Unholy Crusade

There are many faces of black metal, but the two most prevalent ones in its early days were that of the philosopher and the soldier. One espousing an ideological appeal and tending towards a more contemplative take on things (Emperor being the most overt of the early players) while the other simply waves the banner and charges the adversary head on (Sweden's Marduk tends to stand out the most where the early 90s are concerned, but there were naturally others). By way of comparison, though they tended to embody a lot of the musical characteristics of the soldier, Lord Belial tended to draw upon the imagery and lyrical pursuits of the ideologue, at least until the release of "Unholy Crusade", an album featuring a hoard of undead soldiers in the midst of battle and coming across a bit more like a death metal band at first gaze.

To be fair, this album is not a 100% war cry that simply blasts at full speed for its whole duration and leaves little time for the berserker to catch his breath, but it definitely swings its sword far more violently than the magic staff wielding sorcerer soldier of "Enter The Moonlight Gate". Even the opening instrumental "Summon The Legions" wastes no time in assaulting the ears with a nasty death metal oriented riff set with the sounds of weapons striking each other, only to launch into an outright explosion of war-torn rage that is the title song. Both "Unholy Crusade" and "War Of Hate" tend a good bit more towards the hateful, frenzied character of Marduk, while still maintaining that lingering melodic flavor of albums past. But perhaps even more auspicious is the sheer technical brilliance that emerges from time to time, rivaling the madness of the mid 80s thrash scene and conjuring up some impressive lead guitar displays that are something of a rarity in the world of 3rd wave black metal, though obviously not unheard of.

Though this is definitely a warrior's album from start to finish, complete with a far more guitar oriented production and the return of the chunk bass sound that was sort of a unique quirk on "Kiss The Goat", this is not a complete 180 for this band. The occasional synthesized flute line and angelic vocal chime-ins of Marienne Andersson adorn a number of key point on this album, though they are fewer and further between. Indeed, much of the more nuanced mixtures of beauty and rage are not to be found until the 2nd album, almost like the wailing of disembodied spirits on a battle field after being separated from their bodies in a recent battle. The first instances occur on "Death Is The Gate", which has a similarly complex and longwinded construction to that of "Realm Of A Thousand Burning Souls", the closing epic off the last album. "Divide Et Empira" actually comes as something of a curveball in that it conjures up images of recent Immortal offerings with its droning, Viking character and pristine acoustic guitar lines amid a nasty vocal and guitar assault. Actually, though Marduk probably had an impact of Lord Belial's sound by this juncture, there are a lot of musical winks towards Immortal's "Blizzard Beasts" littered on a large number of songs.

Though "Enter The Moonlight Gate" is a slightly more memorable album and definitely closer to the 2nd wave sound aesthetic that fits with the general musical direction of this band, this is very close to it in overall quality. It's definitely heavily oriented towards those looking for a greater degree of aggression and edge that challenges the brutality of Sweden's death metal scene, which was actually starting to go a bit soft in this department in favor of a more melodic strain embodied in Amon Amarth, the Gothenburg scene, and even more traditionally oriented outfits like Unleashed. It's catchy and melodic enough to parallel the glory of Dissection, yet also ugly and nasty enough to sate those addicted to the thicker, heavier character of the likes of Grave and Dismember. Sometimes the wizard must also bear the sword, and Lord Belial dispatched many foes by conventional steel on this one.

This is the work that made me love metal. I bought it after receiving Rhapsody’s ‘Symphony of Enchanted Lands’ as a gift. I was in search of something stronger and darker; ‘Unholy Crusade’ came to me as a revelation. The fascinating cover reveals all the atmosphere you can find on this album: a great full moon shining in the night and all kind of dead and evil creatures preparing for a battle. In fact the album starts with the sounds of a battle, just a minute of ‘calm before the storm’; then it begins a violent drumming, backed with superb growling vocals and simple but captivating black riffs. Evil, rage and anger spread all over the tracks of this little masterpiece, the right thing to listen to when you need some outlet to overwhelming passions.

All of this come without any excess in melody or atmospheric effects. I mean, there are female vocals, a cello and a flute involved here, yet they are used very slightly and so this album stands as a concrete, compact wall of sounds, riffs and drumming from the beginning to the end with only a few changes of rhytm and mid-tempos; it may sound some kind of repetitive, but never too much, the right way to make you descend into some hypnotic abyss of anger and then awake you with some kind of surprise – like the wonderful slow piece in “Divide et impera”, a sort of symphonic moment in which a distant female voice sings along with a guitar. The surprise last only a few second though and it all returns to genuine black metal. This all gives to the work an obscure and monocromatic feeling with a pale glow of light spread all over, and again the cover stands as a perfect description of the kind of sound you’ll get. There are shorter and simpler tracks, yet very catchy like “Lord of evil spirits” and “Master of destruction” (you’ll find yourself sing along as you were listening to a folk song), and longer and more complex tracks, like “Death is the gate” or the final “And heaven eternally burns”, which carries a sort of slight epic accent – very lucky choice to close such an album.

What to say more? Here it is a wonderful, angered, raw and evil piece of black metal to which acoustic guitars and few other occasional addings give a sometime melancholic, sometime gloomy or epic aura, yet without any compromise with melody or folkish elements or so. “Enter the Moonlight Gate” for example sounded more epic and fantastic and somehow satanic, due to more flutes and acoustic moments and to the ‘ritualistic’ ghost-track. Here, these elements are very reduced: an anticipation of what seem to be the ‘new’ course of Lord Belial, nearer to death metal and brutal accents. “Unholy Crusade” stays just in the middle, not too brutal – it’s sheer black metal still! – neither too atmospheric or melodic, a perfect blend in my opinion that made me listen to this album hundreds of times without getting bored of!