Thy Legions Reign over Christendom

This ep is basically a prototype of Dirge of Death’s silence. Three of the five songs on this ep also appear on Dirge of Death’s silence as more polished finished products with small improvements or changes to the riffs and structure of the songs. Aside from the Darkthrone cover and In The Year Of Our Lord which is exclusive to this ep, nothing is offered that you can’t get on Dirge Of Death’s silence. Looking at this ep as a bands first release shines a different light on it though. For a first release from a band this is pretty good stuff. It has it all, aggression, speed, and the classic black metal rawness that many fans love. This ep showcases the bands potential to create atmospheric powerful black metal with purpose that is well structured and nicely layered with metal fused keyboards. Defiantly one of the better debut releases from any band I have heard.

Oddly enough Blood Stained Dusk decided to leave the best song on this album, In The Year Of Our Lord, and not put it on the following years Dirge of Death’s Silence. In The Year Of Our Lord starts out nicely with a calm intro turning into Blood Stained Dusk’s trade mark aggression. It does this well, infusing the opening keyboards into some raw guitars then just going into all out aggression. As the song progresses other instruments make notice such at the drums. Which add to the rhythm but also offer some complexity and interesting moments. The song ends with an epic build up of all the elements of the song coming together. The song starts strong and ends ever stronger. Other highlights of the song are some powerful dictator like spoken word which add a sense of power, meaning and purpose to the song. This is defiantly Blood Stained Dusk’s best song and worth finding this ep or downloading it for.

Everything else on this ep can be found elsewhere, so there is nothing much to say about it. Its good music from Blood Stained Dusk. The band showcases how it can make epic masterpieces like the Moon Behind The Storm which has some great melodic moments and some great intense moments thanks to the speed, aggression and rawness of this band. This ep never falls short and has no low moments, but fails to recapture what it has done on In The Year Of Our Lords Decay, making it short of greatness. it’s a good ep all around and I recommend it to anyone who likes raw and well orchestrated American black metal.