Autumn Roar

For some reason at least 10 years passed between the time this recording was made (about 1995) and when it was actually released (about 2006) and during that decade one of the members of this band Ulv Gegner Irminsson died so we are lucky that "Autumn Roar" finally got to see the light of day. As might be expected of a band that was part of the Blazebirth Hall BM scene in Novomoskovsk (a city located a couple hundred miles south of Moscow), Raven Dark's music here shares similarities with the music of Forest (especially in the second half of the CD) and Vargleide (in the percussion rhythms of the early songs on the CD). The sound on "Autumn Roar" can be incredibly raw, almost like old 1970s punk and a weeny bit like some of the French Black Legions bands (in atmosphere anyway), with the aggression and fury just about spewing out of the music and speakers. Vocals especially are harsh and craggy and are very consistent all the way through this album.

An early track that is outstanding for its near-punk aggression and the Vargleide-like clashing-swords rhythm is "Son of the Eternal Freezing Moon" - ah yeah, these Blazebirth Hall bands did give their songs some wonderful titles: descriptive, heroic and vivid. This track is followed by a highly original near-ambient piece "Funeral Wind" that combines a raw strumming guitar melody with a howling wind - this is an extremely cold and forbidding track. Snatches of spoken voice and shouting can be heard in the background but these serve to emphasise the desolate and frigid ambience of the piece.

I really like "Ride the North Lord" which comes about halfway through the album, this has a strong galloping rhythm which then goes a bit irregular and starts zinging off in unexpected directions before resuming its usual rhythm only to zap off erratically again. There are a couple of moments where there is just ultra-raw guitar and harsh singing which are great. The track does threaten to veer all over the place but the musicians always have it under (loose) control.

Later in the CD the sound quality improves for tracks 6 - 8: the punk ambience disappears as does some of the raw sound but in their place come reinvigorated aggression and hatred and a bass-heavy, more solid sound which in speed and fury is very like Forest. The songs now become more rigidly minimalist BM. "Sun of those damned to the Fire" features insanely fast and almost demented guitar-playing that could be mistaken for a tape loop repeating over and over as it hardly ever varies, at least until the music changes key. A blip of silence occurs, then it's full speed ahead again but we're now actually into a different song "Bloodcall" - the pace is the same, the drumming is the same (bang-bang-bang-bang-bang etc) and the guitar work is as single-minded and crazed as ever so it's easy to think this CD has just 7 tracks instead of 8 tracks and what happened to the eighth track??? At least the last track "Eternal Vastland" is different from the previous two, it still has that beefed-up sound but the rhythm becomes looser and more varied and some definite riffs and melodies appear.

Not a bad song is to be found here though tracks 6 and 7 are so similar that if it weren't for that brief break between them they would have been almost indistinguishable and you'd have to listen to them really carefully to make out any differences (the riffing is different but not very much so). The early songs with that clashing-swords percussion rhythm and raw-beyond-raw sound are really good and have some interesting experimentation. The last three tracks are so different in sound and production quality and have such different rhythms with more emphasis on a rigid song structure and much less experimentation that they have the whiff of bonus tracks about them though nothing on the CD sleeve indicates if they are or aren't.

The music is strong, consistent and varied enough that the CD could serve as a good introduction to the Blazebirth Hall BM scene.