Bathory - In Memory of Quorthon (2006)

Finally, a Bathory collection which doesn't suck? Well, that all really depends on what format you choose to acquire it in, and what exactly it is you're looking for in such a fan package. For example, if I were to break it down into the three independent CDs which one can still seemingly purchase from Black Mark, it doesn't carry a lot of weight. But the full deal, with the poster, booklet, and bonus DVD is quite comprehensive in both CD and LP formats, and thus the preferred option. Surely this is superior to the awful Katalog comp or the individual Jubileum releases, but there are a number of what I'd consider strange omissions and the same miasma of incompleteness that populated the latter.

First off, you're getting a considerable number of remastered tracks, spanning the 1984 self titled debut through the 2003 swan song Nordland II. I've never had significant personal issues with the production of anything Quorthon had released for Bathory, just minor nitpicks, so this is not a major boon in my opinion, yet the fact that they're all given the treatment helps gel them together as a unified collection, despite the studio production variance of their roots. Choices are pretty good, with important cuts like "Blood Fire Death", "A Fine Day to Die", "Enter the Eternal Fire", "Raise the Dead" and such scattered about the three discs, but the selection is far from restricted to the classics, so you've got examples of the mid-90s thrash mediocrity ("War Machine") and a boat load of inclusions from the more recent Nordland sagas.

There are also quite a number of covers here, which were originally recorded throughout the Bathory canon, some appearing on various editions of full-length releases and some I'd never heard before. Some of the choices are very obvious, like "Ace of Spades" or "War Pigs" which are not that impressive other than getting to hear Quorthon's uneven accent. I found the KISS tributes to be much more entertaining and obscure choices, in particular "Black Diamond" which really benefits from the power placed in its translation. Lastly, though, you've got a pair of covers from the Quorthon solo career, namely "God Save the Queen" (Sex Pistols) and "I'm Only Sleeping (Beatles), and I didn't really enjoy them outside of appreciating the guy's obviously eclectic tastes. A few of the originals from the two solo albums are likewise present, like the heavy rock track "I've Had it Coming" or the atmospheric "Boy" with all its samples. Despite my disdain for the albums in general, these are not poor representations, though I would have clipped them in favor of more raw Bathory.

The songs with his sister Jennie Tebler are much less appealing. "Silverwing" is pretty boring crunch rock ala Evanescence with the female vocals flowing over them. Once they enter into a harmony, it's not so bad, but the solo strands of her voice sound like a miserable wannabe of Lacuna Coil or The Gathering. Nor do I much care for her version of "Song to Hall Up High", which closes out the third and last audio disc. It would have been far cooler, and really reflected a sense of completeness if the demo and rare tracks from the Jubileum collections had been gathered here. Still in print, perhaps, but considering the price for this boxed set it would not have set them back so much, and ultimately it might have spared the fans from wasting their money on the older collections if they hadn't already. So, some omissions that would dramatically improved the value of In Memory of Quorthon, but in the end you're still getting about 45 tracks, all remastered, so at least some minimum effort was applied by Black Mark.

Finally, there are the perks and 'omake box' goodies that usually come with these media boxed sets. The poster is absolutely retarded, nothing more than an advertisement for the set that you just purchased with a classic pic of Quorthon. I would have rather it just included the latter. The booklet itself is enormous, a pretty comprehensive biography with lots of photos and notes, but not necessarily anything novel or unexpected if you'd been following his career. The DVD itself is not brimming with content, just the full video for "One Road to Asa Bay" which is little more than a bunch of guys in armor, costume, riding a horse, etc all quite slowly to the roiling pace of the music; an MTV interview clip in which he discusses his transition from the occult lyrical focus of his earlier years to the folksier Norse mythology, and some random promotional footage also from the same 1990 era. Nothing too impressive here, least of all the video, but it's a decent add on for the diehard who might feel the urge to occasionally listen to his/her hero speak.

Needless to say, if you can get your hands on this collection, it stands head and shoulders above its predecessors. I wish it had more to it, and I'm sure everyone does, but as far as a posthumous memorial, it's comprehensive enough not to disappoint. I wouldn't say it was worth purchasing if you already own all the studio albums, but even then, if you want to show more financial support to honor the legend, it's far more reasonable than Jubileum or the needless Katalog. You are getting SOMETHING for your money here, which is more than I can say for a large percentage of shit-eating collections put out for major bands. As of 2011, a nice vinyl box also became available which includes a picture disc of the whole Bathory s/t. Keep that in mind when you're mining eBay, since the format is all the rage and very likely to become a collectible of high value.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

Bathory - Nordland II (2003)

Released about 5 months after Nordland I, Bathory would not leave us waiting long for what was originally intended to be the second of four total chapters in the Nordland saga. Unfortunately, as we all now know, that would not turn out to be the case. Quorthon's tragic passing in the following year (2004) would retroactively establish Nordland II as the grand finale of one of the most important and influential legacies in all of metal. No pressure, right? Well, perhaps its not remotely fair to judge the record on such grounds, and I won't, but there is no escaping the fact that it often feels like a bunch of leftovers from the previous effort, or rather that he front loaded the content to the series and intended the garner interest on momentum alone with diminishing returns.

Not that Nordland II is necessarily a negative experience. In fact, I feel that tracks such as "Sea Wolf" and "Blooded Shore" create quite a cloud of nostalgia for the Hammerheart album, and I admire the grit he exhibits in his vocal performance here and elsewhere on this sequel. Slow, pendulous heavy metal hammer riffs drowned in choirs, synthesized organs and steady drums that create a dramatic subtext to the sailing, drawn out voices in the late bridge of "Sea Wolf". Chunky momentum and crashing chords dialed straight back to the late 80s glories. I also feel that some of the longer tracks like the 10 minute "The Messenger" (with that incredible, simple melody) and the 12 minute "The Wheel of Sun" with its leaden grooves and gleaming spikes of zephyr-like guitars, are far better at balancing their content and shifting necessary gears of composition thank some of the whales from the previous album.

There are also no crappy thrash tracks like there were on Destroyer of Worlds. The closest the record comes is "Flash of the Silverhammer" a mid-paced chugger which reminds me of the older, primal doom/thrash crunch of their countrymen Memory Garden, making decent use of the vocals to carry what otherwise might be a dullard. Like Nordland I, there's an 8 minute tune which makes good use of a propulsive, brutal into ("Death and Resurrection of a Northern Son"), but I don't exactly love this song, and along with other middling fare like "The Land" or the desolate "Vinland" I just feel like it treads on previous ground. With Hammerheart, Blood Fire Death, Twilight of the Gods, Blood on Ice and Nordland I already out in circulation, I got the impression of rinsing and repeating here, which I'm sure might have stretched out its welcome if the ensuing chapters were to manifest without significant deviations.

In the end, as usual, evaluation comes down to the songs. Some of their older albums had them in spades, but Nordland II doesn't really have much to recommend it unless you're obsessed with its stylistic and spiritual forebears and demand more of the same. I'll grant that there are a few epic climaxes here, and an atmosphere which sparks up fond memories for the influential storms Quorthon rode in on, but it's not an album I would choose over others in the canon. Let's face it: the guy more or less created two massive, enduring substrata of the extreme metal realm, and both within a brief span of years. About 13 years after that period, nothing innovative or really interesting had manifest from Bathory. But he had nothing more to prove, and so he resigned himself to small tweaks on the existing formula. I like the simplicity of the lyrics here, their dependable imagery and adherence to the atmosphere or the songwriting.

But where Blood Fire Death summoned up an eternal wrath from my soul, called my imagination to war forever, this album is more or less a pleasant fjord surfing experience with a few gut wrenching moments of anger. A functional successor to Nordland I, and not a regrettable experience, but not a source for much fascination.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (none it shall claim or conquer)

Bathory - Nordland I (2002)

After the split personality of Destroyer of Worlds, it was rather nice that Quorthon would return to a singular vision for its successor, the first half of his Nordland saga. If you couldn't already guess through a glance at the cover image, that vision entails a straight return to the Viking metal aesthetics of prior works Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods, and the 'lost' album Blood On Ice. Only here, Quorthon has written a more substantial treatise on the subject, since both sides of the project total over two hours of material, and there are none of the banal pure thrash regressions that crippled Destroyer of Worlds. In fact, I feel like this first Nordland is perhaps the point at which he best expresses this style. Not that it's the best of his Norse journeys by a long shot, but because he gives it the ample space in which it needs to breathe.

Nordland I is very well paced to provide its narrative in the span of an hour. The intro passage "Prelude" is meticulously crafted to draw the listener into its antiquity, with blazing horns, war drums and the soaring clean choirs that had become a hallmark of Bathory since the late 80s. You can burn Necrolord's artwork into your mind, close your eyes, access headphones and then become a direct participant in Quorthon's Romanticized translation of old. With "Nordland" itself, the appropriate pomp and strength arrives with a thudding, mid-paced metal rhythm and drums that place it aesthetically between the climes of the muscle metal Manowar and the slower, intended swan song of Norwegians Immortal (Sons of Northern Darkness) who themselves owe Bathory a great deal for its influence upon their own career. Folksy dual melodies adorn its crested waves, and Quorthon uses a deeper clean vocal throughout the verses which showcases his own willingness to grow, even if his sum presence is still rough around the edges.

But "Nordland" is also symptomatic of one of the downsides of this extensive work: the lack of appreciable variation through its lengthier tracks. With a duration over 9 minutes, I would have liked to hear more happen in this piece outside of the predictable melodic progressions and the same, studied tempo. The same could be said for other swollen ingredients to the album, like "Foreverdark Woods". Its promising intro sequences features glinting acoustics, mouth harps and pretty much the perfect setup, but once the distortion is introduced you're just hearing the same chords repeatedly, a practice that might have worked in Quorthon's formative shift into the territory (Blood Fire Death), where the darkness and furor of the writing felt so desolate, fresh and hypnotic, but here it's just rather painted by numbers. No surprises wait in store for the listener through any of these longer tracks, and in this they differ from the stories upon which they draw their inspiration.

Really, Nordland is almost exclusively playing it 'safe', a practice treasured by some and trashed by others. Not a deal breaker for me, however, and I do admire that Quorthon has incorporated some faster material here sans resorting to the regrettable thrashing of the mid-90s Octagon. "Broken Sword" has a nice thrust to it courtesy of the driving double bass, as does the brute speed metal introducing "Great Hall Awaits a Fallen Brother", and the pair lends a well needed respite from the slogging pace of the contents leading up to it. Again, especially in the latter piece, Tomas plays with vocal potential, a clean melodic tone applied to the verse. Far from his best singing, but it functions well enough to discern that he's not a total hack, and this is the best of the longer pieces on the album, though it too only experiences a few shifts in tempo and could easily have been better packed. Shorter tracks like "Vinterblot" and "Mother Earth Father Thunder" don't suffer as much from the lack of variation, but they're really just covering the familiar ground of Blood On Ice and Twilight of the Gods without offering much embellishment.

Special mention should be made for "Ring of Gold", one of Bathory's best pure folk songs since the anthem "Hammerheart", and the acoustic guitars and vocal arrangements here feel lush and absorbing against the sparse samples in the background. In general, I find Nordland to be very well produced, rich and atmospheric, emblematic of Quorthon's mastery of this particular style. The drums don't suffer from the offsetting splash effect on Blood On Ice, and the mix is rich on various layers of depth, where Twilight of the Gods was perhaps an inkling too clean. There is a sense of airy fulfillment here which is sure to sate fans of those albums, and I think it's the best effort from Bathory beyond the year 1990, but not necessarily in contention with his rabidly influential works in the first 5-6 years. More of the same, perhaps 'too much' more, but a solid foundation for an hour of daydreaming that holds up after a decade.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (this land and heaven, forever tied)

Bathory - Destroyer of Worlds (2001)

Destroyer of Worlds is an aural exhibition of an important, almost constantly evolving artist who had at long last firmly settled into a particular style, or rather two particular styles, and thus it bears some striking similarities to both the past Bathory canons of the glorious Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods and Blood On Ice Viking heavy metal trilogy, and the sodden and boring thrash that Quorthon thought for some reason he'd dial in during the mid 90s. The roots of both are set in the grimier blackness of Quorthon's youth, but now structurally manifest through either an emphasis on soaring male choirs, lead guitars reminiscent of the slower Manowar fare, and simplistic riffs that do not exactly inspire outside of their presentation as an atmospheric component; or in lame duck, barreling thrash rhythms that seem effectively pedestrian in intent and impact.

The problems I ran into with this album stem largely from its clear division of content. If one were to glance back at the discography, nothing here is necessarily new or out of place, but there is a crippling inconsistency to how the album flows as a whole. Sorrowful, plodding sequences like "Ode" or "Destroyer of Worlds" provide nostalgia for Hammerheart or Twilight of the Gods, but then you've got the clear delineation between that and a piece like "Death from Above", which while not as miserable as, say, Octagon, is at best fueled by mediocrity, cliche and a guitar riff that some random groove/thrash bar band in 1994 might have thrown together at a moment's notice. To Quorthon's credit, he at least tries to create a bridge between these two forces, this ying and yang: you'll hear some atmosphere, distant synths and such in a few of the thrash bits, but then you've got others like "Liberty and Justice" or the pure groove shite "Sudden Death" which amount to nothing more than massive crap stains over any potential the album might have woven.

Destroyer of Worlds is in dire need of a clipping, so swelled is it with middling content, so teemed with tripe. Not only the 6-7 shoddy bludgeoning thrashers (which, in addition to those mentioned include "109", "Pestilence", and the darker and mildly less annoying "Krom"); but also a few of the more spacious, drawn out pieces. For example, the 8+ minute closers "White Bones" and "Day of Wrath" seem rather dull and bloated: the former impregnated with some pedantic groove metal rhythms in the bridge, the latter for its almost Pink Floyd like progression and inane self-referential lyrics in the third verse. You know you're really running out of ideas when this happens, and this is yet another flaw with Destroyer. It retreads numerous prior trends in Quorthon's composition, but it offers no superior or even interesting slant on any of them...

I'm not willing to entirely throw this album under the bus. It's more of a weak and confused effort than one actively terrible, but at its best, even songs like "Ode", "Lake of Fire" and the title track are underwhelming, average shadows of past glories. The album never feels as if it's transitional, whereas just about every important step of the past felt exciting and revolutionary. Many other bands had by this point taken up the Norse mythos crown conceptually (Enslaved, Amon Amarth etc), so it makes sense that Quorthon was no longer exclusively focused there lyrically, but despite the broader prose, the music itself is not reflective of such expansion. The production values are fairly level throughout, the boxy and dense guitar tone and vocals being consistent even when he's shifting ranges, but as an album it feels both redundant and conflicted, indecisive about the next steps and thus suckling at the teat of prior missteps and majesties.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10] (encased in lead and steel)

Bathory - Katalog (2001)

This is one of those perplexing releases that reeks of 'you have got to be fucking kidding me'. Just a few short years after Bathory had finished producing the largely useless Jubileum compilations, they go ahead and release ANOTHER. Katalog is your standard cash cow collection featuring entirely re-issued material. There are 11 tracks culled from the 10 studio albums (including the latest, Destroyer of Worlds), and presumably the intent was to con some young sucker into purchasing this as a 'sampler' of what to buy and experience next. Katalog was initially intended to be a promotional device only, so I assume it was meant for radio stations, zines or shops, but it was eventually decided to produce it in a commercial format.

The only way this works is as some sort of case study on the various transformations wrought through Bathory's career, but even then it's not worth the $.02, since you could just as easily build your own mix CD or shuffle your .mp3 playlist and achieve the same results. You'd assume each selection is meant to best represent the particular album it was initially released upon, but fuck if that's the case for the crappy Octagon ("War Supply") or average Requiem ("Distinguish to Kill"), which don't necessarily have good, at least not great songs. From the earlier archives, we get "Armageddon" (Bathory, 1984), "Possessed" (The Return..., 1985), "Enter the Eternal Fire" (Under the Sign of the Black Mark, 1987), a medley of "Odens Ride Over Nordland/A Fine Day to Die" (Blood Fire Death, 1988) and "One Rode to Asa Bay" (Hammerheart, 1990). All are good choices, but at the same time, more poignant when listened to in their native environment. Rounding out the track list are "Lake of Fire" from their new (for the time) effort Destroyer of Worlds, "The Woodwoman" from Blood On Ice and "Twilight of the Gods" from the album of the same name, plus another of the band's dingy, brief outros, a useless inclusion.

And that's it. No unreleased material, strong remixes or re-recordings, etc. Had this been a bonus disc included with Destroyer of Worlds (dropping "Lake of Fire"), it might have proved a sweet little perk aimed at younger fans who were not familiar with the band's legacy, but as a standalone product it's shit. Might as well just procure an envelope, stuff some cash or a check in it and send off to Black Mark Production asking for nothing in return. In the end, this is just as void of worth as those Lake of Tears compilations Black Mark churned out in 2004.

Verdict: Epic Fail [0/10]

Bathory - Jubileum Vol. III (1998)

Because two near worthless Jubileum compilations were not enough, it was decided that a third be released 5 years later to incorporate material from Quorthon's mid-90s identity crisis circa Requiem and Octagon. Now, I'm not quite sure why such albums, the first quite mediocre and the latter downright awful would warrant such a treatment. Any masochist who was interested in such letdowns could surely just purchase them at barely double the cost, and there are no 'greatest hits' to be had in either case. The refinished songs included here from Blood On Ice had been so recently given an official album release that they also had no pressing need for a reprint, and they are so stylistically jarring to the content from the previous two full lengths that this is by far the most inconsistent of the comps.

Jubileum Vol. III presents one hour of material, 9 of its 15 tracks previously released through the 90s. From Requiem (1994), we get "War Machine", "Pax Vobiscum" and "Crosstitution"; from Octagon (1995) "Immaculate Pinetreeroad #930", "Sociopath" and "33 Something"; and from the entirely different Blood On Ice we've got "The Lake", "The Stallion" and "Gods of Thunder of Wind and of Rain". Not an an impressive roster by any standards, though I favor the last three simply because they are part of Quorthon's return to common sense, and the Norse themes he had begun to explore upon the masterwork Blood Fire Death. Even then, though, these are far better experienced on the full-length album with their neighbors, almost out of place among the more boring, straightforward thrashers. So in other words, about 60% of this collection is a rehash of null value.

We are left with the unreleased material, which hails from all over the spectrum. "Satan My Master" is the best of the lot, a pure grimy speed/black metal track from the s/t debut years which has eventually developed into one of their most popular classic tracks (covered by a large number of the bands they've influenced). Not that it's really one of their best, but the riffs are pure honest bludgeoning with Quorthon's rasp splattered all over them, and almost a punk undercurrent in the bass and chords. Another oldie called "Witchcraft" is here, a nice savage rush of gnarled speed with scintillating guitars, though the vocal bark is a bit repressed in the mix. "In Nomine Satanas" was the original incarnation of the track "Bond of Blood" which was later recorded for Twilight of the Gods, but obviously the subject matter was changed. I rather like this raw interpretation, but it's not cool enough that I'd go out of my way for it. Other than these, we're treated to an alternate vocal take on "Valhalla" (Hammerheart); and a pair of mediocre mid paced groove/thrashers in "Resolution Greed" and "Genocide" which probably didn't make it to the miserable Octagon and wouldn't have helped if they had.

In short, not a lot worth a damn, and I once again am left baffled as to why the rarer demo and cult tracks from all three of the Jubileum releases weren't just gathered in one place. Instead, Boss and Quorthon must have felt we all owed them another 30-50 dollars for next to nothing. Comparatively, Jubileum Vol. III might have more unreleased material than either of the earlier compilations, but as a collection of music of note, it pretty much sucks a bone. Better to listen to "Satan My Master" and "Witchcraft" elsewhere and save the scratch.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

Bathory - Blood on Ice (1996)

By the latter portion of the mid 90s, Quorthon was in desperate need of a turnaround, as his once mighty Bathory institution seemed to be unraveling at its seams; his writing devolved into phoned in, dull thrash and groove metal which wouldn't have sufficed even a decade before its release, when the genre was still shaping up. I just don't see the appeal in creating a bold new genre of music, like the Norse themed folk-tinted metal that he manifest and progressed through the trio of Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods, and then sputtering out into something more pedestrian like Octagon, or Quorthon's grunge rock solo records, but thank fuck the man would come to his senses and return to the Viking path.

Granted, Blood On Ice was not a remarkable return to form. In fact, it wasn't even necessarily a new album, but enough of the content had been restored and supplemented from the original writing and recordings in 1988-89 that it feels like at least a sidereal movement from Twilight of the Gods. Originally, it would have served as a bridge between Blood Fire Death and its follower Hammerheart, and structurally, it's a lot like the latter. A lot of glorious, open passages guided by cleaner, layered vocals, with a handful of brief, folksy acoustic sequences ("Man of Iron", "The Ravens") to break up the more substantial bulk of the heavy metal tunes. Curiously, while I've never been the biggest fan of his cleaner vocal presence, Quorthon sounds admittedly tauter and more professional on some of these cuts than anything he'd done to their day (in 1995), and a few of the softer segments lend credibility that the guy could have written a pure folk record and built up a following that way.

Tunes like "Blood On Ice", "The Woodwoman" and "The Lake" rely heavily on their atmosphere just as much as Twilight of the Gods, so Bathory was continuing to move away from the central guitars so important to the first five records, instead writing riffs to support the woeful choirs of winter depression and unrest. But where this all comes together, like the acoustic sequence at around 3:50 in "The Woodwoman" or the enthusiastic canter of "Gods of Thunder of Wind and of Rain" which feels like Neil Young astride a long ship, you're getting a solid experience worthy at least of it's chronological predecessor Twilight of the Gods, if nowhere near as poignant and crushing as his seminal works in the style. There are some problems with the production, for instance the cheesy slap of the snare drum in "Blood On Ice", but in general, for something that was recorded and reworked from two different periods of Quorthon's career, it comes together fluidly.

My favorite tune here is surprisingly the expansive closer "The Revenge of the Blood on Ice", which more than any other places my psyche upon the same cold, battlestained vistas of the 1988-1990 material, and Bathory had long possessed a rare ability to write lengthy songs that incessantly draw the listener into their depths (since "Enter the Eternal Fire"). However, there is a bit of derivation and excess familiarity. For example, you'll hear a VERY familiar drum beat in the bridge of this piece, and a lot of the soothing, structured choir vocals feel as if they were just lifted from and slightly tweaked from Hammerheart. That said, compared to Octagon, this feels so enormously inspired, from the beautiful cover image to the obvious amount of effort Tomas placed in its salvage and reconstructive surgery. Rather than continue to crash along for another decade (aka Metallica), the Swede seems to have recognized his errors and righted them before they could run quickly out of control. Blood On Ice is not one of his best, but it comes near to compensation for the lackluster comps and albums that he'd been spewing forth since 1991.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (long tall beautiful people fallen lifeless to the ground)

Bathory - Octagon (1995)

Oh, those 90s. Nearly every metal artist of credibility running smack dab into an identity crisis, trying to decide whether he or she should 'go with the flow' or stick to his or her guns. Strangely, Quorthon is not an individual whom I would have expected to succumb to such follies, but yet Octagon stands as another bitter pill to swallow, and the absolute low point for the career of Bathory. Down from the mountains of the late 80s, to the sea level of Requiem and now fully submerged in mediocre riffing and writing, disposable vocals and elements that the Viking or black metal connoisseur of Quorthon's fan bast must have found tasteless and confusing. I can only speak from my own experience, but this album was an immediate shelfer, and if I hadn't been so materially inclined to collect the band's whole legacy, grounds for an immediate return.

Don't be fooled by the eight-pointed parallel to the pentagram on the cover, or the traditional font used in the logo here, this is NOT the Bathory you'd grown accustomed to and not something Quorthon has or will ever be recognized for, outside of the obvious chinks in his armor that it represented. I've seen a lot of tell about how this is the groove/nu-metal Bathory record, and while it drifts closer to that clime than any other, it's more of a failed attempt at modern and grimy thrash redolent of what Slayer were doing post-Seasons in the Abyss. You might catch hints of similar structures to those used by Machine Head, System of a Down or other tripe emerging out of the 90s, but Slayer is the perfect comparison for Octagon, since there are a number of riffs here that seem pulled directly from the Hanneman/King playbook. For example, the descending thrash rush in the opener "Immaculate Pinetreeroad #930". The mix of grooves and primal thrashing in "Psychopath" or the bridge of "Schizianity". Or how about the vocal architecture in "Sociopath"? Ring any of hell's bells?

Nothing is straight lifted, of course, but I felt as bored and irritated by this album as I had been underwhelmed by a Divine Intervention or directly appalled by Diabolus in Musica. It's not that Octagon wholly lacks a personality, or a few 'experimental' touches. For instance, there are a lot of dissonant passages embedded in the guitars, or stolid and raw post Helhammer grooves in tunes like "Born to Die" or "Schizianity", but the riffs are almost without exception predictably patterned to the point of no return. Not one charming, resonant vocal line or memorable guitar progression exists throughout the entire play length, and even when songs like "War Supply" embellish the neanderthal thrashing with noisier, infected atmospheres it still feels no more entertaining than a taut morning struggle on the toilet after a few bowls of bowel sluicing fiber heavy cereal. The only song here I can't say I totally hate is the moody, mid paced "Century" slugger which sounds like Hellhammer and 90s Slayer in a circle stroke. But it's not good, either...

The album ends with a cover of "Deuce" from KISS, but in all honestly this sounds nothing like any other track on the entire album. A straight hard rock version with slightly more crushing guitar production and Quorthon's wild, slathering rasped vocals, but contextually it doesn't fit in with the remainder of Octagon. By extension, Octagon doesn't fit in or belong to the remainder of Bathory's discography. Not because it incorporates unwelcome, unimpressive groove metal elements or terrible lyrics in tracks like "Psychopath" that feel like something an angsty teen would pen after being the last picked for volleyball teams in Phys. Ed class, but because it just fucking sucks. The songwriting is lamentable, the vocals pathetic, and all the lofty ambitions of previous (and later) albums are rubbed into the mire of contemporary industry driven revolt.

Requiem might have been the first case in which a Bathory album failed to inspire me to set someone or something on fire, or dream of the Eddas, but Octagon was the first and only that I want to run over with my fucking car. It's not clever, it's not funny, it's not interesting and it's nowhere near acceptable.

Verdict: Fail [2.75/10] (this is my fucking despair)

Bathory - Requiem (1994)

Requiem doesn't feel so much a 'new Bathory' as one that branched off into an alternate reality at around the time it might have followed Under the Sign of the Black Mark, then somehow found its way back to the natural chronology of the band. After the pair of rather lacking Jubileum compilations, I would have taken just about anything new and original from the vaunted Quorthon, but was not expecting an album which clung so tightly to the pure thrash aesthetics one would expect elsewhere in the scene. Essentially, Requiem is what we might have gotten had Quorthon decided not to delve into his self fulfilling prophecy of viking majesty, but instead attempted to trade blows with a lot of the grimier, aggressive US and German thrashers that dominated extreme metal in the mid through late 80s.

As such, it's not all that poor of a choice. This was a musician unafraid to reinvent himself, who in doing so helped give birth to a number of sub-genres that remain massive today. Requiem is not some monotonous, point for point impersonation of Exodus, Slayer and Metallica, but there is clearly a bit of US street thrash influence circa Anthrax, Dark Angel, Exodus and S.O.D. in pummelers like "Suffocate", "Requiem" and "Distinguish to Kill", some of which even feature rock out solo breaks that also remind me of the more down home, contemporary American thrashers. The tone used on some of the meatier guitar lines is fairly boxy, redolent of the Finnish band Stone, but the fact that Quorthon sticks with his ghastlier black metal vocals through much of the disc does help it stand out from most of the other 'modern' thrash metal that was spewing forth to an unwelcoming audience in the mid 90s.

Unfortunately, I found them to be the least distinguished and charismatic of Bathory's repertoire to its day, with little but their dry, raw timbre to really propel them. Little of the memorable, vile slather of the Bathory s/t or Under the Sign of the Black Mark. The album inevitably becomes a potpourri of a few finer, choice moments and a bunch of average thrash riffing which, while not even bordering on incompetence, might not have even been effective if it arrived when that music was at its peak momentum. I really like the atmospheric intro to the title track with its distant tolling and eerie synthesizer, and Quorthon wrings a lot of corpulent thrust out of the ensuing, palm muted frenzy, but the riffs just aren't that memorable. Another piece I mildly enjoy is "War Machine", for the simplistic, swift flow of the central guitar and the use of sirens to create a belligerent atmosphere, but even this one has a filler riff in the chorus. "Apocalypse" has a bold, churning martial appeal to it, with some subtle melodic overtures that hint towards Blood Fire Death or Hammerheart, but it too falls shy of perfection.

Hell, even the cover image, while not terrible, is underwhelming, but I don't think I could argue that it didn't capture the stripped down aesthetics of the record. Requiem is the Bathory that might have been, were Quorthon not so inspired and inspiring in the first place, but just another in a sea of thrashers so crowded that some of its most brilliant European authors failed to garner the audience they deserved. This album was a little late for that boom, with most of the thrash audience moving on to hip hop, alternative, grunge and other 90s genre giants. It still sounds like Bathory, just not the one that would launch a thousand dragon ships and etch itself into the annals of immortality. A hollowed out headbanging experience, the aggression dialed up and the atmosphere available only in small pockets. It could get worse, and maybe it will...

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (now more dead than living)

Bathory - Jubileum Vol. II (1993)

If it's not painfully obvious just how conniving Jubileum Vol. II seems in the long term, just take a brief glance through the track list. You'll find more tracks lifted from the same albums that the first volume outsourced the year before, and other rarities that were held back. Had Boss and Quorthon decided to just release the 4 obscurities there and the three here as a single EP, or perhaps tossed on some other unheard material, it might have felt a lot less cheap. Fuck, if they had just kept it in their pants until the later 90s, they could have combined the unreleased material from all THREE Jubileums to produce a single, comprehensive collection that would have been both mandatory and highly anticipated by their original fans and the many that joined the procession through their individual discoveries through the emergent black metal genre earlier that decade.

Nah, this just feels like an incomplete 'half' to shove on your shelf next to Vol. I and forget all about it. As proof of this, look at how they've included Bathory's OTHER track from the 1984 Scandinavian Metal Attack split, "The Return of Darkness and Evil". Granted, both of their contributions to the release appear elsewhere in the Bathory canon in a form that does not greatly diverge in quality, but I'd rather have these remnants in one place. The other gems here are "Burnin' Leather", a straight black/speed/thrash blitz from before the Blood Fire Death album was released with Quorthon's most Germanic, Mille Petrozza presence perhaps in all his legacy (not only for the voice itself but the syllabic patterns); and "Die in Fire", which was taken from the same 1983 demo recordings as "You Don't Move Me (I Don't Give a Fuck)". The vocals are a little more hacked here, but I still quite enjoy the primal riffing and think that element alone is just another of the myriad reasons Bathory has been such an influential band. Try and count how many of these throwback speed/black bands today owe their very existence to a tune like this...great that we can finally hear it.

But that's where the value ends to this collection. The rest of the tunes are just lifted off the full-length albums. Two more from Twilight of the Gods ("Bond of Blood" and the title track), which seems rather silly. It was their most recent record and yet now we've got 50% and 30 minutes of its content reprinted within 2 years. From the first three albums, there is a small contingent including "Possessed", "Raise the Dead", "Total Destruction" and "Call from the Grave", and then more of their Viking fare in the form of "Shores in Flames" (Hammerheart) and "The Golden Walls of Heaven" (Blood Fire Death). So, yes, now 5 of the 9 tracks from Blood Fire Death are also repressed for these two compilations...if anyone is THAT interested, why not just buy the damned thing and experience its full, consistent glory.

Alas, the same frustrations apply here to this release as they do for every other largely needless printing of plastics and paper that I've experienced, and it's difficult to regard Jubileum Vol. II as anything more than an incomplete commercial venture targeted at collectors and fanatics who will purchase this on its logo/brand name alone. Two of the unreleased tracks are worth hearing, as they'd not been available to those who bought the original pressings of the full-lengths. But the remainder of the content does not flow any better here than it did in its original configuration, and to most of good taste, Bathory's a good enough band to drop the 60-80 bucks on their exceptional backlog anyway. As it stands, the net worth of this particular collection is about as long as it takes to rip "Burnin' Leather" and "Die in Fire" to your portable mp3 player or desktop folder and then sell it off to some other sucker.

Verdict: Fail [3.25/10]

Bathory - Jubileum Vol. I (1992)

While Quorthon has been on record to discuss his varying levels of involvement with Black Mark Productions and his relationship to its head of operations, Boss Forsberg (who also produced some of the Bathory albums), I don't think there's any dispute that Bathory itself was more or less the flagship act for the imprint. Through the years, I've often enjoyed the Black Mark signings, for example the Swedish psychedelic/doom troop Lake of Tears, who have released some of my favorite albums of the past 10-15 years. But really, if you consider how much of a cult following Bathory has developed over the years, and what a demand there has been for special editions, re-releases, vinyl and so forth, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that Quorthon was the label's primary source of income.

To that extent, it makes sense that the label would and will release all manner of collections and compilations documenting the band's evolution, and Jubileum was the first series of such. The aim here was to provide a good portion of the band's previously released material to prospective audiences, and then jazz it up with a few unreleased gems so the diehards had a reason to pump out the coin for them. Granted, Bathory is such a 'scene status' godfather for the black metal territories that damn near every fan owns their albums in some incarnation, and the last thing they really need is rehashed, redundant material when they would prefer demos, rehearsals or those few old live recordings that might have existed. But alas, this describes about 70% of the contents of this first compilation (and its successor), which is ultimately a lot more useless than not. Also, considering that that both Jubileum volumes I and II are both drawn from the band's early catalog (first six full-lengths), it's a bit lame that they were released independently and not as a 2-CD set...

11 of the track are re-pressed from the prior full-lengths, and the selection is nothing to scoff at in terms of sheer quality. "Blood Fire Death", "Dies Irae", "Odens Ride Over Nordland" and "A Fine Day to Die" all represent the very finest of the band's hours, and their finest album (Blood Fire Death), but they also incorporate a smattering of earlier pieces: "Enter the Eternal Fire" and "Equimanthorn" from Under the Sign of the Black Mark, "Sadist' from The Return... and "War" from the 1984 s/t. Hammerheart earns one proxy ("Song to Hall Up High") and the more recent Twilight of the Gods earns two ("Through Blood by Thunder", "Under the Runes"). So it's clear that Quorthon's choices here were biased towards the more viking themed material, a bias I share only in that it grants Blood Fire Death so much berth, but might not best convey the balance and evolution that the band exhibited in their formative years.

Of course, who gives a shit, because most of us who gave a damn already owned all these songs, and would only be interested in the rare bits. There's a version of "Sacrifice" here that was originally featured on the 1984 Scandinavian Metal Attack split (Bathory's proper debut) with other hopefuls like Finland's Oz and Sweden's Trash. I think we all know who got the best of that deal. Then, more importantly there are some rarer tracks like "Rider at the Gate of Dawn", a lush choir/synth instrumental of about 80 seconds that would have felt right at home on Blood Fire Death with its grim, warlike mount-trotting implications. "Crawl to Your Cross" is a dense and explosive black/thrash piece with a meaty, violent guitar tone somewhere in between the US bands Exodus and ZnoWhite. For 1989, this track was somewhat out of character for the band, since Quorthon was honing in on his viking/pagan medium, so it's understandable why it would have been left out, but I am glad to finally have heard it.

Lastly, you've got a real oldie, "You Don't Move Me (I Don't Give a Fuck") which was recorded in that total old school filth speed metal style that was further evolved on the Bathory s/t. Raw, spiteful and grimy, it's amazing to me just how much this nearly 30 year old piece sounds like the stuff you'll hear the Japanese band Abigail write today! My favorite thing on this comp, and the bass, vocals and licks are all superb despite the humble 4-track production. I can only imagine how much value Jubileum Vol I. would hold for me if there had been more material like this involved, but sadly it's just an exception to the rule. There's a lot of great music on the comp in general, but I can't think of a single reason it would be more appropriate to experience here than in its original landscape. It might have been a total bust, and been 100% rehash, but at least they felt some compulsion to pepper the contents with a few carrots on sticks for the jaded.

That said, this is still pretty useless if you're not a collector or completist. As a 7" with just the unreleased material, it might have shined. As it stands: no. Not the most shameless cash grab I've ever witnessed (check the stupendously redundant Lake of Tears compilations that Black Mark released far later), but kind of a missed opportunity nonetheless. If you DO happen to be one of the fourteen or fifteen interested parties on Earth who haven't yet experienced Quorthon in all his morning glory, then save the shells on this album and instead dive straight into Blood Fire Death, Bathory '84, Hammerheart or Under the Sign of the Black Mark, depending on your preference for his Satanist or Odinist epochs.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

Bathory - Twilight of the Gods (1991)

Over the Christian skulls, and through the waves, to Grandfather Odin's house we go. Twilight of the Gods, the 6th Bathory full length, would see the Swedes' transition to full-on Viking folk metal completed, and all within the span of a year since Hammerheart. Not that this would be the last evolutionary stage for Quorthon, who will continue to place the band on divergent paths through the mid 90s, but I don't think anyone could question that a good number of his albums from the Blood on Ice era and beyond felt like reiterations of the concepts and atmospheres he originally explored on the Viking 'trilogy' of Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart and this Twilight of the Gods.

This chapter is by far the most accessible in all of Bathory's history, and that's due to the high levels of friendlier rock polish in both production and composition, plus Quorthon's decision to focus almost exclusively on a cleaner vocal tone. Personally, I was saddened at this fact when I first purchased the CD, because I did rather admire the coat of grit he had applied to its predecessors, since all but abandoning the snarling and rasping pandemonium of the early albums. As I've mentioned, I find the man's pure singing voice to be inconsistent at best, as he was never blessed with the broadest range and seems to often stumble over his accent, but even at its worst there is a particular character to his floppy, cutting tone that is easily distinguishable from anyone else (sort of like the charm one might find in 'Engrish' bands, though this is not of grammar but delivery). He can hit a certain thread of melody in "Twilight of the Gods" or the soaring symphonic anthem "Hammerheart" which proves he's no hack, but there are a number of passages throughout this album, like the slovenly verses of "To Enter Your Mountain" in which further refinement and editing should have been mandated.

Musically, the focus is all on slick, clean and catchy chorus sequences and simple flowing rock chords, supported by choirs not unlike those found on Hammerheart. Bathory was no initiate to the use of the acoustic guitar, but here it was most heavily implemented as a base component of the musical landscape. It's nearly everywhere, and tracks like "Under the Runes" and "Blood and Iron" wouldn't be the same without the brooding, folksy undercurrent it creates. So much of the album is slow that it reminds me of a Viking Pink Floyd. Perhaps not so psychedelic, unless you're a raven or six-legged horse, but certainly as airy and atmospheric as that comparison would imply, with an assured, steady flow to the music that centers heavily on the simplicity of the rock chords and the flow of the vocal arrangements. The aim was to appear glorious, and even though this is far from a personal favorite in the Bathory repertoire, that end result is not one I could ever deny.

I almost wish that the use of voices here had been restricted to the choir sequences, though, like the drudging harmony used in "Blood and Iron", because when Quorthon breaks away for the lead vocal lines they often feel relatively shabby and off-kilter. With Hammerheart, I felt as if the man were riding some squall on a dragon ship and beseeching Ægir to let he and the crew pass the towering torrents around them, but here his presence seems to break up the smooth flume of the musical procession and there are cases like "Through Blood by Thunder" where he just feels like an emo suffering from a hernia. I found my earlier exposures to the album grating at best, especially in such spots as this, but through the years I've at least learned to tune them out and just focus on the underlying music, which, while rarely exemplary, at least serves for positive background noise to atavistic ruminescence or dorkier pondering. Though interestingly enough, there's a slightly contemporary slant to the lyrics (in particular the title track).

Ultimately, it's a good album, but not a showcase of Bathory at peak performance. I do like the meandering, fell majesty and tribal power of the drums, the constant kneading of the acoustics into the roiling, simplified chord structures and the sobering choirs, but at times I feel as if they're all being conducted by a drunkard. Still, this would be the safest to share with your dad, uncles and granddads over a mead. But your mom will still hate it. I can recall that this was supposed to be one of several swan songs for the band. It's solemn disposition certainly reflects that finality, and I'm sure that there are a great many Bathory fans who wish it had been the case, judging by the divisive reactions towards its successors, but it's not as if all the ensuing efforts were total refuse. Twilight of the Gods should be judged as the album which plied the safest waters in terms of a general audience, but it was quite risky at the time for the more specialized metal audience who at the time might have been more desiring of heaps of entrails and Satan. But then, they had Deicide (and many more) to whet their carnal appetites.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (we maintain we are in control)

Bathory - Hammerheart (1990)

Hammerheart and its successor Twilight of the Gods were unique to me in that they were the only 'growers' I experienced in the whole of Bathory's body of work. Most other albums prompted immediate satisfaction or indifference, but Hammerheart took a span of years to accumulate its value when I was flooded with so much else at that precise point in metal history (1990), where thrash had churned out some of its most impressive and enduring works, and death metal was just digging in its heels. Of course, this was an instantaneous purchase much like anything else on the Noise Records roster, but I listened to it a few times, found that it was not as good as Blood Fire Death, put it on the shelf for a few months, extracted it, enjoyed it a fraction more, rinse and repeat for another two decades.

It's almost as if Hammerheart grows better not only with its own aging, but with mine. These days, as white threads being to poke out through the hedgerow of my facial hair, I've taken on a new level of appreciation for this trudging, Viking monolith, which nearly completed Bathory's transition from thrash and black roots to one of the forefathers of the pagan/folk metal advent that took a firm hold in Europe through the mid to late 90s. You still get a bit of rasped edge to Quorthon's cleaner tones, and the riffs possess a similar, inherent glory to those of Blood Fire Death that feel so legitimately atavist and Norse in nature, but the material here is slower, more atmospheric and drawn out. Tracks like "A Fine Day to Die" and "Blood Fire Death" itself were given plenty of space to breathe as they surged forth in their belligerent majesty, but here we experience pure paeans to the land and sea of the Sagas, tributes to the world not only of, but BEYOND the battlefields, and as such it's rather refreshing.

My favorite component to the music is the interaction of the horn sounds with the undercurrents of distorted guitar and the vocal arrangements. Some of this was carried forward from the fourth album, and yet here the orchestration reaches a new level of prevalence in that it's almost a rule and not the exception. The opening sequence to "Valhalla", leading up to the potent thrashing canter of its verse, is a fine example of how Quorthon has grown into a composer beyond the metallic instrumentation, and further evidenced by the soaring choirs he implements in this and numerous other tracks on the album. The tribal, measured Viking thrash of "Baptised in Fire and Ice" and the lurching, grooving bludgeon of "Father to Son" are other highlights, but I find that, considering the 55 minute length of the album, it's pleasant on the whole to experience, if not without some flaws. I could probably live without the obligatory ambient/choir outro, and the massive 11 minute opener "Shores in Flames" could have been slightly trimmed, but the majority of the compositions are compelling enough that I appreciate Hammerheart more than anything the band would put out later.

I've mentioned before that I've never been all that fond of the 'singing' Quorthon, but I should clarify that this is simply the limitation on the vocal chords the Gods granted the man, and not on his effort to better himself, to evolve through the process. He's no Celine Dion, but he works with what he's got. Through Hammerheart, really, you only get a taste of the cleaner tones (like the intro to "Shores in Flames"), and he largely adheres to the grimier, accented grit that was so prominent on Blood Fire Death, but you can surmise that he's further motivated by melody to match the atmospheres of the changes in the music. Hammerheart lacks the black metal core of its predecessor. What heaviness you witness here comes at either a doomed clip or a confident slower thrashing impetus, so it makes a whole lot of sense that the vocals needed to adapt along with this new vision.

In listening through Hammerheart, I like to imagine Quorthon as a skald, a minstrel-herald to the fire and wind who gives voice to and through the ice-rimmed storms that assail the ship on which he rides, and I'm sure this was the man's own motivation in choosing this style. And even where I don't love the delivery of each line, it's full proof of concept, which goes a LONG way to properly assessing and immersing oneself into the music here. The ideas might not have been all that unique, after all, we had Blood Fire Death a few years prior, and heavy metal bands like Faithful Breath, Thor and Manowar had already touted the Viking party line, but the 1988-90 Bathory era is without a doubt the point at which it was handled with what felt like genuine passion and enthusiasm, and not as a gimmick or excuse to wear helmet and furs, or to impress your groupies at the after party with the size of your 'axe'. To that extent, metal owes Quorthon another debt (in addition to that whole black metal thing), and this album, while not one of Bathory's best, indefinitely applies its titular implement to your beating hugr in a surefire, resonant succession.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (the rumours told of a man)

Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)

By the time Bathory's third full-length rolled around, thrash metal had produced a number of hallmarks in extremity which more than contested the Swedes' claim upon that end of the spectrum. Reign in Blood and Darkness Descends not only benefited from unforeseen levels of intensity and musicianship, but they were also incredibly volatile and pissed off to the point that they made almost anything outside of the German Big Three seem like turtles racing hares. That said, Under the Sign of the Black Mark was STILL a paradigm of aggression and evil, not through any sense of instrumental flatulence or compositional brilliance, but for the lack of all these things: the crass and compelling stench of darkness, filth and pestilence which permeates every lick played upon the album.

You wouldn't want Bathory (1984) or The Return... (1985) to hang about your local chapel or attend a family dinner, but when their successor arrived, it felt like every door and window in the village must have been shut tight and barred off, offerings of rams' blood smeared upon their wooden faces to ward off the evil that had strolled in upon a foul wind. This album is really that good, and in my opinion its pacing and structure placed the band firmly upon the pedestal from which Quorthon would never, and has never been shaken, despite the divisive evolutions that Bathory would endure in future years. Contextually, through my own perspective, I have long gone either way on the earlier albums in terms of their exact classification. They were thrash metal. Dirty Satanic speed metal. Death metal. Black metal. In retrospect, that latter category has since officially become 'a thing' of some importance, but one might still place them in all of these spheres at once and get no argument from me.

But Under the Sign of the Black Mark, at least for my humble self, feels like the point at which the levee broke on the top shelf of the Abyss, and all the damned and damning souls erupted through the crust, screaming in Bradbury-unison 'something wicked this way comes'. THIS is black metal, at its purest, borne on the nuclear zephyrs of thrash and speed and dawning into its own abominable, leering presence alongside another, more underground Scandinavian threat: Mayhem's Deathcrush. Bathory had to this point already been destined for immortality due to the spiteful, unapologetic atmosphere of The Return... and the vicious charisma of the self-titled debut, but Under the Sign of the Black Mark combines the two into a rapine rush of simple and effective buzzsaw riffing momentum, blazing fallen angel leads that cut the heavens with sighs of inevitable vengeance, and a rasped vocal so grimy and eternal as it barks through its acrobatic patterns that it feels as if Dead and Mille Petrozza found some arcane ritual through which to spiritually copulate in Hell and produce a slavering, ravenous offspring.

First, the decision to shorten the traditional intro piece was wise. Unlike "Revelation of Doom" or "Storm of Damnation", it arrives and departs swiftly with all its howling, scathing, and swelling ambiance, to the extent that I never felt myself thinking 'please get on with it' like the first two albums. And it morphs flawlessly into, "Massacre", one of the fraction of the tracks here that reflect the debut's sense for shoveling 2-3 burning guitar progressions at the audience and letting them stick like napalm. Simple, fast paced chords shift in serpentine cohesion while a louder, more disruptive, distorted bass tone (played by Quorthon) barrels below. The new drummer, Paul Lundberg is even more strenuous than his predecessor, and his performance here was a benchmark for the black metal genre as a whole. Unfeeling, callous mechanical human blast work with tunneling double bass, Lundberg makes it sound easy. All too easy. So maybe his technique wasn't on par with a Gene Hoglan, Bobby Jarzombek or Dave Lombardo: that's not the point of this, but to bludgeon you repeatedly like a burlap sack of bloodied coins.

What I find most amazing in listening back to the album is how the guitars actually somehow take a back seat to the louder vocals and drums, but the patterns are deadly, powerful and hypnotic enough that they catch your ear anyway. This was actually a process vaulted forward into the more glorious atmosphere of Blood Fire Death, but not many bands could make it work. The neck breaking, ominous grooves of "Equimanthorn", the chugging and oblique "Woman of Dark Desires", and the dire rocking fortitude of "13 Candles" are not fashioned from the most prevalent riffing sequences in the band's career, yet they forcefully carve their well deserved niches into the darker reaches of your mind with a haunting, hostile certainty. Speaking of Blood Fire Death, there's an even more prominent presage in the form of "Enter the Eternal Fire", a track that experiments with a grander, 7 minute structure and a lot of those flowing, Viking associated rhythms and hammer-drums that dominate their aesthetics in the near future. "Of Doom" is another of the many worth mentioning; the break and flow of the guitars here a tangible precursor to the sound that Emperor would master on their classic In the Nightside Eclipse in the ensuing decade.

The only, and I mean ONLY reasons that I can justify to give Under the Sign of the Black Mark a less than perfect score are simply that I found a teensy handful of the riffs (less than I can count on one hand) to be less engaging than the remainder, and the closing :25 outro as useless as the two that were on the first couple albums. Minor mars upon a near flawless countenance, but present nonetheless. That said, let them not dissuade anyone who has somehow evaded this album's infernal grasp to immediately correct that mistake, because Under the Sign is one of the most indomitable works of classic black metal, and hands down one of the greatest Scandinavian extreme metal works of the 80s. Period. No contest, with the exception of its next youngest sibling, an album I prefer due for its ability to transport me to a place I'd rather be. Whatever. Apples and oranges. Pikes and pitchforks. Own this, or suffer the consequences of your own, miserable, tasteless purgatory.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.75/10] (I stand at the jaws of the pit)

Bathory - The Return... (1985)

To dub The Return... a disappointment would be like condescending to a good massage after a fit of passionate, memorable intercourse. It sure feels good, but it just cannot match the climactic intensity and release you were experiencing just a few minutes earlier. Or in the case of Swedish abomination Bathory, a year earlier. Don't get me wrong: The Return... is a puerile, forceful and even brutal album. I'd state with a straight face that it was more savage, primal, atmospheric and barbaric than its predecessor. But the riffs here are just not as good, the energy level somewhat curbed and a bit more emphasis on the weight and rock-groove of the guitars than the sheer blitz of dirty speed metal that dominated Bathory. That album was a straight razor of sinister intentions, this is more of a vulgar machete with a mildly dulled edge.

The band was still in a trio format, though Andreas Johansson replaced Rickard Bergman on the bass. The intro and outro play out much the same as on the s/t. "Revelation of Doom" is a bit creepier than "Storm of Damnation" due to the more roiling torrents of guitar distortion and the pronounced, if distant looped screams, but I still feel as if it just goes on too long. Give me just a minute of this, or cause something more to happen, because even in the span of 3 and a half minutes I grew a little tired of it, and the hidden :25 second outro is too brief and useless to stir up any reaction. There are a few songs which I found spiritual successors to the first album, like "Bestial Lust" or "The Return of the Darkness and Evil", the latter having some similarities to a straight Slayer speed thrasher ("Chemical Warfare") with corpulent tremolo picking in primal but menacing patterns. Most of Quorthon's snarling and rasping is well in line with the identity he had manifest earlier, but I actually found that it had less of a ghastly, wavering character and more of a focused, cutting grimness to it that was marginally less effective.

However, he does occasionally add some spice to the mix like the expansive backup gutturals in the chorus of "Born for Burning", or the more ritualistic growls in "Reap of Evil". Considering how few bands were using the style at the time, it's no wonder that The Return... is cited an influence upon the death metal genre as well as the black. Back in the early through mid 80s, a boundary of distinction had yet to really be drawn, so they shared a lot with Hellhammer in that small class of progenitors that transcended simple categorization. But what I find pretty clear about The Return... is that it has a far more muscled punk or hardcore influence than its predecessor. Songs like "The Rite of Darkness", "Sadist", "Son of the Damned" and "Total Destruction" brandish a lot of open, grooving chords that crash back and forth along the axis of the semi-burst beats. They'll often incorporate some solid mid-paced pure thrash riffs ("Born for Burning" and "Sadist", for example), but I rarely found any of the note progressions here to be as searing or diabolically enthusiastic as a "Sacrifice" or "Necromancy".

Aesthetically, The Return... is brighter and more dynamic than the generally moody darkness prevalent on the s/t album, and here there is really no contention as to its influence on a metric shit ton of later DIY black metal recordings in the underground. Once more it's produced by Quorthon and Boss, so it stands out from the mainstream in that Bathory never had the purse or the desire for tracking down some big name producer and wider cultural acceptance. Almost messy in its determination to tear and bludgeon the listener's brain, but the bass a fraction less pronounced (in both volume and composition) than it had been before. The drums seem a lot more crashing akin to the later Blood Fire Death, lacking that subtler constant tinniness that permeated the debut, and I found that the actual structure of the guitars very often serves as a foreshadowing to that later, monumental masterwork.

In the end, though, this is really no more than a 'good' black/thrash metal album. Worth owning if you love Bathory, worth owning if you enjoy the primordial sounds that would stretch and settle into the style so many enjoy and emulate today, but it's not possessive of their best material. It's louder and about 10 minutes longer than Bathory, and the lyrics on par, but those are the only areas in which some physical aspect matches or exceeds its forebear. I can't think of any legitimate reason why I'd break this out over any of their other 80s full-lengths, but it's probably on par with all of those later works upon which Quorthon decided he was a 'singer'. Fun enough for frenetic sessions of head banging, appreciable for its place in the canon, but it's no Deathcrush, To Mega Therion or Under the Sign of the Black Mark.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (a sorcery written in blood)

Bathory - Bathory (1984)

To calculate the actual sum of influence perpetuated by the 1984 Bathory debut might prove inestimable to even the keenest of logisticians, because it's seething tendrils pervade numerous niches of the metal spectrum even today. I can't tell you how many bands I hear annually, via promos or research, that would be entirely content if the whole of their careers amounted to little more than an aesthetic tribute to THIS very album. To exist as nothing other than a shadow of the late Quorthon. Is Bathory the first proper 'black metal' record as far as the fundamental principles we equate to the genre today, disregarding the titular ownership via Venom? I do believe that a strong case could be made for such, at least as good a case as for any other particular work.

Of course, when I was young, and first experienced the Swedes' music, it was considered thrash or speed/thrash metal of a darker pallor than some of the popular Bay Area sounds. People had yet to kick around the 'black metal' tag as a proper sub-genre, and other favored progenitors like Destruction, Sodom and Kreator were clearly performing at a similar, vicious viscosity to Bathory's scathing inauguration. And yet the iconic, minimalistic cover, the classicist font of the logo and the repulsive timbre of Quorthon's youthful snarling best represent, at the very least, the birth of European black metal in its filthier format. That's not to say that Bathory was wholly unique even for its day. Clearly there are parallels to Slayer's rapid, hellish origins ("Hades" reminds me of "Black Magic") and a grimy punk rocking glaze redolent of the more extreme NWOBHM related acts like Motörhead, Tank and Venom. The Satanic/occult focus of the lyrics was also also not news by this time, as it featured prominently for several of the aforementioned acts. However, the fact that this was arriving from a non-German or American act was indisputably eye awakening.

Bathory was not an easy find for me at first. I combed the local import record stores with decent metal sections on a near weekly basis for such gems, squandering my paper route money on whatever was readily available rather than paying double for special orders. If they ever had the damn thing in stock, it was always gone before I arrived. I had to settle for a dub off a friend's cassette for years, and in fact I had purchased hard copies of Bathory's later efforts like Under the Sign of the Black Mark and Blood Fire Death before finally landing my grubby mitts on it (ironically, the only two albums in Quorthon's entire lexicon that I favor over this). Bathory was not a highly visible band in my neck of the woods. You heard mention in interviews or magazines, you saw a few of your favorite metal musicians wearing the T-shirt in photo ops. Metalians in my high school were busy sporting erections for Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, and most had very little attention span or funds to explore the thrash genre much deeper. If you encountered a guy or gal with a Testament or Nuclear Assault t-shirt other than yourself, you were blown over by the prospect of a kindred spirit. Meet your new best friend.

Funny, then, that of any of the 'second tier' of speed and thrash in the 80s, Bathory has left one of the most enduring and massive legacies. Few metal bands can match their aesthetic imprint count for count, and even some of the 'big' names owe Quorthon a beer in Hell. For example, you could lie to yourself and then try to convince me that Burzum's "War" was not a spiritual rehash of the track "Necromansy" (not Bathory's "War"). The riffing pattern is very similar. Or that Witchery's explosive black/thrash cut "The Reaper" was not an atavistic nod to this previous Swedish "Reaper", which has a decidedly familiar chorus. And what of the vocals in general? Cronos might have had a crude and carnal mean streak coursing through his pipes, and Schmier a more pinched and nasal wrath on Sentence of Death, but Quorthon's biting vitriol is like a musical Genghis Khan, its seed spread through countless tens of thousands corpse painted progeny who only rarely rival the fiber of their ancestor.

As far as its production qualities, Bathory was far from a highlight for '84. Glossier 'mainstream' efforts like Powerslave, Metal Heart, Defenders of the Faith or even Ride the Lightning proved that metal had come a long way from the toiletry of its demo years. And yet, Quorthon and Boss wrung out a primal and methodic sound here that too transcend into aesthetic immortality. Not as messy, raw and reductive as Venom's Black Metal, perhaps, but equally sinister. Stefan Larsson's drums have a thinner, backing tone that never intercedes over the concentrated acid of the guitars or the wretching diatribes of the front man, played largely in a punk rock fashion with loads of tinny cymbal crashes (though the supporting bass drums are noticeably thick). The bass of Rickard Bergman isn't dowsed in a load of bold distortion, but instead threads moodily below Quorthon's rhythms and leads; only rarely breaking away from the guitar progression, but where it does ("In Conspiracy with Satan", for one) it creates a warmer, morbidly glorious atmosphere.

But most importantly, Quorthon showed himself a relatively accomplished guitarist early on, and some of my favorite moments on this debut are when his frivolous leads tear off the rhythms in the bridge of a "Sacrifice" or the rocking "Raise the Dead". There is some degree of amateurish sloppiness in a few of the solos, or the riffing in general, but in general you'll be too hypnotized by the sheer cruelty and velocity. The song structures are relatively primal here, rarely featuring more than 2-3 riff variations, but none lack for a thriving infernal energy, and the brevity of the tracks average around 3 minutes never allows the listener's interest to wane. In fact, alongside Slayer's Reign in Blood, this is one of the best short playing thrash albums of the 80s, in and out faster than a desperate drunken tango with a prostitute. Slam, bam, thank you ma'am, the cash is on the dresser and I'll try not to trip on the sticky jeans around my ankles while I fly down the stairs. 27 minutes of sinful pleasure beget a lifetime of damnation.

It's not perfect. Personally, I find that the windswept, distant chanting and tolling of the "Storm of Damnation" intro could have been clipped in half to better swell the anticipatory momentum for the first metal track, "Hades". The outro could have been snipped entirely. A few of the later cuts like "War" and "Armageddon" never really hit me with an ace riff like the rest, though they are no less despotic and relentless than their neighbors. The lyrics are all appreciably extreme for the time, but some of them seem better ordered and paced than others, and certainly they provided fuel for a great number of faux Satanists and provided ample fuel for the genre's Christian right-wing antagonists. I always got the feeling that Quorthon was just doing the whole 'evil' thing for show, and that he never really had his heart in it, a notion that was enforced by Bathory's later switch almost exclusively to Norse/Viking themes. But, that said, who the hell WASN'T doing it for show? Maybe King Diamond and Cronos were serious about it at some point, but Tom Araya's a bleeding Christian.

You don't get a chance every day to formally review something that has left such an enormous impression upon such a huge chapter of your life in entertainment, and Bathory is clearly one of the cornerstones. Rolled out of the very depths of the abyss for your amusement. A ripping rout, unapologetic in its backlash towards the mainstream of heavy metal that was making headway at the time of its arrival. Some bands burned churches to make a name for themselves, but some, like this one, just burned your fucking ears off.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10] (where the cold and darkness meet)

Bathory - Blood Fire Death (1988)

And so it would happen, in 1988, that Quorthon would transition from the primal black chaos of his first three works (all pretty fine by their own rights), into the mightiest epic of his career. Blood Fire Death is the first Viking metal-themed work of note since Led Zeppelin's immortal "Immigrant Song", and remains to me the very highest watermark by which all other works of its kind must eventually be compared. With the exception of Enslaved (who have also written several masterpieces, though usually with a different, complex progression to them), no other band can really stress the point of 'Vikinghood' quite like this one. This album arrived alongside the top crop of the best overall year in metal history, and thousands of bands have been trying to live up to it since.

I'll note here that despite the larger, epic structure of its tracks, Quorthon retained a lot of what made his earlier albums so ripe...so vibrantly destructive and misanthropic. He has simply merged that furor with a lyrical hierarchy that means enough to him that he would continue to trace it through the remainder of his career as Bathory. But his later success would be limited...some of the works like Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods, Blood on Ice, and Destroyer of Worlds were worthwhile, but I felt that his insistence on the cleaner, shaky vocals and ever increasing use of acoustics provided them all with an inconsistent quality. However, not the case for Blood Fire Death, which walks a straight and true path of belligerent savagery and and kicks your ass again and again for 9 tracks and 45 minutes.

It does not kick your ass with metal alone, as the intro piece "Oden's Ride Over Nordland" proves, a stunning three minute intro of thundering horses and epic choirs that hover below a gathering storm structure, gray and black clouds penetrated by the light of the suncross and the wisdom of the Father's sole, gazing eye. The track flows nicely into the acoustics that introduce "A Fine Day to Die", Quorthon adding subtle vocal flavors, and then at 1:45, all fucking hell breaks loose...and we all welcome our doom. Prepare your soul, my friends, because this is THE END. Fight or flight! Vvornth's crashing kit exclaims the immortality of the riffing to follow, and the guitars grind you into a mid-paced paradise where Valhalla calls every wayward man of honor to crush the fucking skulls of his enemies. The vocals are sick, tortured and 100% authentic gleanings into the genius that, for a brief period of years, possessed this man. The track is just over 8 and a half minutes of bewildering punishment, slowly churning along like a juggernaught of axes and screaming that cannot die until the deed is done. "The Golden Walls of Heaven" follows, and Quorthon shows that he has not abandoned the speed of his previous works, as this is a vicious and brutal punishment which channels early Kreator and Sodom-like speed/thrash into the bowels of Asgardian lore.

Soundless wings lacerate the night
Angels of death emerge accross the sky
Thorned heads spiky limbs climb the air up high
Attack of the pearly gates
Now wait for the sign...

Not convinced? Then the mean, crushing rhythm of "Pace 'Till Death" shall quell all doubts, an hymn of destruction that once more takes the brutal German thrashing roots to the fullest extent as it helps usher in the age of barbaric black metal. Noisy and unforgiving, with messy, hack leads and a scorching, thunderous end. "Holocaust" is another neck breaking tribute to the insanity of warfare, and once again it bears the heavily influence of insane Euro speed/thrash, with guitars so thick on acid and high on blood that you probably should be deaf after hearing them. More streaming, turbulent leads which go nowhere (except straight through my heart), and more cancerous, raw power! "For All Those Who Died" brings it back down a notch to a deadly, mid-paced battering. The way the chords ring out over the surging bass of Kothaar and the simple, stick and bash drumming is beautiful, and Quorthon again poisons the masses with the savage lamentations of his cruelty. The song is a steady five minutes of rocking, the only climax the heightened slamming of the drums over the noisy distorted rumblings in the end.

Burning naked but smiling
Not full of fear but pride
Knowing death alone could cleanse them
Of the reasons for which they all die

"Dies Irae" claims all your remaining lifebreath, ramming it back down your throat with a mailed fist of frost. The song is so fucking heavy that I feel like, even 20 years hence, it slowly peels off the dead cell layers of my skin with only implied, psychokinetic frost and fire. Gods, what a headache! What a beautiful, lummox of wrath and pain. And the breakdown is viler and more penetrating than an einherjer receiving the blessing of Sif between his thighs. At this point, the album is already one of the most brutal and effective metal works I've ever heard, and yet...it's not over yet. THE BEST IS YET TO COME. And it comes in the form of the title track, 10:30 of classic, immortal riffing and atmosphere that anyone worth his weight in sea salt could live and die by. The track is truly immense...the riff at 1:00 is the best 'Viking' metal riff ever written in history, so strong that I get the shivers running through my head and spine just hearing it. The way the keyboards glint above it, and Quorthon's vocals summon both the chaos of Loki and Ragnarok and the primal chaos beyond the destiny of all mankind. The bridge is even more glorious, with the vocals taking on a grim majesty, a king dethroned, a dying and rising soul. The extensive bridge of this epic breaks for some acoustics, and some surging thrash rhythms that march across the battering of the drums. There is also an outro piece which breathes like wind and thunder, but you will hardly care, because you have just been leveled and brought to your knees. What could be left of you?

Blood Fire Death is staggering. When I first heard it, I simply could not fucking believe it. I was just starting high school that year, and had to bring it in to school the day after I got the cassette, to let all the poseurs know the latest herald of their apocalypse. I may very well have transformed a half dozen glamboyant hairspray chuggers that day, and frightened away another score or more. This was something new...something savage and carnal and yet emotionally impactful. This album is a mountain. It will not move. It escalates from track to track. You can erode it with age, but its imprint will always remain, in the ground soil and dust and memory. It's mandatory listening, whether you enjoy black metal, thrash or speed metal, or Viking/folk metal. And if you've not heard it, I will arrive at your doorstep, beaten cassette in hand, one eye burning directly into you.

Highlights: The first 45:43 of the album. The final 45:43 of the album.

Verdict: Epic 'Where Can We Go From Here' Win [10/10] (now the limit is so close)

http://www.bathory.nu/