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Thule > Anthology > Reviews
Thule - Anthology

A very nice surprise - 90%

girionis, April 30th, 2008

Wow!! This is actually good. This is very good. Having heard that Thule hail from Iceland I didn't expect much but this album changed my mind. What we have here is eight songs of pure driving black metal.

This album contains songs from several periods of the band. This is obvious as soon as someone starts listening to Thule. The first three songs are brutal and fast black metal with excellent production. Thule know how to play ultra-fast and raw black metal without loosing a touch of melody. The songs are very fast (you don't get mid tempos at all), they are like an incessant black metal machine. The production is very professional, you can hear everything very clearly, (even the bass) and the drums are pounding fast and heavily. At one time there is a small break where the guitars' sound resonates in the middle of the song. The vocals are typical black metal vocals with screams and gruntings.

The next two songs are rawer and they sound more like a demo. You can say they were recorded earlier from the sound and the production. The production is definitely dirtier and unpolished, and the guitars more distorted. The music interchanges between mid and fast tempos. Both songs are more atmospheric than the previous three and much more melodic with slow breaks and clean guitars at times (especially in the Aett Ulfa song). Vocals are also typical of a black metal release.

The next two songs move more or less at the same level, although they are bit faster with more complex riffs. You also get pounding drums and a lot of melody.

These four songs clearly show that they were recorded earlier than the rest since they are raw and complex and the production is more amateur. You can really feel the passion and the effort of the band. Not that the other songs are not passionate, it's just that these four ones are more underground, unpolished and raw.

The last song (Thegar Tunglid Er Fullt) is a re-play of the song number three. The basic rhythms are the same although some of the riffs are changed. The production is also a more professional, it's cleaner and the instruments sound a bit refined (for example you can hear the cymbals very clearly which you cannot do it in the original song). Apart from the production and some of the riffs nothing else has changed. You keep on getting torrential guitars, very fast drumming and hammering bass. Black metal at its finest.