At the Helm of the Abyss

Canada has always seemed to spawn more ultra-violent black metal than just about anywhere else. Right from the get-go with Blasphemy’s insane melding of black metal’s seething nihilism with the relentless speed and violence of death/grind metal, the Great White North has constantly provided us with speaker-destroying audial warfare, and Dead Of Winter seem to be quite content continuing the tradition. Exploding out of a roll of boiling thunder, At The Helm Of Abyss spends the next 36 minutes slapping you around with a non-stop barrage of blastbeats, primitive guitar abuse and hoarse vocals. The drumming really is the centre of attention here, slamming away with a ferocious artillery of whipcrack snare and thunderous double-kick, while the guitars mostly provide harsh ambience for the rhythms to churn up into a storm of hatred.

Occasionally they do slow down, such as in the lead-heavy “Across The Vast Storm Front”, but mostly you’re just going to be pulverized by speed for the entire duration, not crushed. The magnum-opus here, though, is the epic final deathstrike “The Seminary of Desolation… At The Helm of the Abyss”, which bashes away for a mind-numbing 9-odd minutes before dissolving into an ambient outro. Not to worry, since it feels like about 5 minutes. In fact, the album as a whole seems to rush in much less time than it really takes, which is always a good sign – better to have a 30 minute album feeling like 15 mintues than 75, after all.

All said, there’s not much subtlety here really. Not to worry though, since this stuff was never about such nonsense, it’s entirely designed to slap your face with a nuclear hammer. Fans of such nice radio-friendly acts as Conqueror, Bestial Warlust, Black Witchery and Marduk will derive endless enjoyment from this album.



Previously published at www.diabolicalconquest.com (c) 2005