Autumn Roar

It's hard to find a place to start with this album. I suppose I should start with the good.

First of all, this production is terrible. It makes my ears want to vomit and I love it. Doesn't sound like there was much in terms of mixing either (There might have been none whatsoever). Secondly, the vocals are very harsh, more gutteral than normal and similar to that of fellow BBH branch, Branikald. The drums are more creative than that of Branikald, however. Something intriguing about this album is how atmospheric it is even though there does not seem to be much reverb on the guitars. The atmosphere is almost all in the awful production; it's a rather overwhelming atmosphere of noise and feedback. The song writing is a bit more complex than what I have heard from other BBH bands, with songs that change tempos occasionally.

Favorite songs from this album would be Ride The Northlord, Sun of Those Damned To The Fire, and Bloodcall. The last two mentioned do not change tempos throughout their durations, but the machine gun styled drums and high-speed riffs bordering on melodic make them my two favorite songs. It's somewhat humorous that the two are very hard to distinguish from each other. I actually thought they were the same song when I first listened. The only thing separating them is a half-second pause where it sounds like somebody accidentally turned off the microphones.

Now for the bad. The production is horrible to the point that there seem to be occasional microphone malfunctions and bits and pieces of songs are lost. Funeral Wind, being the longest song is a big let down consisting of nothing more than some tremolo guitar work and a blowing wind sound effect.

Bottom line: This is some pretty stuff and I would recommend it to anybody who likes lo-fi black metal.

Whenever I hear Raven Dark, it's hard to take it completely seriously. Of all the horribly produced, questionably played, intensely derivative bands in the Blazebirth Hall scene, Raven Dark has the worst production, playing, and music of all of them. Hands down. No contest. They are, for all intents and purposes, the worst band in Blazebirth Hall. In fact, they're so incompetently bad on nearly every track I've heard by them, I fail to see how people view them with some sort of legitimacy. Everywhere I turn I see people listening to Raven Dark like it's serious black metal- the same people that would dismiss this if it was an American kid in his bedroom love this because it's some weird Russian dudes in the middle of nowhere. That doesn't work for me, man. It's still super shitty.

So apparently 'Autumn Roar' was supposed to be released back in 1994, but the band sat on it until 2006. Honestly, this shit might not have sounded quite as dated if it was released back in 1994, but at this point, the style of overly dramatic Russian dissonant raw black metal is pretty fucking played out, and 'Autumn Roar' doesn't express any of those ideas in a way any more compelling than the hundred other bands out there releasing unknown tapes of the same general shit. Production: non-existent. The thinness actually hurts my ears if I turn it too loud since I'm pretty sure some of the riffs are played in a register that only dogs can hear. The music: ponderously written. Long, boring songs composed of sloppy blast beats with one or two Darkthrone-derived tremolo riffs over them alongside some howling vocals. This reminds me of early Striborg without any of the artistry.

And... I'm at a loss for what else to say about this, really. I fully believe that the only reason this has legitimacy is due to the weight of the Blazebirth Hall name (or should I say the Branikald and Forest names); were this released by some unknown musicians, this would be roundly rejected- hell, not even that, it wouldn't get to the point where rejection is necessary. But since this is BBH-affiliated, everyone feels the need to gather around their stereos with quizzical looks on their faces, occasionally nodding slowly to themselves over the depth of the compositions. I'm no stranger to extremely raw and minimal black metal, but the raw, minimal black metal Raven Dark plays is so derivative and simply boring that I can't find anything to recommend about it. It's a joke. This doesn't convey any majesty, grimness, or whatever else some are saying about it: it just sucks, and doesn't even suck in a particularly interesting way. Do you know how many random NSBM CDrs from South America I own that sound just like this?

There's an interesting thing about Raven Dark: whenever you read a review of a Raven Dark album that's positive, the reviewer tends to go on and on, describing the music and the production in detail, but when it comes time to actually talk about what is functionally good about the record, they're mysteriously silent. That's because there's nothing to say: Raven Dark, for all its trappings as a grim, mysterious, true black metal band, is really just an entity of style and fashion like the worst of hipster USBM. There's nothing of enduring value here: just the pretense of it.

For some reason at least 10 years passed between the time this recording was made (about 1995) and when it was actually released (about 2006) and during that decade one of the members of this band Ulv Gegner Irminsson died so we are lucky that "Autumn Roar" finally got to see the light of day. As might be expected of a band that was part of the Blazebirth Hall BM scene in Novomoskovsk (a city located a couple hundred miles south of Moscow), Raven Dark's music here shares similarities with the music of Forest (especially in the second half of the CD) and Vargleide (in the percussion rhythms of the early songs on the CD). The sound on "Autumn Roar" can be incredibly raw, almost like old 1970s punk and a weeny bit like some of the French Black Legions bands (in atmosphere anyway), with the aggression and fury just about spewing out of the music and speakers. Vocals especially are harsh and craggy and are very consistent all the way through this album.

An early track that is outstanding for its near-punk aggression and the Vargleide-like clashing-swords rhythm is "Son of the Eternal Freezing Moon" - ah yeah, these Blazebirth Hall bands did give their songs some wonderful titles: descriptive, heroic and vivid. This track is followed by a highly original near-ambient piece "Funeral Wind" that combines a raw strumming guitar melody with a howling wind - this is an extremely cold and forbidding track. Snatches of spoken voice and shouting can be heard in the background but these serve to emphasise the desolate and frigid ambience of the piece.

I really like "Ride the North Lord" which comes about halfway through the album, this has a strong galloping rhythm which then goes a bit irregular and starts zinging off in unexpected directions before resuming its usual rhythm only to zap off erratically again. There are a couple of moments where there is just ultra-raw guitar and harsh singing which are great. The track does threaten to veer all over the place but the musicians always have it under (loose) control.

Later in the CD the sound quality improves for tracks 6 - 8: the punk ambience disappears as does some of the raw sound but in their place come reinvigorated aggression and hatred and a bass-heavy, more solid sound which in speed and fury is very like Forest. The songs now become more rigidly minimalist BM. "Sun of those damned to the Fire" features insanely fast and almost demented guitar-playing that could be mistaken for a tape loop repeating over and over as it hardly ever varies, at least until the music changes key. A blip of silence occurs, then it's full speed ahead again but we're now actually into a different song "Bloodcall" - the pace is the same, the drumming is the same (bang-bang-bang-bang-bang etc) and the guitar work is as single-minded and crazed as ever so it's easy to think this CD has just 7 tracks instead of 8 tracks and what happened to the eighth track??? At least the last track "Eternal Vastland" is different from the previous two, it still has that beefed-up sound but the rhythm becomes looser and more varied and some definite riffs and melodies appear.

Not a bad song is to be found here though tracks 6 and 7 are so similar that if it weren't for that brief break between them they would have been almost indistinguishable and you'd have to listen to them really carefully to make out any differences (the riffing is different but not very much so). The early songs with that clashing-swords percussion rhythm and raw-beyond-raw sound are really good and have some interesting experimentation. The last three tracks are so different in sound and production quality and have such different rhythms with more emphasis on a rigid song structure and much less experimentation that they have the whiff of bonus tracks about them though nothing on the CD sleeve indicates if they are or aren't.

The music is strong, consistent and varied enough that the CD could serve as a good introduction to the Blazebirth Hall BM scene.