Sing Thou Unholy Servants

“Sing Thou Unholy Servants” is a schizophrenic album. It’s a maniacal concoction of all of black metal’s stereotypical elements, vomited up by Wind of the Black Mountains and released in disk form. Pornographic imagery, stock satanic symbolism, atmospheric frills, ritualistic indulgence, and a Bathory cover for good measure—all meet incoherently to constitute “Sing Thou Unholy Servants,” an album that is not quite a mess, not quite original, and perhaps not even quite an album. Wind of the Black Mountains nail the madness part but neglect the method.

The album was recorded over a four-year period, and it really shows, as far as production is concerned. It’s jarring when the first-half of a release sounds much better than the second, and the discrepancy damages cohesiveness. “Forcefed into Blasphemy” and “An Autumn Evening” have a much clearer and crunchier bite to their sound than do “Adversary” and “The Shadow.” Because it suffers the most, “Adversary” was probably the earliest recorded song. The guitars have an abrasive, fuzzy quality, while the drums take their cues from early Bathory releases. With a muddier wall-of-sound style, “The Shadow” is somewhere between “Forcefed into Blasphemy” and “Adversary.” In all three cases, the production is not terrible, and the typical black metal fan won’t be bothered in the slightest and may even be pleased with how much the tracks recall early classics. However, it’s hard to take “Sing Thou Unholy Servants” seriously when it’s only a few demos padded with atmospheric filler to make a full-length release.

It really seems that “Forcefed into Blasphemy,” “Adversary,” and “The Shadow” were the only tracks that got the band’s full attention. By covering Bathory’s “Rite of Darkness,” Wind of the Black Mountains assert their legitimacy, but the track is redundant when “An Autumn Evening” is more or less a Bathory imitation. As a re-worked cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” “Black Goat” has incredible potential, but it comes across as much stiffer than the original and feels out of place. Loyal to the trappings of the genre, “Thou Shall Not Mourn” is a throwaway synth-ridden outro, complete with whispers and spoken-word passages.

It seems accidental, then, that “Beautiful Sorrow” should be a standout track, but it is. What otherwise would be filler is a strange blend of 1970’s psychedelic folk and early black metal. Without going on for too long, the song consists of an acoustic guitar playing chaotically over whispers and synthesized noises. Wind of the Black Mountains do this style very well, not only in this track but in others as well. The problem is that they often go too far, and the songs become cheesy. The opening acoustic passage of “Forcefed into Blasphemy” is haunting, but it feels as though the listener is being force-fed the atmosphere when the vocalist doesn’t stop whispering evilly. The track features an audible bass and interesting percussion work but is brought down by a minute-long section of cheap synthesizers and layered vocals tagged on at the end. “Adversary,” too, is really only half a song, with the last six minutes being overblown ambient noise and an acoustic section that goes nowhere.

Calling “Sing Thou Unholy Servants” an album is a bit deceptive because, in simply repeating what has already been done, it is unclear what the album is setting out to do. It’s black metal done rightly, in the sense that all the necessary ingredients are here, but it’s not done incredibly well. To be sure, there are moments, but they aren’t sustained throughout the release. Instead of concentrating on one element, Wind of the Black Mountains take the ritualistic, satanic, dramatic, and sensual sides of black metal and throws them into a blender. It’s a shallow and confused mixture, but it’s certainly palatable to any fan seeking to be satisfied but not surprised.

I find the cover art of this release interesting.

First of all, the (admittedly excellent) painting chosen for the cover is taller than it is wide, which leaves a bit of empty black space on the side. Cropping the pic to get an image of the proper dimensions was really out of the question, of course: you really need to see both the naked chick’s ass and the entire demon head to get the proper effect. Rather than put the empty margin to waste, the layout artist turned the band logo and album title ninety degrees to the right and stuck them both there. It looks a tad amateurish, but it does work.

The music sort of follows suit: utterly wrong, but successful thanks to a freak accident of right-brained madness. In spite of being rough around the edges, the music comes together as more than the sum of its parts and is very effective.

The primary influence here is probably Bathory; in fact, the sixth song on the album is a very worthy cover of “Rite of Darkness” from “The Return”. Elsewhere the influence makes itself clear in the bass-snare drum machine grooves, the dead simple guitar riffing, and the rasped vocals. Atmosphere is the real priority here – the blackness is at least equally important to the metal – and aside from the darkness conjured by the guitar riffs (which is considerable) the band includes some elements that might be called “experimental” if they didn’t feel so natural to the music. Not to say that they’re all completely successful – there are some awful female vocals on the very first song that nearly manage to derail the album before it really gets started, to name one example – but rather than feel like tacked-on meanderings they functions as natural extensions of the music (as they also do in Beherit, another imaginative black metal band). Things come together nearly perfectly in the fifth track, “Adversary”, which starts with a low tempo groove and atmospheric riffing that sounds partially improvised, a hint of eerie keys in the background, and reverb-heavy vocals spouting nearly-discernable blasphemous lyrics… eventually some impressive lead guitar intrudes into the background (Tchort is not a bad guitar player). Eventually the distorted guitars and drums evaporate, and the song continues as a tapestry of ambient sound, keys, and clean guitar, managing to show off nearly aspect of the band’s sound.

But you know what I really love about this album, now that I think about it? It’s not the least bit self-conscious or pretentious. You know, so much black metal these days has this really vain vibe to it, like the angry fifteen-year-old who “doesn’t care what anybody thinks” about him but still takes the time to dye his hair black (with green highlights) and don a Marilyn Manson shirt which is sure to draw attention. The bands are all reacting against something, or trying to revive something… you can detect an acute awareness of the history of black metal and the eyes of the worldwide black metal community (?) on them in everything that they do, from the way they package and market their releases, to the sorts of interviews they give and the kind of image they attempt to project, and yes, even in that oft-overlooked peripheral element of black metal bands: the music that they record. Wind of the Black Mountains, on the other hand, seem to have a near-total indifference to the supposed rules of black metal while still grasping the power of the music natively. Too rare a quality.