, and some classic heavy metal sounds, and I would safely say you've got Evroklidon's sound.

It really shouldn't work on paper honestly, but it damn well does. The vocals are the aspect of this album that remind me most of Burzum - instead of raspy croaking or demonic growls, they sound more anguished and ancient. Instrumentally-speaking, this band is top-notch. The drum-work is perfect, the guitar-work is phenomenal. It's an amazing listening experience - when they call this album "epic", they're not lying.

Which leads me to the faults of this disc, despite its being most worthy for any black metal fan's library; that is, the song lengths. The album is only six songs long, and yet it runs at an incredible 42 minutes in length. In short, the songs are just a little bit too long - if they weren't so good, they'd almost lose me.

The other fault on this album for me is one that is more to do with my own personal taste: the classic heavy metal bits that poke their way into the near-flawless black metal. It makes my skin crawl when a black metal band is right in the middle of sounding like war in some ancient Viking land, only to suddenly turn around and start busting out riffs that would sound more at home on a power metal album. Not my thing at all. Thankfully, they aren't too common on here.

Overall, I'd say this is a must-have disc for unblack fans of almost all stripes.

'The Flames Of Sodom' starts off with a relatively short intro to lure you into the rest of the album. From the very beginning it creates an atmospheric style and continues in the same way throughout.

The album passes through different styles but is mainly quite ambient. At times, there are quite upbeat, almost happy riffs that sound rather folky but for the most part it is downbeat, emotional black metal with some solo instrumental parts.

The vocals are screechy, similar to Burzum's style and fit very well with the music. The production quality is quite high for this genre and is a very flowing album overall.

This is a very impressive album that any fan of ambient and atmospheric black metal would enjoy.