Battle Dagorath "Eternal Throne" CD

An Opus of Cold Bleak Atmospheres and Intense Glorification of Darkness. Enter the Realm of Cold Misanthropic Majesty.

Tracks 1 & 9 written & performed by Vinterriket, album mastered by Vinterriket. Session keyboards by Vinterriket.

Good ol’ John Tolkien – years after his passing, his written works have continued to inspire and influence countless artists of many forms, including a fair amount of lyricists in the world of heavy metal. Battle Dagorath are another band who are fixated under the epic spell of his novels, doing a great job of capturing the darkened, cold atmospheres of Lord of the Rings in their music, leaving you feeling as if a Nazgul had been standing directly behind you for the albums entirety, breathing his icy breath down your neck.
Eternal Throne is the bands debut release, and I must say that it left an instant impression on me from the very first listen. The raw, freezing music sweeps evilly from your speakers like an inexorable army of orc raiders, leaving you spellbound by the magical creation you’re listening to. Although majestic and ethereal, it keeps a bitingly intense black metal edge to it (differing from the likes of say, Summoning, who often rely on swathes of keyboards for their awesome atmospheres). The production is of a good quality, being far from the 4-track necro-hell bedroom demo tape kind which suits the music perfectly. At times the bass became so booming and deep that I thought the wall was going to come through on me (but on afterthought, perhaps that was just a neighbour trying to get me to reduce the volume). The guitar work is of course the main point of interest musically, flickering and hissing menacingly throughout. When they’re not pounding you hard with blast beat backing, they’re sparkling sinister sounding arpeggios or sweeping huge clouds of arctic hatred directly at your face, and I just can’t get enough of it – can you tell? The album is bookended by entirely ambient interludes which were composed for the band by Christoph Ziegler (who also mastered the album - so fans of Vinterriket should definitely take note).
Needless to say, I was so impressed by this that it had me searching out all information I could find about the band, not only to upgrade my MP3 version of the album to CD, but also to see if they had any demo material I could wrap my eager ears around. If you’re a lover of majestic black metal, or even if you’re a sucker for metal that really conjures the ancient spirits of middle earth, you really can’t go wrong with Battle Dagorath.

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