Pulverised Records

Fourteen years between albums is a long time for any band. It's especially a long time when it's only the band's second album. The Black's first album, the deathly dark The Priest of Satan, was a surprisingly awesome album released in 1994 that, to my knowledge, didn't get much recognition. To this day it seems to have somehow been all but forgotten by many, though there are the few who remember it and still play it. I've got it somewhere, but haven't listened to it in literally probably 6 or more years, so comparisions between that album and the new one will not be made as I've forgotten everything important about it except that I was impressed by it.

When finding that The Black had released a second album after 14 years of who-knows-what, I was interested. I didn't know if I should expect another impressive ass kicking, or be generally skeptical of a band that, as far as I knew, had either been broken up for many years and decided to reform, or had just been lazy for 14 years.

Alongside Death immediately opens with a violent massacre of a track called "On the Descent to Hell" that literally sounds about as horrendous as one might imagine a descent to Hell would sound, with blasting speed and deathlike screams announcing murder and damnation, and filthy guitars right underneath. It's a short and to-the-point track, the shortest on the album at under two minutes, but it gets a lot done in that time. In my case, it left me psyched and begging for more.

Regain Records

Ah... the rebirth of Gorgoroth. Introducing this album requires a bit of a history review, so here it goes. Two years ago, in October of 2007, Infernus was somehow kicked out of his own band, the black metal death machine in which he was the only founding member. Gaahl and King (Ov Hell) decided that Infernus had been too lazy, and had not contributed enough to the writing of the music they had been making (the music on the previous two albums having been written almost entirely by King). Gaahl and King continued to tour without Infernus in the band, which Infernus was not going to put up with! Why should he? So like any true warrior of Satanic influence, he got the courts involved and it was decided, rightfully so, that Gorgoroth was Infernus' band, and Gaahl and King were in the wrong to try to kick him out. Infernus, in the mean time, had built up a new band to call Gorgoroth... which, I might add, was more GORGOROTH than Gaahl and King's Gorgoroth, considering the inclusion of PEST and TORMENTOR.

So where we pick up today is a little over half a year after the court declared that Infernus owns Gorgoroth. Pest (my favorite Gorgoroth vocalist) is back on vocals, Tomas Asklund is on drums, and a man going by the name of Bøddel is on bass. Tormentor is now back in the band, as guitarist, though did not contribute to the making of the album. What they have created here is the eighth studio album in the last 15 years, which has much more in common with the old days of Gorgoroth ala Pentagram, Antichrist and Under the Sign of Hell than any of the later material.