The Old Ways

Plugging away for nearly the past 20 years as a project in its own right and in collaboration with other underground BM bands (not to mention its sole member Vulturius being employed in various other bands) is Irae, who believes in doing things Ye Olde-Fashioned Way, as on this limited edition 7-inch vinyl release - gosh, even the format and the measurement is o-o-old! - aptly titled "The Old Ways". The founder band of the Black Circle network of underground Portuguese BM bands delivers six very demented if unfortunately very short songs in raw melodic old-skool BM style. As such, it's probably best to hear the whole recording in one hit if you can to appreciate its ritual nature. "Initiation" is a very appropriate introduction into this recording and the Path of Irae: crackly rain ambience and a howling mess mixing clean, shrill and crepey demon vocals from a choir of souls long ago damned to Hell herald listeners as they all descend through the gateway to the Underworld.

There, they will be caught up in an furious and frenzied onslaught of raw lo-fi and badly produced BM played on biscuit-tin drums, whistling cymbals and scratchy-scrapey guitars while devils rant and rage in screechy squawking tones. Occasionally the music will actually go melodic and even rock'n'roll groovy, and songs like "Adoração ao Fogo" even have dark melodrama and some bluesy tunes in parts. There is room for some experimentation (though not much) on the doomy mid-paced "Martyr", showing a potential for including atmospheric noise if Irae were interested. A horror-movie soundtrack feel and a mood of sheer dread and terror are present on "Night in the Graveyard" with rapid hornet-noise tremolo riffing, shouty chanting vocals and triumphant screaming near the end. This is probably the most BM-sounding track on the recording but Vulturius fills every space with more than enough terror to send most listeners racing for their lives in sheer panic and getting lost in the bowels of Sheol.

That "The Old Ways" is such a short recording is very much unfortunate - well, for me anyway - as it's full of the kind of crazed and debauched fun and nutty chaos that the French Black Legions indulged in, in those moments when sanity left them (on the assumption that those bands ever had any), in the 1990s. But then, if "The Old Ways" had been any longer, few of us listeners would have any sanity left either long after the last song had finished. Sometimes the best things have to be savoured in small helpings.