Onwards to the Spectral Defile

I accidentally came across Cirith Gorgor and I’m very lucky to have stumbled across such an awesome band. I just loved this album at the first listen, and instantly became a fan of Cirith Gorgor. I just don’t know why such brilliant bands are so underrated. Every single track in this album is an awesome combination off brutality, super fast guitar riffs, melody and poetic lyrics.

The production is pretty good with more emphasis being given to the guitar rather than the drums. The drums, I think, are the highlight of the album with super fast blast beats and bass drum parts present throughout the album. Nimroth’s extremely brutal and harsh shrieks add a nice touch to the incredible atmosphere. It would have been more awesome if the bass was just a little bit louder. The keyboard outro in the first track, The Declaration of Our Neverending War, is superbly haunting. It would have been better if the songs were longer (trust me, you would never want any track from this album to end after just 5 minutes), with only one track, Sons of the New Dawn, crossing the 7 minute mark
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Highlights: The Declaration of Our Neverending War, Sons of the New Dawn, Ephel Duath (A Warrior's Tale), Shadows over Isengard.

Finally, this album is highly recommended and must not be missed by any hardcore black metal fan.

Too often this band didn’t receive the right attention or, worse, it gained the attention of few just because they compared it with far more famous bands like Marduk or Dark Funeral. This comparison is one of the silliest things ever because the differences between these bands and Cirith Gorgor are huge. First of all, Cirith Gorgor enriches its sound with a battling, epic feeling, leaving the anti-Christian themes apart. The music is not a without sense, furious attack and it’s not ritualistic either. It settles down right in the middle with lots of blast beats, yes, but with the melody of the guitars to sustain and give strength to the epic themes. The epic lyrics and the epic music collide perfectly with the rudeness and violence of the black metal.

On this debut album, Onwards to the Spectral Defile, Cirith Gorgor, is not the classic raw black metal band that tries to mix some more melodic parts. Here, this band is ultra charged, the production exalts the guitars sound very much, achieving the goal of creating a real wall of violence. The drums follow with hyper blasting beats and the vocals are really nasty and shrieky. Since the opener, “The Declaration of Our Neverending War”, the blast beats are used as a base under which they build ultra massive black riffs with incredibly epic intermezzos. On these parts the guitars are less impulsive and they point more on the melodies, as some clean choirs enter, but the intensity remains untouched.

The dynamism of the drummers has something hypnotizing. The rolls, the blast beats and the faster bass drums sections are perfectly mixed together to perfectly sustain any kind of melody or pattern. Check the beginning to “Winter Embraces Lands Beyond” is its Sacramentum influenced style. The guitars draw landscapes of sorrow, just before restarting on nasty overtures, conserving the epic touch. This is simply awesome. Maybe just the bass is a bit too low during the lead sections. “Through Burning Wastelands” follows definitely more direct patterns even if with always more than a simple eye to the epic melody. The guitars do a massive work on this album, passing easily from the power chords, rhythmic riffs to the lead others.

“Sons of the New Dawn” reaches the top if you search for a slow, massive and ultra epic tune. The low vocals and the distorted arpeggio are great to create the dark atmosphere before the blast beats sections. The triplets’ parts are definitely more epic and they have that thrash metal style that drives me crazy, announcing a long and melodic guitar solo. “Wandering Cirith Gorgor” points also on the galloping riffs and the fast bass drums sections. There is a good use of the lead guitars during the calmer parts, as well as on the following “Ephel Duath (A Warrior's Tale)” that once more has a good use of the double bass before the classic blast beats. The drummer conduces and pulls all the instruments behind in a massacre of black riffs.

The hyper fast with few good, epic intermezzos, “Shadows over Isengard” and the nostalgic piano notes of the last “Thorns of Oblivion” mark the end of this very good debut by this overlooked band. The first songs are awesome, while the rest remains on very good levels. If you are searching for a band that mixes perfectly the violence of the black to the epic melodies, check this out. The following album would be even greater than this one, but for a young band, I think this is more than acceptable.

This was the first album by Cirith Gorgor that I had heard, and I have been a fan since. Allow me to share why. Every song presented is catchy, brutal, even melodic, all with the intent of being epic, performed with true determination and blueprinting the band's sound for future material.

From the opening track that that is a perfect blend of brutality and melody (and urges to fight Islam rather than Christianity, a point of originality for the band), to the haunting piano outro that allows a story to build in one's mind, Onwards to the Spectral Defile covers multiple black metal staples, drawing inspiration from Tolkien (not just the name), to Nordic history and hatred for religion. Sounds good to me.

Sons of the New Dawn is by far the stand-out song of the album; over seven minutes of pure driving metal, lyrically poetic and multi-layered riffs. An evenly paced intro riff prepares the mood to headbang fiercely, and whilst the spoken vocals of battlefields are mixed a bit low, they are quickly replaced with searing black vocals over ballistic yet smooth, chaotic instrumentation. My favorite part of the song, however (and the album for that matter), comes about the 3 minute mark, where the fast riffing gives way for an easier, thrashing passage, Nimroth urging us to fight, and dueling solos that truly display quality musicianship.

My only complaint with Onwards is the vocal mixing. It sounds great, but at times noticeably distorted or faded. This however is a fairly minor complaint, as what you'll find overall with the album is as I described above: an epic mix of melody and brutality that is truly professional black metal, without being over-produced. Impressive debut.