Dragonlord

There's something about American black metal that just isn't right. While all the hallmarks of "true cult" black metal seems to flourish amongst Stateside corpse paint bearers - under-produced, raw sounds with raspy vocals and immoral atonality - in all actuality this "true cult" stuff is the same stuff that American metallers deemed too primitive when it was coming out of Norway a decade ago before going back to banging their heads to the comparatively polished sounds of the Bay Area. Ironic then that a bunch of Bay Area folk are now jumping on the cause, however many years after the fact, as a sort of tribute to the black metal section of their local record shop. Because Eric Peterson, Steve DiGiorgio and Jon Allen are involved, this album will hold up to greater scrutiny, and it's not because more would naturally be expected from a line-up of this experience and musicianship that you will be disappointed. You will be disappointed because this is a standard and pedestrian airing of the black metal songcraft. A good chunk of the genre has moved beyond taking chromatic riff A and combining it with rapid-fire picking before layering boring keyboard run B. Too bad Dragonlord haven't. Then again, all the people who still love that stuff will probably love this.