Songs of the Ancient Gods

Frost (Hun) - Songs of the Ancient Gods

It could have been better ... much better.
50

The Hungarian band with the name Frost has released in 1999 an ep with the title Songs of the Ancient Gods and it has some nice moments, which might catch the listener by surprise. No, problem one might think, so let us enjoy the art, yet this is not very likely because the band has ruined them. A paradox? No, Frost merely did something a lot of bands tend to do...

Black metal is a tricky thing, as it is possible to play it in so many ways and to ruin it in even more. When it comes to this band, then the short-comings are identified at once: cheesy keyboards and overloaded compositions. These two form an unholy alliance and ruin a good deal of the atmosphere. To be fair, the production is also not optimal, some instruments sound displaced occasionally, bla, bla, bla ... nothing that could not have been expected; at least in some degree. Yet, compositional efforts are able to compensate those flaws in some respect, but the Hungarian band Frost was unable to do so. A chaotic mess is what the listener has to endure and the band seems to feel comfortable with creating it.

Songs of the Ancient Gods is a very suggestive title. The history of man is loaded with gods and goddesses and to give all them all a proper place in an ep would of course result in something without a clear direction. This is the flaw of this release. The band Frost do not really know where they want to progress towards and accordingly has the listener a good deal to endure. They want to cover a good deal of facets of the black metal circus and to combine them in a neat fashion, but this is a task rarely achieved and accordingly is the art stuck at a certain point and unable to move beyond it. Plain parts are reached fast and they overshadow the nice moments, not a real challenge as only some of them can be found here. There are even the bursts of bass in the background, which also make the debut release of Auberon a strain to the ear; at least to mine.

How the band should revamp this album:
Give the keyboards more room, make longer songs, balance the vocals better -- less of them and more of the instruments --, drop the tempo a bit and remove samples like the one on A Táltos; when Ork were unable to get it right, then Frost will find it even more difficult.

Well, I do not think that my cries will be heard by the band and accordingly is the beauty I am able to find beyond the dirty surface a gem that will remain hidden for good. To Koppány Lord could be quite a good song, would the band stop for one moment and recognize the atmosphere they are creating at the opening, use it as an incentive or motivation and compose around it the rest of it. No, the band rather relied on the black metal parts and left the keyboards the spare and unused bits. A pity, a pity indeed.

This release is basically a mixture of Stormblåst and For all Tid with aggressive elements but simply done wrong.