Autumn Roar

It's hard to find a place to start with this album. I suppose I should start with the good.

First of all, this production is terrible. It makes my ears want to vomit and I love it. Doesn't sound like there was much in terms of mixing either (There might have been none whatsoever). Secondly, the vocals are very harsh, more gutteral than normal and similar to that of fellow BBH branch, Branikald. The drums are more creative than that of Branikald, however. Something intriguing about this album is how atmospheric it is even though there does not seem to be much reverb on the guitars. The atmosphere is almost all in the awful production; it's a rather overwhelming atmosphere of noise and feedback. The song writing is a bit more complex than what I have heard from other BBH bands, with songs that change tempos occasionally.

Favorite songs from this album would be Ride The Northlord, Sun of Those Damned To The Fire, and Bloodcall. The last two mentioned do not change tempos throughout their durations, but the machine gun styled drums and high-speed riffs bordering on melodic make them my two favorite songs. It's somewhat humorous that the two are very hard to distinguish from each other. I actually thought they were the same song when I first listened. The only thing separating them is a half-second pause where it sounds like somebody accidentally turned off the microphones.

Now for the bad. The production is horrible to the point that there seem to be occasional microphone malfunctions and bits and pieces of songs are lost. Funeral Wind, being the longest song is a big let down consisting of nothing more than some tremolo guitar work and a blowing wind sound effect.

Bottom line: This is some pretty stuff and I would recommend it to anybody who likes lo-fi black metal.