Sing Thou Unholy Servants

I find the cover art of this release interesting.

First of all, the (admittedly excellent) painting chosen for the cover is taller than it is wide, which leaves a bit of empty black space on the side. Cropping the pic to get an image of the proper dimensions was really out of the question, of course: you really need to see both the naked chick’s ass and the entire demon head to get the proper effect. Rather than put the empty margin to waste, the layout artist turned the band logo and album title ninety degrees to the right and stuck them both there. It looks a tad amateurish, but it does work.

The music sort of follows suit: utterly wrong, but successful thanks to a freak accident of right-brained madness. In spite of being rough around the edges, the music comes together as more than the sum of its parts and is very effective.

The primary influence here is probably Bathory; in fact, the sixth song on the album is a very worthy cover of “Rite of Darkness” from “The Return”. Elsewhere the influence makes itself clear in the bass-snare drum machine grooves, the dead simple guitar riffing, and the rasped vocals. Atmosphere is the real priority here – the blackness is at least equally important to the metal – and aside from the darkness conjured by the guitar riffs (which is considerable) the band includes some elements that might be called “experimental” if they didn’t feel so natural to the music. Not to say that they’re all completely successful – there are some awful female vocals on the very first song that nearly manage to derail the album before it really gets started, to name one example – but rather than feel like tacked-on meanderings they functions as natural extensions of the music (as they also do in Beherit, another imaginative black metal band). Things come together nearly perfectly in the fifth track, “Adversary”, which starts with a low tempo groove and atmospheric riffing that sounds partially improvised, a hint of eerie keys in the background, and reverb-heavy vocals spouting nearly-discernable blasphemous lyrics… eventually some impressive lead guitar intrudes into the background (Tchort is not a bad guitar player). Eventually the distorted guitars and drums evaporate, and the song continues as a tapestry of ambient sound, keys, and clean guitar, managing to show off nearly aspect of the band’s sound.

But you know what I really love about this album, now that I think about it? It’s not the least bit self-conscious or pretentious. You know, so much black metal these days has this really vain vibe to it, like the angry fifteen-year-old who “doesn’t care what anybody thinks” about him but still takes the time to dye his hair black (with green highlights) and don a Marilyn Manson shirt which is sure to draw attention. The bands are all reacting against something, or trying to revive something… you can detect an acute awareness of the history of black metal and the eyes of the worldwide black metal community (?) on them in everything that they do, from the way they package and market their releases, to the sorts of interviews they give and the kind of image they attempt to project, and yes, even in that oft-overlooked peripheral element of black metal bands: the music that they record. Wind of the Black Mountains, on the other hand, seem to have a near-total indifference to the supposed rules of black metal while still grasping the power of the music natively. Too rare a quality.