Sovereign

Some call it war metal, but it’s really just a particularly aggressive strain of black metal that looks to speed and intensity before atmosphere. I guess its origins lie in the likes of Blasphemy, who fused the back-to-basics punk of early black metal with grindcore. But a particularly militaristic strain evolved with the likes of Marduk, Zyklon-B, and I guess you could lump Impaled Nazarene in there as well. It gets a bad rep for two main reasons.

One is the limitations of the style, relying as it does on sheer, one dimensional intensity with no let up, creatively it ran barren pretty much right away. Secondly, because the chaos and mechanistic nature of the music draws artists towards subjects of modern warfare in the lyrics, the charge of Nazism is often levelled at many of the musicians. This means that artists who choose to tackle the events of World War II in their subject matter often appropriate a questionable aesthetic which – either knowingly or in ignorance – courts controversy. Or else people exploit this as the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment for those wishing to discredit black metal. Beyond the noise however, let’s take a look at the actual noise.

Cirith Gorgor, although lyrically more philosophical than straight up war metal, have never tired of their own brand of energetic, restless black metal. 2019’s ‘Sovereign’ sees them adopt more of a heroic and defiant sound through their riffs than the rather dissonant ‘Visions of Exalted Lucifer’ released in 2016. Of course there’s the obligatory ‘evil’ aesthetic running through the backbone of ‘Sovereign’, but it is worked into a sense of triumphalism that augments what would otherwise by a rather intense and monotonous shower of blastbeats.

So, before we move on to what on earth I mean by ‘triumphalism’, a couple of words on production. I would say this is the most filled out sound achieved by Cirith Gorgor to date. The drums are crystal clear, with the bass perfectly audible but not overbearing, which is impressive given the fact that they rarely let up from blast beats or intensely busy fills. Guitars again are pretty much industry standard for this particularly modern incarnation of black metal; polished and crisp, but heavy enough to leave a mark. They predominantly work their way through minor keys underpinned by plenty of tremolo’d barrages of noise.

The result – to some extent – is the post 2000 Gorgoroth that could have been. In essence there was nothing wrong with the gradual shifts in sound that they took to end up with ‘Twilight of Idols’, although it was a damn shame to lose the esoteric chaos that was an Infernus led jam of insanity a-la ‘Maneskyggens Slave’. No, it was the sheer lack of energy and imagination baked within music that purported to get by on aggression and ‘evil’ alone, with some over the top Satanic imagery worked throughout. Cirith Gorgor, newly modernised on ‘Sovereign’, demonstrate the true potential of this style.

The triumphalism is a subtle undercurrent worked throughout certain chord progressions, from major to minor, dissonance to atonal. They revel in the power of the music, and rather than crushing the listener, they wish you to revel in it too. This is furthered by the vocals which – when not a standard rasp – devolve into a clean shout, reminiscent of the noise of battle. This creates much needed space between the barrage of blast beats and riffs to allow the music space to breathe, and grants us a moment to digest the content, before moving on.

Cirith Gorgor may have diluted this warlike style resulting in something more entry level, but accessibility is not a kiss of death in its own right. It’s a well-made slab of fast and hard melodic black metal for all the family.

Originally published at Hate Meditations