Darkwor – Foederati

When I used to hear good bands from the USA it made me angry. How could a country so obsessed with Death Metal be unleashing credible Black Metal? How dare they intrude into the most extreme form of music known to mankind? A music that evolved in Europe drawing upon centuries of history that they do not possess. Gradually after the number of acts I really enjoyed had risen into double figures I began to accept it and now I’m genuinely interested in their scene and the bands of quality that exist…and there are plenty.

Whether you like it or not American Black Metal is becoming an important branch of the scene as it injects some fresh meat into the butchery. Darkwor, although sporting a pretty cheesy name, make some excellent varied sounds with influences, I presume,  from all over the place. With quite a heavy sound, incorporating audible rumbling bass, they chug through seven mid range tracks over almost thirty five minutes.

‘Dawn at Adrianople’ is a pretty bog standard type of intro with a void-like static but with a drum roll it eases into the seven minute long title track. Rasping vocals and slow guitars greet you to begin with but it builds up nicely and unleashes a frantic second half of the opening minute with hefty downtuned guitars coarse but not high pitched screaming. You don’t know what they’ll do next, it is unpredictable and changes riff, pace and key without warning. This is one of the best seven minutes of USBM I have heard to date.

‘Renaissance Apocalypse’ is a fast but brutal stabbing ditty with a quality piece of atmosphere in the form of a long single note underneath the riff during the middle barage. Track four is the badly synched ‘III’ with a blaring battle horn it begins but takes a while to get going until they hit a massively downtuned note; must be T flat or something because it’s fuckin’ deep.

There’s a boring three minute ambient track next but then a few picked bars of acoustic which descend into ‘Curse of Atrevs’ which blends Death, Black and a sprinkling of keyboards. Not my favourite on the CD but listenable anyway as the keys don’t get in the way too much. There’s even a solo in there. The final song ‘Desecrating the Remains’ bears more of the same well crafted mayhem.

Sure it is not as pitch black underground as the Black Twilight bands and although they are occasionally dipping their fists into the astral waters in which Abigor and Emperor made their names Darkwor have something for everyone here, and a few surprises in store too, without occupying too much middle ground. It gets pretty chaotic at times with a stack of ideas pouring out musically in quick succession.

Far from sounding over played Darkwor play some really decent Black Metal and have released a fine debut in Foederati and one which you need to hear to believe.

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Tags: 2010, Darkwor, USA

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 21:52 and is filed under Black Metal Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.