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9.0
- Band:
BATHRY - Duration: 00:27:52
- Available from: 02/10/1984
- Label:
-
Black Mark
If you take any list of metal albums from 1984, apart from a few sporadic thrash releases like Metallica, Slayer, Destruction and Voivod, most of them settle on classic heavy, without any particular peaks of extremism, except for two cases: “Morbid Tales” by Celtic Frost and the debut of Bathory. The importance of both for the future development of extreme metal, especially its darkest and most evil branch, is such as to make them the first examples of (almost) done and finished black metal in History.
In the specific case of “Bathory”, the bar of extremeness is raised to levels never heard before, thanks to a music that draws heavily from punk impetuosity and thrash paroxysm with a dark attitude and a rotten sound that makes you feel uncomfortable in its raw and glacial nature.
Of course, we could say that, starting from the cover with a goat in full view, Venom had gotten there first, and had even taken the trouble to give a name to a certain type of music, but what comes out of the grooves of the Swedes' debut goes even further.
Although the starting point for such a delirium is precisely the heavy metal and satanic themes of Cronos and his associates – something always denied by Thomas Börje Forsberg (Quorthon's real name), but confirmed by first drummer Jonas Åkerlund – each chapter of this debut seems to want to amplify each of its characteristics, which goes far beyond being 'Motorhead with satanic lyrics'. If, on a purely formal level, “Bathory” draws heavily from Venom classics such as “Welcome To Hell” or “Black Metal”, and in the specific cases of “Sacrifice” and “Raise The Dead” even copying their titles, Bathory’s metal throws away every minimal sign of rock’ roll, creating something minimal, cold and genuinely disturbing, with speeds that increase beyond measure, obsessive and razor-sharp guitars and a voice that – probably – is the first real example of screaming black metal ever heard.
Characterized by a production that was wrong on paper, with a drum kit full of reverbs and guitars that cover very high and often disturbing frequencies, each of the songs of the twenty-seven minutes of the album lay the foundations for the explosion of the Scandinavian scene that would come shortly thereafter, with examples of proto-black metal such as the immortal “In Conspirasy with Satan”. “Raise The Dead”, for its part, introduces what will be the most epic side of Bathory, with an iconic mid-tempo that will be developed in the following albums until it matures in what we today identify as the viking metal period of Quorthon's band. “Reaper” and the opener “Hades” embody a very fast and uncompromising thrash metal, while the aforementioned “Sacrifice” is perhaps the most punk episode of the album, a faint memory of Thomas' past in Stridskuk. With “Armageddon” we return to a feral black metal made of chaotic sounds and reverbs that cover everything, a path that will be fully developed in the two following albums.
“Bathory” was recorded and mixed in a garage that would later be called Heavenshore Studio, in less than fifty hours, on an eight-track and at half speed to fit into the very limited budget available. All this, together with the introduction of ambient and disturbing sounds as an intro and outro, created that cold and cemetery sound that would be an integral part of the black metal school of the nineties.
“Bathory”, even if it doesn’t represent the artistic peak of the black metal period that will be perfected and fully codified with the two following “The Return…” and “Under The Sign Of The Black Mark”, remains perhaps the first true example of an extreme metal that wants to be disturbing, minimal and that has the desire to shake off every trace of melody, in favor of an obsessive and annoying sound. A milestone like few others, imperfect but with an essential historical value, which is codified as an obligatory influence of everything that will happen in Northern Europe starting from the end of the Eighties.
We close with a curiosity: the typos on the titles of “In Conspirasy with Satan” and “Necromansy” are intentional and due to the fact that, when finalizing the layout of the artwork, it was noticed that the number of letters 'c' of the font purchased for the titles were not sufficient. It was therefore decided to replace them with a 's' phonetically similar.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM