Black Metal Warfare

Hell yeah, I had not heard anything about this band from Austria until i found them somewhere on the internet. Well, i have listened to their tracks freely available, which were really amazing, so i got me the disk. I did not found much information abound the band members, but most of them seem to be active in some other bands too. So now to the review!

"Black Metal Warfare" starts with a quite strange intro, some kind of symphonic stuff, so i thought that there could be more keyboard stuff on the album. Thanks to satan it was not so!

The first real track "Ave Maria" starts with simple but catchy riff, with a good drive. The songwriting here is not that interesting, but all in all it is a quite nice song to begin.

"Despair In Emptiness" is a slower, and more melodic song, which reminds me somehow on the track "Dunkelheit" from Burzum. I love the acoustic guitars in the first riff. There is a strange cut after this riff, with some drums together with vocals which somehow destroys the atmosphere of the song. Later, there are some other great riffs in this song, but no real highlights.

Then comes "Fuck You", for me one of the greatest songs on the album, with a very powerful drum intro. After a one second break, the song really explodes, with fast riffing, nice melodies and thrashing drums. The song structure here is also more interesting, the whole song is a powerful smash in the face. Must be a fucking great song live, I think! It fucks you directly.

"Nazareth Burning" is remarkable because the whole song is somehow quite experimentel, with a lot of tempo change and black metal unusual riffing, but on the other hand it sounds old school somehow. The leading riff is one of the most catchy riffs I have ever heard, really great track. It is one of the songs, which is available on the homepage of the band, worth a look!

Probably the fastest song on the album "Wuotas Pass", includes quite technical, for black metal unusual riffs, which somehow sound neoclassical, but spread a fucking cold atmosphere. High spead shredding, with interesting song structure.

The title track "Black Metal Warfare" hast some unuasual guitar riffs again, also nice structure and some tapping soli. It is also a very fast song, but mixed up with some groovy parts too.

The Tyrants also included one cover song on the album. What else could it be than the song "Tyrants" from the Immortal album "Sons Of Northern Darkness". Although the Tyrants do not play "Tyrants" with the same atmosphere as the original version contains, they play it faster, so the song gets an other touch. The second part, after the acoustic guitar part in middle must be a lot faster than the original, but not disturbing. The main hammering riff of the song comes a lot harder this way.

Last song is called "Sins Of A Saint", some black and roll -kind song, with a very catchy guitar riff, some rock solo, and also some parts, which remember me on good old german black metal bands from the 90's.

To sum up, "Black Metal Warfare" includes some great songs, especially "Fuck You" and "Nazareth Burning". Although the album is called "Black Metal Warfare", it is not really a typical black metal album for me. It seems to be a mixture of a lot of styles, mainly black metal, mixed up with some thrash and death metal and also a little bit rock/experimental.

A negative aspect is the strange production. It is not that bad, I ve heard a lot of worser sound productions, especially in black metal, but it somehow does not fit to the tracks. The Tyrants seem to be responsible for the sound themselves, Gruol led the production. He seems not to be a professional, but for a self-made album of an underground band, the sound is totally ok!

I hope I will see them once on stage, the live pictures on their homepage look very sinister and also most of the songs seem to be good live songs.