BLOODSWORN : ALL HYLLEST TIL SATAN
Agonia Records
It’s Norway, it’s 1999, and black metal warriors Bloodsworn, all of whom have been active in the scene since its inception at the beginning of the decade, are getting down to the serious business of recording their debut album “All Hyllest Til Satan”. Guitars have been mangled, tortured howls have been committed to digital posterity and a drum machine has been roundly abused- the job is done! Now all that’s required is for a label to successfully launch this opus onto the unsuspecting world. It was at this point that Bloodsworn hit somewhat of a brick wall, with not one but two labels folding underneath them, and so it’s a full ten years on that I come to listen to these seven tracks of Nordic grimness.
It takes more than a few seconds to adjust to the sheer primitiveness of Bloodsworn once the opening salvo of chaotic, raw, nastiness, “Frykt Djevelen” has kicked in. This thundering, quagmirish, skittering tone has not been heard in many a year, and although there is a darkly melodic lead to follow, it’s still hard to latch onto this as a ‘tune’. The title track adds another guitar layer, and an enthusiastic if not quite accurate attempt at a Mayhem-style solo, which adds equal amounts of interest and chaos. The percussion is programmed and pitched way too high, so that it feels like a particularly persistent and necro woodpecker is sitting on your head.
Still, I can’t help but enjoy this album, in a grim and frosty way. The guitar lines, where you can make them out, aren’t your standard black metal tremolo iciness, instead incorporating structures and tones from thrash and heavy metal, particularly on “Destruction in the Name of Satan”. The punk kick to the tempos is infectious, there are moments of more open atmosphere that are enjoyable and after a while the mind adjusts to accepting howling, fuzzy, messy chaos as the norm. If raw black metal is your thing, sound quality probably isn’t at the top of your shopping list anyway, and so the relentless torment of this album will be full of charm.
It’s not fair to say this will only appeal to purists, because of the deviations from the classic black metal norm outlined above. Nor is it a painful mess devoid of value or enjoyment, as suggested by some reviewers; there’s catchiness here, and if you like a racket, you’ve got one. I’m not sure if it would have been any better received ‘back in the day’; Bloodsworn’s contemporaries were already producing “Rebel Extravaganza” and “IX Equilibrium”, after all, and we’d all developed more sophisticated tastes. A historical disc of interest, then, for anyone with a passion for cacophony, although probably best avoided by everyone else.
59/100
