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Liar of Golgotha > Ancient Wars > Reviews
Liar of Golgotha - Ancient Wars

In Praise Of Cthulhu - 89%

AdNoctum, August 2nd, 2008

Liar Of Golgotha's 'Ancient Wars' was at the time of its release hailed as one of the best Dutch (black) metal albums of the year, and by some even as one of the best albums in the history of Dutch metal. And indeed, what Liar Of Golgotha presented on that particular record could, and can still be described as really impressive and a great example of what can happen when extreme metal and so-called 'serious' musicianship (mind the inverted commas and the word 'so-called', people!) are combined.

One would not expect this, perhaps, looking at founding member Gorgoroth's history with the semi-legendary Dutch black metal outfit Funeral Winds. But unlike this renowned band, which (still) plays raw, satanic black metal, Liar Of Golgotha soon developed a more melodic style. Around the time when the band released 'Ancient Wars', the key elements of this style were an unusually well developed sense of melody and harmony, creative drum patterns and fills (drummer Yuri Rinkel, now playing in both Melechesh and Holland's oldest extreme metal band Thanatos, has a leading part on the entire album), a generally symphonic approach, and frontman Gorgoroth's full-sounding voice.

Besides this, the lyrics on 'Ancient Wars' – mainly written by former member Vincent Meelhuysen – are less aggressive than usual in the black metal scene and hardly ever deal with traditional subjects like evil and darkness. The vocal arrangements, though, are one of the few weaker points on the album, because Gorgoroth doesn't always stress the syllables in the lyrics that should be stressed and often transformes vowels into sounds that are more suitable for screaming (such as 'a' and 'i').

The tracklist consists of six own songs, four short instrumental interludes, and a cover song (Exodus' "Piranha"). Every single one of the songs can be labeled as exceptionally good, and especially the first two songs – "Ghost Of The Ancient Siberian Wolfcult" and "Night Of The Falling Stars" – are extraordinarily good melodic/symphonic black metal compositions. The interludes, performed by keyboard player Marco, come in between Liar Of Golgotha's original compositions. Where many other bands fail to write even one relevant intro, Liar Of Golgotha manage to sustain the dark, unworldly atmosphere that this album carries by adding these short segments. The Exodus cover ending the album is performed well, but doesn't really fit in this context: the listener is rudely pulled from that mystic world the band build so carefully during the previous 41 minutes, and all of a sudden faces something totally different. My choice would have been to save this cover song for an EP, so that the album's overall atmosphere would not have been disturbed.

Besides the two disadvantages named above, 'Ancient Wars' can, to my opinion, indeed be considered one of the best Dutch black metal albums, and anyway the best one of the three full-length albums that Liar Of Golgotha released during its twelve year-existence. Due to various setbacks, the band disbanded in 2005, but at least we can say that 'Ancient Wars' was a worthy farewell.