Thorns on the Black Rose

North was among the very first Polish black metal hordes that managed to release their LPs. They're still active, they released a couple of materials and changed their style much since their debut. „Thorns on the Black Rose” is quite an important album in Poland, along with Behemoth's „Sventevith” and Graveland's „Carpathian Wolves”. But I have a feeling it never gained as much cult as the two other albums mentioned here. Maybe because North was never really involved in any dramas and wars of the Polish 90's black metal scene?

North's debut brings out some typical black metal created in the the middle of the 90's, not very far from Darkthrone or Mayhem. This kind of music was often called „forest black metal” in Poland, not only because of the lyrical themes but also because of the rather poor sound quality. There are seven tracks here. Most of these songs are taken from three demos that North recorded before. Sound is really underground, especially when it comes to the drums, but it's perfectly fine when you realize how hard it was to record such material in Poland in the late 90's. I think it brings some unique, underground climate – but for the modern listeners it might be simply poor. Same goes to guitars, they're buzzing for most of the time and sound isn't impressive as well. So yes, it's not a very good material in technical terms.

Songs are mostly pretty simple, much in the early 90's Norwegian black metal style, sometimes with pauses and rhythm changes along with Burzum-alike shrieks („Thorns on the Black Rose''). Two of these songs are longer („December Thoughts” and „Ages of Reign'' – each about 8 minutes) and have some nice, slow climatic parts too. The last one („In the Circle of the Kings') is a bit different, with acoustic guitars playing the main part, slow pace and some recitations at the end. Lyrics are dark and grim, sometimes even quite goth („My Heretic Kingdom”), but mostly focused on ancient times, legends and paganism. Yes, nothing original or new. North needed some time before they found their own style.

There's not much of any original stuff here. Most of the songs are rather monotonous. This, along with its rather mediocre quality, makes „Thorns on the Black Rose” a pretty decent album. You have to add some nostalgia value to make this album something worth getting and listening to. If you can't, then I can hardly recommend it to anyone. It's not like it is something really bad, but there were simply hundreds of similar albums in the 90's and you can easily find some much better ones.

North was one of the first Polish black metal bands, and this is a re-release of their first fullength album from 1995. It doesn’t have any bonuses, nothing especially fancy. It’s just a re-release to give a new generation the opportunity to get a hold of this classic album. And I think that’s a mighty good idea!


What we have here is bleak and raw black metal. It has a certain amount of melody to it, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call this pure melodic black metal. No, this is raw black metal. Raw in the sense of chilly riffs, gnarly screams, pounding drums and a cold-as-hell production. The drumming really pushes things forward while the intense and brutal riffing creates an atmosphere of vast forests, as the raging chants commands the earth to open up and swallow the world whole. Lyrically it’s quite pagan, which shouldn’t be too hard to figure out if you know of the band. I mean, nowadays they’re really concentrated on war in the heathen ways.


There are no bad tracks on here, but two that definitely stands out are The heretic kingdom and In the circle of the kings, the opening and closing tracks. 42 minutes of classic, mesmerizing black metal with one of the greatest album titles ever.

Originally written for www.mylastchapter.net