Blood Must Be Shed

An awesome collaboration of some of the finest black metallers of the time. I sense nothing but cold, and the colour black when I hear these only three tracks recorded by this line up. The guitar sound makes the riffs less clear but all the more searing, the keyboards add an odd ambient element to an otherwise aggressive output from the remaining members. The vocals lean away from the generic black metal shriek and instead the Dodheimsgard vocalist simply yells over the top of the instruments. Frost's drumming does not change from blast until halfway through 'Total Warfare' where a marching gallop takes place to soar the middle section back into the last half of the song (blast). There are a couple of interesting tempo changes from riff to riff, particularly one that sticks out when the blast tempo snaps suddenly much faster without warning. Whilst the sample at the end of the third track does have some agreeable sentiments, I find that samples cheapen this style of music and sometimes wish it wasn't there. A stand out release of 1995 - the year when the black metal phenomenon began to fade into the oblivion of what it is today.