Rapture

It was the late 90s, and Eric Peterson of Testament fame, like so many of us out there, discovered a little thing called "black metal". And, again like many of us, he was floored. It wasn't a hidden secret, either; he wore a god damned Mayhem shirt in his photo for the "The Gathering" booklet, for fugg's sake. But he took it a step further, it turns out; seemed he loved the style so much that he actually wanted to give it a go himself. Never mind that he spent the better part of so many years as a Bay Area thrasher, never mind that his particular approach was the only one he knew how and what to play, he was gonna add his own odes to the Dark Lord into the ever-increasing miasma that was black metal. Thus, Dragonlord was born. You gotta give the dude props for being as gung-ho as he was, if nothing else.

What followed was an album that may have contained at least half of that day's Testament line-up, but it certainly was its own beast. To an extent.

From the get-, it was incredibly obvious that Eric really wanted to make a black metal record...except he didn't exactly know how to do it. Many of the genre's hallmarks are there (blast beats, shrieking vocals, raging tempos, chaotic riffing), yet it's done in a very elementary sort of way like, I dunno, from someone who literally just discovered the genre? But that's not a knock of him for being so earnest about it. Well...not completely. Eric and the Dragonlords run through their unholy craft with a sort of crushing energy that feels less like cavalcades of devilry rushing at the listener and more like a bunch of dudes having a hell of a time jamming. Despite the genre of choice, much of the darker tone and songcraft one found in "The Gathering" is present here, albeit with more tremolo picking and a few less palm-muted chugs, making it seem less a full on black metal album and more like a faster thrash album with black elements and keyboards gussying it up. Old habits showing their ugly, sun-drenched faces beneath the corpsepaint.

The whole affair is one of odds sometimes working against one another; the performance is wild and crazy, but the songwriting can get quite clunky, very square peg in the pentagram-shaped hole if you will. "Unholyvoid" and "Born to Darkness" are the first to show this sort of creative disconnect, where the keys feel just slapped on and the vocals sort of existing in its own space completely away from the rest of the instrumentation. Yet as the album continues on it begins to feel like things slowly coalesce into actually functioning decently well. It feels like this is a literal work in progress, where the further into the disc you go, the more the group understands what they are trying to achieve; to wit -- when everything comes together near the end with the transcendent "Wolfhunt" (with a chorus riff to die for) and the devastatingly violent title track, showing huge strides in creative growth the likes of which the first half lacked.

All in all, Dragonlord's debut was a slight misfire from someone really excited about giving a new style a go, though it has moments where it shines. It only took this one time before Eric fully realized his black metal vision with the follow up, which was leagues better, but his first step from the West Coast to the wintry forests was quite the stumble.