Supreme Art of War

I am once again on my self righteous quest of heralding insignificant underground death/black metal records as essential parts of mankind's art history and I am still waiting for an angry mob of high school professors with torches and pitchforks to carry me into the night and hang my stupid skinny ass on the next tree while cursing me in latin and eating tiny biscuits. But I guess I am not important enough for that. Well, it's their loss. Today we are looking closely on an album that feels like a little brother to everything that Bal Sagoth (a fantasy metal project that kills all other fantasy metal projects before they are even born) ever did. A little brother with enough strength and poetry to fight his own battles at any family dinner.

The overall atmosphere on this album is incredibly warm, bordering on "hot" sometimes. Like you just got sunburned next to the Egyptian pyramids or on some Sicilian beach. The high shrieks of the croaking screamer Christiano have that certain "hysterical duck quality" that I admired on "In the Nightside Eclipse" by Emperor or also the debut of Setherial (Get that shit, seriously!) but they do not sing about dark or blue fjord skies and frosty rocks covered by virgin blood, snow and goat guts this time. This is an album for the long and dreaming days of summer. We have fast blasts, windy thrash runs and power metal beats, rich double bass servings and fulfilling cymbal crashes and I have to give the drummer kudos for not falling into the trap of using only one style of moving things forward. This is as varied as it can be without a single showy drum solo in the mix. A drummer that is an equal amongst equals and not the blind rhythm machine for better men. Thank you, sir!

Hold on a second. Uh, keyboard infested black metal with a fantasy/epic history theme? From the label "Last Episode" in 1999? By all the holy laws of nature and man, nothing good could have come out of this, this record really has to hurt like being fucked by a coked up stallion on a battlefield filled with piss and shut, right? RIGHT? Let's rewind and look at that name: Stormlord. Not a very good band to this day, actually. Sorry about that, but they have been putting out the same trite "not too hard, not too soft chug chug I'M A VAMPIRE GEEK" extreme metal with keyboards and without identity in the embarassing tradition of Dimmu Borgir for two decades now and every new record disappoints the shit out of me like a Christmas present from my drunk aunt. "Really, Carol? A compilation with the best of samba dances? Have you not been listening to my elitist tirades of nihilistic black metal forgery? What the hell are we doing here?"

But back to Stormlord. Their debut album kicked so much fucking mortal ass that it single-handedly excuses every mediocre, sterile and unnecessary output under the same band name forever. It was like they stumbled upon an ancient recipe for one of the most dreamy albums ever and used up all their potential at once until there was nothing left for any future albums. Oh, the tragedy. Let me cry for thee, Stormlord. "Supreme Art of War" is essentially a power metal album in a black metal costume. Not a big market for that, I'm sure. Give it some time, it will make sense in the end. Let me put it like this: If you don't have a tiny spot in your heart for the fiery and cheesy theatrics of Italian power metal from that area and time, a significant part of Stormlord's debut will be entirely lost on you. This is the music of youth, about the taste of salt water on your lips after returning from the beach, it's the sound of the wind on lonely mountains after your first heart break, it's the survival of eighties metal with all its faults and victories. It's the soundtrack of the angry teenage moonlight.

Surprisingly, the guitars on this record are neither really blackish nor in the vein of classic power metal. They are rather thrashy (I hope Jon Schaffer does not sue them for stealing his galloping riffing style of epileptic thunder) with a hint of melodic death metal elegies. But they do not support the aesthetics of either. The tremolo sections do not sound Scandinavian or American and the open chord hammering has no real equal among the wide realm of...well...anything. Isn't that fucking weird? I have listened to this record more times than to the sound of my own sweaty dick being masturbated by my stern, hairy and manly warrior hand (verry sorry for that picture!) and it's still incredibly hard to compare the guitars on this album to the ones from any other album, alive or dead. This is the first puzzle piece of why the escapism of this record works so damn well that sometimes I forget that I am a human being with troubles and debt while listening to it. The strings are picked like a strange musician from a strange fairyland would pick them. Without influence from our world but ruled by the same auditory rules as us, the guitars of "Supreme Art of War" sound alien and familiar at the same time. They are rather thin and not recorded by the most metal celebrating engineer from the heavens, but by Zeus and his shriveled olympian orgy penis, this murky, imperfect, unique and highly Individualistic sound makes the travel even more exotic. Have you ever come across melodies and sounds from a death/black metal band that make you feel like being in a dusty library where a tiny flea market for pulp comics about barbarian warlords and their half naked female cousins is happening? A message and feeling that is just conveyed by music without actual words? Hot damn Jesus of the unholy chilli pepper dildo fuck fest, these riffs got it right!

Oh fuck me, did these guys just use a singer with actual classical potential for some very short but equally powerful sections? Oh, another one? Is that a whole tiny choir? Is that a woman? These shy guys knew actual breathing girls back in the day without having to dig one up at the cemetary? I thought that things could not get more glorious after the main keyboard melody from "Age of the Dragon" was introduced, but here we are. What a chorus. By the way, check out that main melody. If you do not feel anything while listening to it, you are either no fan of power metal or emotionally dead and ready to throw yourself from the nearest cliff. If there are no cliffs near you, find a god damn river you useless fuck. There are enough places and possibillities for people willing to end things like a man. I can't join you because I still have to listen to this album until I have discovered all of its secrets.

I saved the best for last. The keyboards. Are they simple, silly and cheesy as hell? You bet your tushy and the asshole within, they are christmassy, broad, wide, lingering between the tales of Shakespeare, Power Rangers Dino Thunder and Iron Maiden alike. If you're not into cheap Nintendo sunday moods, you are not my friend! The epicness of this record balances itself by revealing the love for childlike adventures and bloody aristocratic throne wars at the same time. Harpsichords of doom and death, synthetic and real choirs of grassy plains, bells of caverns. These are the techniques of power metal keyboards that dare to be more than their forebears. What a ride! I love it when a young band sounds inexperienced, too smart for their own good and daring at the same time.

This album made me search for equally wonderful undertakings and I was unlucky. There is no album like this album. It's one of the highlights of every genre, it's the best (and only REAL) album Stormlord ever did and it will rot in oblivion forever. It sounds twenty years older than it actually is and it feels a thousand years older than it ever could be. Most people will never hear praise about this music. But I have heard of it, and so have you now.

Casually, a long time ago, I came across this record; immediately, I was completely attracted by its cover art. Many years ago I used to listen to heavy/power/thrash metal rather than death/black metal (or extreme metal in general), and only recently I have broadened my horizons, discovering new metal subgenres. But I have always been an avid album listener, especially around that period.

Supreme Art of War was my first approach with Stormlord, an extreme epic Italian band which I didn't know of. In my country, metal music is not an underground phenomenon, but sadly it is not popular as Scandinavia or other countries either. So I started listening to this LP and some of their discography; among all their records, I was genuinely impressed with this one and I instantly fell in love with it. After countless listening experiences I can, without any doubt, affirm that this album is a blackened masterpiece, one of my personal favourites black metal records, and also the pinnacle of Stormlord’s discography in my humble opinion.

The style of this record is substantially different from that of their later records, where their music vision will be more oriented to a sort of symphonic death metal, with growl typical of death metal and shrieks of black metal combined together and a wide (perhaps excessive sometimes) use of power metal style keyboards. This album is more authentic and genuine, every aspect of brutality, melody and epics seemed perfectly balanced to me. The atmosphere is very immersive and evocative and it recalls scenarios of medieval wars, the glories and fantasies of ancient times. The lyrics of the songs are quite interesting and remind me a bit of epic/chivalric poetry; to be exact, the themes are many, such as the aversion to Christianity (Of Steel and Ancient Might), the Roman culture (Where My Spirit Shall Forever Be, Age of the Dragon) and medieval battles (War, Immortal Heroes). The experience, in terms of themes and atmospheres, seemed totally solid to me. Epic as hell.

From the musical point of view, the songs are pure black metal combined with melodic components, meticulously created with the use of keyboards, acoustic arpeggios, violins and flutes. Cristiano Borchi's vocals are really aggressive and his high black shrieks perfectly balance the epicness of the music (and that it wouldn't be possible with Burzum-style shrieks). Guitars and bass are fine, but Davide Folchitto is one hell of a drummer (his power metal background is evident) and his talented drumming skills does not go unnoticed. A lot of choruses are present, but honestly I didn't find them cheesy. Some of the songs also include clean female vocals (Immortal Heroes) that really seem to sadly mourn their warriors lost in battle.

All in all, a truly fantastic experience worth listening to. For me, this is their record most influenced by black metal; unfortunately, their upcoming albums will radically change in style and in terms of music. Mind you, I also like some of their future works (such as At the Gates of Utopia), but, although they have found their own personal style, I certainly like their latest albums less than this debut, and in general I find them pleasant to listen but nothing more. Recommended for open-minded black metal and symphonic black metal fans. Also power metal fans might give this record a chance.

"When the light of blade, enlight the shades
storm of blazes, shine bright on fighting date
spirits of war I call, enlight the shades
spirits of war I call, prepare for mighty war"

Vehn

Though the Italian band Stormlord's keyboard-driven, 'epic' brand of metal was ahead of the curve (think of how many bands today use this formula), it was quite slow in getting to the point it now lies with the excellent Mare Nostrum. Supreme Art of War was the band's first proper full-length, after a few mediocre EPs and demos. The style was a mix of black, power and melodic death metal, with plenty of keyboards and both male and female operatic choral vocals, and though the record has its moments, I felt the mix of styles really fell on its nose here.

Part of the fault lay in the production. It's not hideous, but the mix of churning, low guitars, epic synthesizers, thinner guitar tone for the melodies and speed picked rhythms, off the hook Dani Filthy snarling sounds rather scattershot, and the choral vocals simply sound silly, as they often overpower everything else in the band, and it becomes hard to take seriously. And unfortunately, this happens in almost all the songs. Even the stronger, charging tracks like "Immortal Heroes" and "Supreme Art of War" are short-reigned when the female vocals enter the picture and foul them up. The double bass is quite flattening, but the rest of the kit languors behind the guitars. And speaking of the guitars, they seem too intent on meshing with the keyboards to ever produce much in the way of excellent, memory riffs; though they do get their gallop on. The lyrics are cheesy, but functional. I like that the band has always stuck to their guns, Roman and Greek history and myth have so many tales worth telling through metal music (though they have meandered outside the period on occasion).

There is a genuine energy to the writing, and I feel perhaps this must have come off better live than in the studio debut, but it's hard to shake the feeling that Supreme Art of War sounds like a group of Renaissance Faire/LARPer dorks getting together with that one cool girl from the college choir to record an extreme metal album. This time out, at least, it wasn't happening for me, but to their credit, Stormlord is one of those bands to improve with each release. You can hear that in The Gorgon Cult, and certainly Mare Nostrum.

Highlights: the blacksmith, the glassblower, the venison, and the joust for the good maiden's heart

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

People ask me why I'd make a Myspace... Well one day this band called Stormlord added me and I won't lie to you my friends, I was smitten. First I checked out their cover of Moonchild off of their third album The Gorgon Cult then figured these guys were worth the check out. First off I got The Gorgon Cult and I was pretty impressed but it left alot to be desired, I then stumbled across this album and I tell you not only is this one of the most uniquely amazing things I've ever heard, I'm willing to call it the best debut album since Melissa or Holy Diver.

I will admit I'm not the biggest aficionado of either Black or Power metal, but I was floored by Supreme Art of War from the opening keyboards of Where My Spirit Forever Shall Be. This album has a great mix of keyboards as both ambient background and actual music but doesn't sound weak in the slightest, the majority of the guitaring is heavy but powerful enough to fill the song with emotion, the vocals focus mainly on a black screaming style that fits perfectly well with the power metal feel but also have an interesting almost choir style of vocals during some songs. But the real star of this album is the drummer, this guy can play fast, this guy can play heavy and this guy can play epicly. As you'd imagine for Power Metal and Black Metal, it's mainly double bass work, but it never gets repetitive, something tells me this guy isn't new to drumming.

Now as for the songs, they have a recurring theme about the Roman empire (hell, these guys are from Rome) and the music reflects it (check out the instrumental “Sir Lorial”). Also, they seem to go for a very epic and progressive feel, with all but 2 songs going for well over 5 minutes and one of those two songs is simply an outro, but due to the length of these songs there are only 8 tracks to be found and only 7 real tracks.

Things start off with the masterpiece “Where My Spirit Forever Shall Be”, which is without a doubt the best track to be found here, starts off slowly with some keyboarding before a seeming never ending army of riffs take over, when I first heard this I didn’t know what to expect and I was floored by the opening minute and a half. Check out the riff at 00:57, wow. Once the singing kicks in you immediately get the idea on how varied these guys can be; first line – rapid screaming, second line – operatic vocals. There’s a great over the top chant along bit to be found in this song as well, it really embodies the black metal/power metal fusion.

"A Decent Into the Kingdom of the Shades" is as forgettable as it is hard to say, although the break at 3:00 has a kickass gallop which would make any metal fan proud, also has a hell fun yet cheesey and dramatic chorus. “Sir Lorial” is the previously mentioned Instrumental and is the only real song that is under 5 minutes in length (just over 2 minutes to be more precise), this song is really all over the place and has an awful lot in it in the span of two minutes, only problem is a lot of cool moments are cut short and the song feels rushed.

“Age of the Dragon” starts off with some cool opening passages spoken in Latin and unsurprisingly turns into a kickass song about dragons, ah the cheesiness of power metal… “War (The Supreme Art)” is what I guess you could call the title track is the shortest normal song at 5:20 probably has the second best riffing to be found on this album as well as the short but sweet chorus “SUPREME ART OF WAR!” Good times… good times.

“Immortal Heroes” is a bit more different as mid song there seems to be a verse sung by a woman that seems to come out of nowhere but doesn’t take anything away from the song, these guys really know how to throw a curve ball like this in songs.

Then we come to a close with “Of Steel and Ancient Might”, which along with “Outro” goes for a nice 10 minutes. This song really wraps up the album nicely showing off all the key aspects of this band, plus the keyboard “breakdown” around 4 minutes in is amazing, you think it’s going to be the end of the song then… bam! More riffing to be had! Finally, after 9 and a half minutes we fade out into the acoustic outro to fill out the last 50 second and the right comes to an end.

Sadly they would go on a spiralling decline after this album which took them 9 years to shake. Either way, this is nothing short of a masterpiece and one of my favourite debut albums ever.

“Supreme Art Of War” is the Stormlord album I like the most. Their style is a unique and rare excellent combination of black metal and epic melodies in the keyboards. In these melodies we can find roman influences and medieval ones. Anyway the group is always inspired and brutal at the same time.

The opener is one of the most beautiful ones in this genre with lots of tempo changes and arpeggios. The guitars and the bass are always extreme metal oriented, supported by screamed vocals. There are epic choruses and female vocals too. All in all a very good mix, that succeeds in not being boring or childish.The drums work on this album is remarkable for its powerful, precision and clean production.

The second track alternated quiet, mid-paced riffs to blast beats with melodic guitar lines. The keyboards are always very important, passing through goth oriented, epic, black metal sounds. No time to relax: extreme symphonic metal at its best.

“Sir Lorial” is almost funny with those blast beats over the typical medieval atmosphere with a sound of a feast in the background. It's fast, instrumental and essential with beautiful sounds, while “Age Of The Dragon” shows the most roman melodies with some spoken words in Latin at the beginning. Then it turns to a fast bass drum one with war melodies.

“War” shows again more roman oriented melodies in keyboards with only the vocals to lead the most black metal parts without being excessive or too brutal. Really, the atmosphere and the melodies are something so beautiful and catchy that is hard to image. On “Immortal Heroes” we can find Steve Sylvester (Death SS) too at vocals as guest, to make the song even more admirable.

The almost ten minutes of “Of Steel And Ancient Might” (with violin sounds too!!) end an album made of lots of tempo changes and excellent melodies. In a so abused field it was very hard for Stormlord to release a good album but they did it. This is recommended to anyone who wants melody mixed with raw parts and black vocals.

For being the first full length, Stormlord has done a great job for the first blackened epic metal band. The album carries out the theme of an epic adventure very perfectly. It is synchronized very well as a full, which made it very drawing all the way through the album.

I would have to say most of the talent and value came from the keyboardist. The keys capture so many of the albums elements and remands unique all the way through with a variety of different lead riffs for the best epic atmosphere the band presents in the album. He ranges the elements from harpsichord to violin to strings, and piano. This puts you in a trance of an epic tale poised so effortlessly.

As for the vocals other styles of vocalization are also present, like choirs and operatic vocals, that is joined with the harsh screams of Cristiano. His vocals sound so well and devilish, definitely black. I would say his vocals carry out the extreme part of the album. At other times in the album he does sort of Gregorian mourns for more passion in the music.
The guitars are sort of background, but only when the keyboard is leading, other than that its very heavy, and there are a few great riffs that draw your attention. A lot of galloping along with the bass drum, and seem to follow the power metal sequence.
The speed of the album gets is mainly from the drums blasts and smooth double bass beats. It carries flow of sound so smooth and soothing with that great epic feel. The drummer is definitely good, carrying out 32nd notes so easily.

All the songs are great through out the album, each song never getting boring. If you are into epic ambient, symphonic, folk, or death metal, the album is sure not to disappoint you. This album will blow you mind away if you are fans of Wintersun, Equilibrium, Norther, or any epic band of the sort.

The songs that captured my imagination were Sir Lorial (instrumental), Where My Spirit Forever Shall Be, and Immortal Heroes.