"I lift the blood-filled chalice towards the sky, and drink in the honour of my master of the deep. I kneel before the black altar of Satan and the sign of the Baphomet. And command the dark forces to come forth..."
Sounds stupid? Maybe it does. And if I told you that there's more of it, seven full songs of endless Satanic nonsense in every possible and impossible verbal combination, you would probably look elsewhere for good music.
But, just as Setherial were capable of writing approximately 1,000 lines similar to "The rise of the ancient dragon, from the darkened depths. The seventh gate is open and Satan rules the world..." without repeating the same nonsense, they were, at least on Hell Eternal, also capable of making 1,000 insane riffs. Without repeating the same song. Hell Eternal, for me, is the best and most brutal that Swedish black metal has ever offered.
Okay, obvious comparisons to Marduk or Dark Funeral will pop up. Screw that. In the same year, Marduk released Panzer Division Marduk, and I went to see them live. While buying the ticket, I also noticed the Hell Eternal digipak and bought it as well. Marduk were... okay. Boring. Nothing special, after 15 minutes just the same-old, even though I was in the first row. They didn't even play the good tracks from the two excellent albums they had. And when I came home, early morning, ears buzzing, legs and neck aching, I just tried Hell Eternal, at low volume. WHAM! Blown away. It was marvelous, and still is.
Concerning Dark Funeral... Nothing they have ever done belongs in the same sentence as Hell Eternal. Pretty much the same as anything Setherial themselves did after this.
The digipak in question looks what every self-respecting black metal digipak should look like: black. On the front: the logo, a shield, the title and two figures looming from the darkness. One holding a spiked club, the other an axe. And the one with the spiked club had the weirdest corpse paint: splitting his forehead in half. Open it, and you're threatened by more of them, almost as if they are displayed on a fantasy war figures exhibition.
Open it some more, and on one side there are some credits and hails. On the other side, someone, in their infinite black metal wisdom, confused the left and the right side of what was to be folded downwards, so you have to read the right page first, and THEN the left page - if you want to follow the lyrics. Kvlt.
And, yeah, there's the music too. Seven songs, forty minutes and forty seconds. The production, done by Tommy Tagtgren at the Abyss studio, was impeccable. Play it low, it's thundering. Play it loud, it's bloody scorching. The drums have the best sound this side of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The guitars are fairly clean, but the clarity is of little help when you take into account what they are doing. Almost always there's the classic deviant black metal rhythm guitar, blazing as if there's no time for small talk. If it wasn't grandiose, it didn't end up here. Obviously, if we're talking Armageddon, there's no point in using small words.
And the lead guitar adds three or four other dimensions. When you are able to notice what it is doing, that is. But if you do, you'll be rewarded. Armageddon... that's the word. No intro, just instant blasting, a ferocious scream, and we're in. No mercy. Except for the subliminal ride cymbal going at half the tempo of the snare drum, the rest are ubiquitous blastbeats of the most merciless kind, and the regular eight beats per second seem to be able to go on forever. The riffs are ascending and descending from everywhere, Wrath's vocals are magnificent and quite understandable, and the music is just beyond comparison. The levels of brutality are so high, yet so gloriously outrageous, that, once you get used to Hell Eternal, you will actually consider the songs NOT starting with a scream "weaker tracks." And even though one, title, track, does indeed have an intro... when Setherial kick in, the snare drum blasting is so loud that it deafens everything else. Hell Eternal is not an album for the weak. Most people would complain about the lack of variation, but those who know will "get" it. To this day, I haven't heard anything like this: fast all the way, brutal all the time, endlessly insane and with no indecisive moments. And catchy as the aforementioned hell. Listen closely and stop complaining about how it hurts, and you'll realize just how many sweet and outstanding moments this all-out noisefest has, and you'll keep returning to it for years to come. I do.
Want an example? "Towards Thy Realm" has a moment when the singer growls, and not screams, "Satan." And yes, that's a great moment, just as is the closing moment when the song slows down a bit and the vocals threateningly command "Creation: Reverse." But you have to hear it to witness it.
"Shadows of the Throne" screams "best song ever" at least while I'm listening to it — just the beginning holds an explosion and a moment where everything stops, slams down with full force three times, and continues at full speed. Then, what else... ah, it has the best riff ever, then another best riff ever, then another... and then a double-bass drum part where it feels like you're ascending into the freezing night sky, and if there ever was one moment in music history saying "THIS is black metal," listen to it between 4:21 and 4:35 and this would be the one. Did I forget to say that I've never heard tom rolls and cymbal crashes being used like this?
The title track manages to sound even MORE brutal, and the way the guitar follows the scream through the "flame, my dark delight" part of the lyrics damn right feels like some flames are being thrown at me. And listen closely, you'll notice one of the noblest melodies ever written passing you by as if it's nothing special. Somewhere around 3:30, Alastor Mysteriis also goes for the "fastest kick drum ever" and it sounds as if he's resting on that part. Actually, the drums are, as a whole, played with so much careless speed, precision and variation that... Never mind. I'm out of superlatives.
"The Aeschma Deava," besides having the best riff... damn. Yes, another best riff, just like almost any other riff on this album. I'm already regretting having started to write. If this was a regular review I'd just write 10/10 and instead of reviewing give you the links to every CD shop in the world where you can buy Hell Eternal. If you can't get the digipak, there is good news: Napalm Records has re-released it in 2008, as a double CD, so in the same case you can get Hell Eternal and Nord. If you can still find that one in 2020, or whenever you're reading this.
And yes, "The Aeschma Deava" actually slows down. Then the drumming gradually speeds up to one and the same riff (yep, best ever) and you're exposed only to total blackness and an annoying cymbal playing with your nerves until everything explodes back into blasting. Then Setherial go progressive, and I promise to let you know what "The Sign of Wrath Awaked" is about as soon as I figure it out. 20 years after buying the album, I'm still not sure. It sounds like it was played backwards, but it isn't. No idea how they came up with that, and learned that thrashing interlude either. It doesn't make sense. Except that it's brutal.
What does make sense is the more straightforward follow-up track, "The Nightwinds," and by that time, even though it's easier on the nerves, all you'll be able to remember is "Satan... in hell awaits..."
Finally, "Guardians of the Gates of Flame" ends as abruptly as Hell Eternal started, and this one is so twisted that I can only tell you that the chorus consists of "Rahhhh!!! Rahhhh!!!" and it repeats twice. The parts in-between sound like Emperor are having a knife fight with Dark Funeral. Incredibly messy, but in a glorious way, as if Setherial had a million more things to say but instead decided to shove them all into one final song. And the poor listener, by then, gets so exhausted that it's all the same. Just mental pain.
Twenty years later, Hell Eternal is still the best fun you can have without actually watching the Armageddon with a cold beer in your hand. Since that fairytale event isn't very likely going to happen, and "Satan" is a pre-Christian word meaning basically "the one we don't like" and not a personal name of some imaginary bad guy, you're left with this. To my knowledge, no one has ever tried to do anything like what Setherial did here, or if they did, it was nothing memorable and fell apart after a few minutes. This one is a documented moment in history when someone decided to do the maximum in glorious, Satanic violence, and had the means to do it. No mercy, no romance, and if you're looking for mood, the mood is the Armageddon itself. As if it wasn't enough to throw in more riffs, fills, melodies and breakneck direction changes than other bands do in their whole careers, Setherial hammered the point home by using the word "Satan" about 33 times. I counted. And trust me, not for a second, never, does it sound like they were joking.
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