Review Summary: Sons of Balaur detail a predictable, slightly unremarkable beginning, but one which stays true to its story of origin.
A few months ago Metal Hammer UK released a promotional snippet from an up-and-coming graphic novel entitled
Realm of the Damned. It centres on a particularly gruesome story entirely based on a fictional world where death, gore and evil seems to reign supreme. It's also, as proudly stated by its creator, a fine homage to black metal and its ideologies, and coupling this fact with the connected story suddenly doesn't come as much of a surprise. Even less of a surprise then, that a black metal band called Sons of Balaur are practically the centrepiece of this whole thing. Now this isn't the first time that a fictional band has been created as a result of popular multimedia where the story is somewhat interconnected with metal itself: Dethklok have successfully provided a fine run through three fairly decent death metal records. Of course, the great danger of not taking these fictional bands seriously definitely rears its head most of the time, but there's fun to be had at the same time.
Sons of Balaur's debut effort,
Tenebris Deos details a fitting conjunction with its accompanying story. Whether or not you can stand black metal at its most simplistic and downright straightforward will tell you if listening to this effort in a passive way is worthwhile. The majority of these twelve tracks flow through a variety of extreme metal sub-genres, and the performance is surprisingly spot on most of the time. Songs such as the epic, stand-out highlight "The Curse of Bloodlust" and the punkier, grittier "Succubus Slut" certainly lay bare their respective influences (Dissection and Bathory if you want me to spell it out for you) offer an insight into the story's multi-dimensional menace. Not only that, but they prove prove how consistent certain songs in this debut effort really are. For a fictional band, Sons of Balaur sure do reap their rewards. There's also various changes in pace to ensure that the listener is never on the edge of becoming bored with what they hear: "Balaur's Rise" is a groovier, doom-laden passage and the narrative within gives a strange resemblance to Attila from Mayhem, and "Soldiers of Darkness" revels in blackened thrash taken straight from the book of Skeletonwitch. In all honesty, and despite this being a mere by-product of a metal-worshipping graphic novel, the majority of this album seems a lot stronger than you'd expect.
However,
Tenebris Deos often runs the great danger of becoming inconsistent and reliant on well-trodden paths through sub-genres which are already rife with copycat groups. This will probably annoy those who are expecting something more revolutionary and spectacular, and as it stands, Sons of Balaur's debut album never really hits such lofty expectations because of its seeming unwillingness to progress from set boundaries. There are, as a result, a fair few filler tracks. "The Nameless Roams the Earth" takes a minute for the slow, semi-acoustic riff work to come into full effect, and unfortunately this proves too late for the black metal-inspired performance afterwards to truly gel with the listener. "Athena Bitch Betrayer" and "Torch This ***ing World", being both close to the end of the album, also seem rushed and uninspired, despite their reliance on black metal's most well-known characteristics and eventually run their course with virtually no memorable aspects for the listener to ponder. The most unfortunate thing about this album however is that if you're not going to read the accompanying graphic novel,
Realm of the Damned, then none of this album will really seem that worthwhile. The story flows well as the songs are structured in a certain pattern to represent the novel's progress, but without knowing what the songs actually regard, you're left with an unremarkable albeit solid debut extreme metal effort.
It's certainly a fitting start for Sons of Balaur to make their mark on the metal world, but whether or not you can take them seriously because of their origins will determine how much of
Tenebris Deos is to be appreciated. As said before, it's not worthwhile to listen to the record without at first having read and understood the direction of
Realm of the Damned, because without that there wouldn't be a Sons of Balaur to begin with. Whatever you decide, it should be duly noted that none of this is to be taken seriously: it's all good fun, albeit fun for the right people.
