I bought this on Half.com back in the day for 2 bucks if I
recall correctly. At the time, it was labeled just as heavy metal and with a
pretty cool looking cover art, I figured at worst, this would be low budget
power metal. Instead, this wound up being low budget black metal. Surprise
aside, the first thing that came to my mind when listening to "OF Battle
and Ancient Warcraft", was just how vanilla everything sounded. Standard
guitar riffs with endless drum kicks and black metal 101 vocals. I will say though;
the predictability of the songs was not the most disappointing aspect of this
record. I mean, I've listened to numerous death metal, power metal and
metalcore albums that I felt I had already heard before even giving them a
spin. The difference here however, is even if it is predictable, the quality of
the sound is simply not good. The guitars are way too distorted; almost as if
they were going for a classic basement sounding production, but failed to
capture that type of atmosphere. The low quality sound, predictable nature and
simplistic style plays through most of the album, but the band does add some
keyboards into the mix on a few songs, which is strange. The keys seem almost
as if they realized they could have incorporated them into their sound, but had
already recorded the majority of the album and it was too late to go back.
If I were looking at
this with a positive narrative, I would say that there are a few songs that
although bland, are decent. "Armageddon Arrives" and "Of Battle
and Ancient Warcraft" have a pretty decent base sound, but that's about
the height of their praise. I think, had the band added more layers to their
sound via keyboards and variation of riffs and drumming, some of these songs
could have been pretty good, but at the end of the day, this feels rushed and
very amateurish. I could only recommend this to rabid black metal fans.
Highlights: "Of Battle and Ancient Warcraft"
"Armageddon Arrives" "The Dawn of Black Hearts"
Rating: 1.5
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