Sad - Misty Breath of Ancient Forests (2020)

Sad is an unsung, relatively long-standing act in the Greek black metal community which might be dubbed as 'dependable', truly committed to the most fundamental aesthetics of their genre but never really manifesting anything truly impressive or unique, nor anything that really drags the bottom of the well. Albums like Devouring the Divine and A Curse in Disguise are textbook cases of the medium, with nasty rasped vocals and nihilistic energy that is derived from the European forebears and iconoclasts like Mayhem and Darkthrone. They don't have a terribly Hellenic feel or sound to them, although I'd say a few melodic parallels might be drawn towards the more sinister Rotting Christ or Varathron material.

Misty Breath of Ancient Forests is the duo's sixth proper full-length installment, and while it might be considered more of the same, I'd say this was easily the band's best produced record to date, and also cultivates a consistent melodic might to it that should sate purists. I was immediately taken in by the muted, murky artwork and just how well the musical content lives up to that. You're clearly thrust into the role of some corpse-painted barbarian scouring the ancient boreal landscapes of sound, wrestling with other predators to the unending glorious melodies that spew out of Ungod's strings. The vocals are standard for the genre, but definitely get crazy and suicidal enough sounding to compete with the incessant momentum of the music, and you might get a grunt to back up all the snarling. There can be a bit of a monotonous nature to the song structures...they cycle through a good number of riffs, and few that disappoint, but often the blast parts can grow a little weary, where if they had just thrown in an added break or simpler, slower transition a lot of this could come across far more sick and effective, especially when you're juggling 6-9 minute tracks.

Just listen to when they curb the speed a bit in "White Death" and you get those really great sounding melodies to the surging chords, or the saddening guitar strings that ring out over the roiling bass drums of "Hades Gazing". These aren't a huge deviation from the main thrust, but they hint that Sad could benefit from even more versatility in tempo and riff selection. But that's the only major gripe I can say about Misty Breath of Ancient Forests, because it sure as hell is well-assembled, and if you're a fan of classics like Transilvanian Forest which could also be pointed at for its too-persistent pacing, despite it being a masterpiece, then I don't think this one will bother you. A bit overlong, especially without some more breaks, segues, or varied tempos, but with ease this is one of Sad's better outings.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://hordeavsad.webs.com/

Sad - Utter Nihil Worship (2016)

Long and forever a fixture of the Hellenic black metal underground, Sad is a band arguably mired in convention to the extent that there is no possibility of them escaping the shadows of the more eclectic, ritualistic or melodic acts of their region, a fact that I'm sure suits Ungod and Nadir pretty well. The emphasis here has always been on pursuing purist, Scandinavian-rooted raw black metal in the tradition of groups like 90s Darkthrone and Horna, where just about all variation on an album will come strictly through the balance of tempos and the minor production details, but little else in terms of lyrical matter, riff construction or stylistic shifts. They've released some solid fare like 2007's A Curse in Darkness and their album previous to this one, Devouring the Divine, but understandably have not flagrantly publicized themselves or revolutionized their material to the extent that they really stand out.

Their sixth full length, Utter Nihil Worship does nothing to deviate this course. Tremolo picked, dire melodies threaded above hammering chords and harrowed rasps, with a production to the rhythm guitars that is slightly fuzzier and more ear-bleeding than on a handful of earlier recordings. They set up songs structurally so that you won't be constantly bombarded with the exact same riffs and speed patterns that surround them, but that's not to say that when you break down what they're writing on a fundamental level, that it's anything you haven't heard a thousand times before. Truly, only a small selection of the riff patterns here stick to me, like the opening salvo in "Aprophenia", which would have sounded truly evil if joined with some haunting, ancient synth lines as per In the Nightside Eclipse; or the raw and roiling, melancholic tribal war pattern that introduces "War, Father of All", immediately conjured up nostalgia for the fell beauty that even this ugly genre of music can conjure when the mood strikes alongside the toms.

Beyond those few moments, though, there's just not a lot of excitement. Stronger riffs with cede to those that are decidedly less compelling, and the vocals or general atmosphere of the record aren't vile or memorable enough to overcome it's stylistic loyalty, to a fault. There are occasionally a few nice bass-lines, and the production was well suited to the genre, if a little dry, but the riffs just don't offer much of a thrill if you've heard so many similar efforts before. Utter Nihil Worship is by no means a bad album, it's just going to depend on how 'authentic' of a course you want your black metal to stay upon, or if you've grown jaded. But I have no evidence that there is any other objective here, and if you're solely in the mood for what the album promises in its title, then I can't imagine you'd be all too put out. Utter Nihil Worship did not earn my interest, but Sad does continue to earn my respect.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

http://hordeavsad.webs.com/

Sad - Devouring the Divine (2013)

About the worst criticism I can evoke for Devouring the Divine is that it proves another Sad recording that dwells around the median of the black metal genre: standard songwriting techniques with tight execution, but nothing particularly poignant or memorable apart from a few of the harmonic textures of the dual guitar lines. That said, these Greeks have always had a decent standard in terms of production, and their latest is no exception, with a professional mix allowing all the instruments to shine through, while desperately surging below the suicidal snarls and rasps of Nadir's very up-front delivery. In fact, the clarity of the delivery bolsters the strength of the riffs, which are almost exclusively centered on tremolo picking wastelands of sorrowful note progressions that ebb and flow with the meatier transitions into chords.

There's a bit of the 'Transilvanian Hunger Effect' here, in which a lot of songs follow the same general tempo and then seem to bleed into one another, but like that album, I can't say that I found the material boring or redundant in the slightest...simply consistent. A lot of tracks are 6-8 minutes in length, but shorter on average than Abandoned and Forgotten, and each packed with at least a half dozen decent rhythm guitar patterns that allow them some degree of variation. As usual, Sad is more cognizant of Swedish and Norse influences than their Greek neighbors, so the melodies are often built from the mold of bands like Bathory and Dissection, with the strongest resemblance possibly to Arckanum, if not as catchy in their simplicity. The beats are all basic blasts or uptempo trots, without much personality since the focus is so heavily on the guitars and vocals, but there are enough fills to feel like they're not on autopilot. The bass lines offer an added layer of melodic undercurrent to the streaming riffs, but otherwise aren't wholly interesting, which I can somewhat forgive seeing that there's just one guy handling all instruments.

Admittedly, once you've made it past the first few tunes, "Cursed Be the Light" and "Grim Reflection", there aren't a whole lot of surprises, and by the time you hit the finale, "I Bleed a Lake", you feel like you're just treading the same ground as 37-38 minutes leading up to it. But that's Sad. Not a band you're listening to for innovation or a high level of dynamics; albums will differ mildly from one another, but they've always stuck to the same general path and they show no signs of deviation. You know what you're getting before you even you begin listening, and in the case of Devouring the Divine, it's certainly a passable effort. I still think that Ungod is better used in the blackened thrash cult Slaughtered Priest than any of his other projects (Kvele, Necrohell, Insidius Infernus, and this one), but ultimately this is the strongest Sad full-length since A Curse in Disguise, and if you enjoyed any or all of their offerings, then I doubt your feelings will change here. Solid.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (your sleep will be mine)

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/thimios/

Sad - ...And His Minions Shall Eternally Reign EP (2011)

Sometimes the notes configure themselves into penetrating patterns of poignancy, and sometimes they do not. This is both the malady and the cure to Sad's seemingly average string of releases. Where full-lengths like Abandoned and Forgotten and Enlightened by Darkness have not entirely delivered the goods, this brief 11 minute EP, with a mere two tracks, delivers them wholesale. The vocals, the drums and guitar tone are all pretty much the same as on the 2009 full-length, and the style is a dead ringer, but a muse of dire melody has been captured and for the most part, this is strong material.

Of the two songs, it's the opening to "Dichotomy" which immediately captured my attentions, a teeming, uplifting melody that plays out wonderfully against the simpler, steady rhythm guitar as it accelerates into a bristling, majestic blast sequence. "Shallow Grave" has a similar style and pace, but after a few minutes pass, I felt that the riffing became somewhat more level and predictable, though Nadir's wretched snarling helps break up any potential for monotony. I very much enjoy the thick floe of guitars, it's somewhat redolent of the more recent Arckanum records (but not exactly), and a good way to dominate this melancholic but forceful niche of the genre.

Anyway, I'd square these tracks off just about nearly anything from the past two albums and they'd come out ahead, even if they don't reach the bar set by their sophomore A Curse in Disguise (which I'd maintain is their best work). Nothing has really changed, the band are quite settled into their sound and don't seem likely to evolve or devolve anytime soon, so if you've heard anything out of their back catalog, you know exactly what to expect: only marginally more titillating.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/thimios/

Sad - Abandoned and Forgotten (2010)

I think I can trace the rather lackluster showing of Sad's more recent output to one obvious culprit: burnout. Stylistic excess. When your primary songwriter is involved in half a dozen bands, many with the same general principles and style, something is going to suffer along the way, and the Greek band who released a good sophomore in 2007's A Curse in Disguise seems to have hit a roadblock with their two consecutive efforts. Abandoned and Forgotten is all too likely to be suffer the actions of its namesake, because it's really just more of the same as Enlightened by Darkness; the same material that not only this band has been creating for a few years, but many middle of the pack black metal artists slump about with. There's just no ambition here at all, no pushing of boundaries, no pushing of the self.

That would be fine if the riffs and songs were immaculate and memorable, but this is just not the case here. I'll grant that Abandoned and Forgotten is marginally superior to its predecessor. There's a nice, clean, even tone to the guitars that blends in accordingly with the vocals and drumming. I think this has the most 'airy' aesthetic of any Sad record, and that's not such a bad thing. They aren't excessively repetitive, and exchange dynamics so the listener isn't left in an incessant feedback loop of boredom. You've got the marching, mid gait of "Creatures Untold" or "The Black Parade" contrasting the brighter, melancholic flow of "Solitude" or "Fall from Grace". Nadir does a decent job coming off as a man in pain, and we all know Ungod is tight as fuck from the major amount of experience he's been racking up on numerous releases. Yet, there are just no surprises here, no riffs that come along and clutch the listener's spirit, casting it into the pit of ichor and negativity at the heart of black metal.

I admit, I was not expecting to ever hear a Radiohead cover done in this genre, but Sad have including a snarling rendition of "Street Spirit" (The Bends, 1995) complete with waves of tremolo riffing and bitter snarling that almost outshines the rest of the album in pain. I like that they've made it their own here, which is essentially what you want out of any cross-genre, contrasted cover song, but it's not necessarily interesting enough that I'd go out of my way to hear it. All told, this is a slightly more impressive experience than Enlightened by Darkness, and well beyond where they started with Total Nothingness, but there are no new tales to tell, no tricks and nothing out of the ordinary. I get the impression that Sad could write a half dozen albums a week of this caliber, but that doesn't mean it should happen, especially when you know they could do so much better.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/thimios/

Sad - Enlightened by Darkness (2009)

After a sharp spike in quality from the debut Total Nothingness to 2007's Curse in Disguise, Sad were en route to becoming on the stronger stock black metal outfits in Greece. This momentum was drawn to a halt with Enlightened by Darkness, the band's third full-length, which seems like a step back from its predecessor, but let me qualify that statement by saying that little has changed in terms of the musical content. Once again, one should not be misled by the band's moniker: this is hardly the 'depressive' sort of material you might be expecting, but instead a driving, melodic beast with fully Scandinavian influences from Burzum, Mayhem and their like, and a strong guitar tone that dominates the recording.

As with the prior albums, these guitars clutch the steering wheel and never let them go. Sad is foremost a band about the riffs, and it feels like the rasped drawl and an admittedly competent drum performance seem to remain in the back seat. For that reason, there's just not a lot of interesting layering within the songs. They depend wholly on how damn catchy the guitars are, and though some thought was placed in the construction of notes, a lot of songs grow tired in short order. Particularly, these are the longer pieces like "Sweet Loss" or "Ignored", which move with a melodic swagger somewhere between Mayhem and Bathory but simply cannot seem to justify 7 and a half or 8 minutes of constancy. The same goes for "Let Snow Cover the Earth", which opens with a fairly dull blast sequence and then spit its one brighter, emotional riff before exhausting all the surprises in store.

Better are the shorter pieces, like "Soul Scars", which opens with another of these thick, streaming elegies and then manages to belt out a cruel rock groove in the bridge redolent of a Hellhammer or Darkthrone. Or "Destroy Them", which is straight cruising mid-paced black metal following a similar, mean sounding course with brief fits of acceleration. It almost seems like the more drifty and dreamy the band grows here, the less potent and memorable they become. It's a shame, really, because these guitars have great production, the drums crash along appropriately and they're clearly solid as cement. Ultimately, Enlightened by Darkness just doesn't leave the same impact on the listener as A Curse in Disguise. Granted, it's still better than the debut, but not by a large margin.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/thimios/

Sad - A Curse in Disguise (2007)

Sad had released a fairly average debut (Total Nothingness) with perhaps the hints of a few good riffs that were dragged down by the listless and ultimately uninspiring architecture of the overall tracks. With A Curse in Disguise, they successfully improve themselves with a richer production standard and an increase in the sheer intensity of the material; a noticeable escalation of potency from its predecessor. But I think by this point it's pretty plain to see that 'Sad' is no so much a depressive black metal outfit as their name implies. At least, not in terms of the emotions that their compositions create. They tend to approach their end times with a more forceful and glorious barrage of thick and soaring guitars that feel more like a mash up of Bathory's glory days (Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart) and other Swedish bands on the melodic side, with perhaps a dash of late 90s Immortal.

These guitars, of course, carry forward the band's original intentions of given the the listener something brighter and balanced to experience than just staring at a gray wall of decay (a trait all too often in the European underground). They're the loudest in the mix here, cruising along in meandering mid-paced swagger ("Chaos Returns", "Forgotten Existence") or a blasted clamor ("Beyond the Great Suffering"). Oftentimes, though, Sad just rocks the fuck out with huge chords reminiscent of Hellhammer, Darkthrone or the later Satyricon records ("True Evil Lies in the Hearts of the Children"), and in all three cases, A Curse in Disguise is a pretty damn good time. I can't promise you that the individual riffs are unique, complex or intricate, but once they break out something like the wall of chords at around :40 in "Alone I Walk the Dark Paths", you know the Greeks can at least write worth a damn, and that this is everything the debut had aspired towards.

Also should mention the vocals, which are far less dry and monotonous here, with a dark and dreary bark to them reminiscent of some of Quorthon's lower groaning, or Abbath on the more recent Immortal albums. They've got just enough character to them to bite into the voluminous swells of guitar, as if they're chopping away steadily at some hardened oak in the middle of a winter wood. Without them, A Curse in Disguise would feel a lot less 'dark', as the actual construction of the riffs are about half-glorious and half-solemn. At any rate, while Sad continues to elude some of the originality that their countrymen once spawned, and the largely suicidal (and weak) lyrics don't match up that well with the actual music, they do that mid-paced Swedish and Norwegian style proud, and this is easily one of the their best records to date, if not THE best.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (and there will be famine)

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/thimios/

Sad - Total Nothingness (2006)

Total Nothingness is quite a quandary, an album that inevitably falls flat despite having one of the stronger riff-sets I've heard in all the Hellenic scene debuts in the 21st century. The band's name certainly conjures forth an impression of longing, loneliness, and depression, but the riffs actually bear an understated majesty which is not quite as emotionally draining as I might have expected from the album title. But that said, it turns out to be a rather standard effort for the style, due to a few faults which cripple the solid guitars from greater achievements and a truly memorable impact.

For one, the vocals croak along in a familiar rasped fashion without ever possessing any grisly finesse. Quite primitive, and not without a hint of genuine pain, but ultimately rather flat against the writhing, shifting rhythms, which are quickly ignored for. The drums are solid and organic sounding, but the construction of the tracks feels strangely dry, as if these powerful guitars were going to waste. The transitions are all predictable, and the songs slowly seem to lose energy, despite the inherent catchiness of the guitars. Style-wise, there are clear parallels to old Bathory, Burzum, Mayhem and Darkthrone, but the band never feels quite so genuinely dark as any of those influences, nor do they resemble most of their Greek neighbors, with the exception of a few sparse glories, and the generally tendency towards a mid or slower pace.

It's sort of a bummer, because tracks like "Worthless Almighty" and "Pain" definitely manifest some dark, steady and rolling power rhythms that lurch along like a wall of tears and bones through a desolate plain, sucking up any of the living in their path. "Dark" is likewise strong, at least the guitar itself, which is picked almost as if it were some sluggish, surfing abomination. The band does not stick solely to one tempo, and there are faster, blasted moments present (in "Verschlinger"), but other than the actual construction of the central riffs, the composition feels so jaded and lifeless. I realize that's half the point of such a thing, but never did I feel the ominous terrors of self-loathing and suicide that inhabit the better bands of this particular niche.

In truth, Total Nothingness is not all that 'nothing'. Nihilistic, and perhaps bleak, but there's a betrayal here: a taint of warmth that makes the material more fit for a march than a morgue. Speaking of "Nothing", the closing acoustic outro is entirely dull and useless, and the baby like, freakish samples of the intro "Behind the Door" also feel forced and disjointed from the metal. I will say I liked the band's logo quite a bit, and was fascinated by the minimal moniker they had chosen (much like I was with Sigh in their formative years). But the lyrics are quite plebeian, and Total Nothingness is ultimately an uneven start for the Greeks, one they will admittedly improve upon for future works.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10] (the sunrise of my godhating spirit)

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/thimios/