Review Summary: Black metal styles are disappearing faster than new styles can save it. When caught in the middle of this cauldron, it’s just waiting for disaster.
Suns must set, and moons must fall. It perfectly describes this album. Holy Blood, along with many other supremely unblack metal bands, have been falling ever so slowly since the turn of the century. This really comes as no surprise considering laid-back officials fake what it’s all about.
Hard riffs, shredding vocals? It’s not enough anymore. The rawness is instantaneously deteriorated at the very beginning of the album. The major unblack metal scene imprinted on this band, is completely overrun with various folk sounds. The gut-wrenching vocals don’t match up with any other aspects of this album, and frankly, the instruments don’t support a creative, influential style. The only supportive aspect to this label is the guitar. Yevhen Titarchuk and Ihor Dziuba don’t offer themselves the benefit of the doubt. Their style is constantly at a battle with the rest of the composure, and ultimately fails. Where one sound is repetitively used, another isn’t used enough, this all too apparent from beginning to end of this album.
This album is severely inconsistent. Celtic is also a major influence on this record, and actually, in the long, saves the album from total annihilation. The only problem with this is that when you are superiorly one genre, and you change constantly to another, you're just asking for trouble. This album really starts to kick off with 'Kill', killer riffs, and standard vocals, is the supreme highlight of this album. And really, this seems to last for a while until 'In the Lake of Fire'. 'The Poor World' is a degenerated version of 'Morning' that lasts a while longer, and expresses even more aspects of folk, with influences of Celtic. The main catch for most of these tracks is the guitar. While they don’t support the most creative skill, they do stand out in front of other instruments that require amazing regulations.
As I said in the beginning, suns must set, meaning that the black/unblack style is starting to kill itself. And moons must fall, means that a new day is coming, represented by the well designed, but inconsistent Celtic and folk genres and influences that save this album from the garbage disposer.
