Art of War

This is the first album of what is supposedly one of the first Spanish black metal bands, and despite having the rather ignominious badge of beginning a scene that no one (including the Spanish themselves) cares about, this is actually quite good. Well, the intro... that could probably give you the wrong impression; it's cheesy MIDI synth ambient that would come from some early '90s fantasy turn-based strategy game, and though I have a soft spot for that sort of thing, it does a very poor job of introducing the genuinely good black metal to come.

Spanish black metal seems to always have a vaguely off-center feel from typical black metal and never seems to fully ape the Norwegian bands we all love so much. The riffs are nearly always a notch more complicated than average and the atmosphere seems to dwell in a sort of Summoning style kind of folk, kind of medieval, kind of epic territory. Primigenium embodies all these values pretty clearly: the riffs are a little complex and the atmosphere is folky/epic/medievally despite the lack of a lute anywhere in the action. The production is rather flat and plain, raw in a conventional black metal sense but with no instrument particularly obscured, with the individual tonal properties rather smothered by the buzzsaw guitar distortion and harshly screamed vocals.

The songs all seem rather narrative in nature and I'd imagine they all tell various stories of slaying dragons (and by dragons I mean Jesus) and having vaguely non-consensual relations with various maidens from throughout the kingdom. But all latent cheesiness aside, its typicality of Spanish black metal belies a strong sense of riffcraft and intensely motivated instrumental performances which seethe with the kind of fire that most bands lack. The band sounds nearly ready to fall apart at any moment and is probably playing the songs with a bit more fervor than they logically should, but that seems to add to the charm of the album: it takes relatively simple elements and overdrives them so even the weaker parts still make you take a step back out of fear that getting to close to the stereo will result in you being clubbed with a drumstick or something.

I listen to this album a lot when I'm doing what I usually do throughout they day (cry and masturbate, generally) and it's the sort of release that provides a stirring soundtrack to just about anything, turning a venture to Wal-Mart for milk into some anti-Christian quest for glory. I can't really think of many things that I want more from my black metal so I guess this is a pretty good album if it can make my errands exciting.