Review Summary: Serpent Lord's triumphant return
It’s no secret that I’ve been on a Washington state black metal bender for the past several months, specifically diving into various Superchi brothers projects. I find them fascinating because while household names like Wolves in the Throne Room and Agalloch – and to a lesser degree Abigail Williams and Hulder – have made waves far beyond their Pacific Northwest haunts, it took nearly two decades for Jake Superchi to break through, with Uada serving as the vehicle.
But well before that, Nick and Jake Superchi were crafting spellbinding black metal in various underground bands. That of course includes the witchy goats and pentagrams project Ceremonial Castings, which balanced out the deer skulls and ferns aesthetic of their regional fellow travelers. It also includes two much lesser known projects - Serpent Lord (Jake) and Mysticism Black (Nick).
Formed in 2003 in the foothills of the mighty Cascades, Serpent Lord recorded and released three demos through the following year. While the first two releases are alright, [i]The Order of the Snake[I/] is a fantastic full length effort that’s full of emotion and raw composition, imbuing it with an undeniable charm.
All of this is to say that Serpent Lord didn’t materialize out of thin air. It’s part of a long arc of Pacific Northwest history that’s being resurrected. Specifically the album is being marketed as a revival of the 90s pagan black metal that the band’s earlier releases showcased. While I find that interesting, it’s also true that the clock doesn’t tick backwards. Despite Serpent Lord’s best efforts, it’s impossible to listen to this without hearing the experience gleaned from the decade Superchi spent in Uada peeking through, along with the musical polish that brings with it.
And polished this album is! In my previous review of Ceremonial Castings’
Into the Black Forest of Witchery I talked about Superchi’s obsession with constantly tweaking the mixing, mastering and even recordings of his projects’ previous albums. With Serpent Lord’s
The Once Forgotten Ways of Old it appears that the dog has finally caught the car.
That’s because this album sounds pretty damn great overall, with some caveats. The music is full and fleshed out, filling every nook with atmosphere. The drums are constantly pummeling and at the forefront while the main guitar riffs are audible and blend nicely with the varied and characteristically impressive vocals.
But that level of polish also works against Serpent Lord here. It actually took me several passes to really appreciate the level of detail that went into
The Once Forgotten Ways of Old. This is a record that’s packed with interesting guitar noodling, splashes of folk instrumentation and diverse vocal and choral performances. Thanks to the mix though, unless you’re paying close attention, the music can all churn together and get buried under itself. That's what let me down about listening to this album for the first time. But once you start noticing all of those flourishes, the album really blossoms. Although first it bludgeons.
Serpent Lord wastes no time serving up that sweet, sweet pagan meat with the opener “Aries Ram,” which launches right into soaring and melodic black metal riffs before swirling down into a slower atmospheric midsection. It almost creates an uncanny feeling of being in a dark grove with a cloaked guitar-wielding shaman. It’s not particularly menacing, but it’s certainly otherworldly. As the guitar tapers off, the whole cycle starts back up again with the return of towering guitars and smashing drums. It’s a circular songwriting structure that quickly becomes familiar on this record. Motifs are created, buried and resurrected as the wheel turns.
The title track is another standout, featuring shifting guitarwork that’s layered upon by droning vocals and pounding drums before setting off on another adventure. But even though this is one of the strongest songs on the record, it also showcases the strange mixing and mastering choices. As the droning vocals splinter and fray, joined by gut-wrenching burbles and a Superchi choir, it’s all shuffled to the background and bundled up too tightly. What could have been truly unhinged (and is, if you listen
closely enough) ends up being flatter than it could have been.
The last two tracks on this album provide a nice one-two punch closer. “A Pagan’s Spell” features some rollicking and punky power chord-first black metal that’s a welcome change of pace from the hypnotic meloblack that makes up much of the first two-thirds of the album. The excellently written and paced “Forever on the Grounds of Battle” wraps up the record with swaggering and triumphant riffs that at times hearkens back to old Serpent Lord and even Ceremonial Castings work, while “Enter Serpentagram” feels like it could have been plucked from an Uada album.
So after all that, and despite my quibbles about the mixing, is Serpent Lord’s
The Once Forgotten Ways of Old a worthwhile successor to its killer predecessor, and – most importantly – is it worth your time? The answer to both is a resounding yes. While I would have liked to hear something a bit less polished, maybe a bit rougher around the edges, that’s more of a wishcast on my part. The cycle only moves one direction, and while it will begin again, it will always be a little different. Serpent Lord has returned home with this album while simultaneously launching the opening salvo of what could be a new chapter, but the battle lines have shifted. I think this record is both a worthy adaptation and fresh introduction for one of the Pacific Northwest’s best kept musical secrets.
