Vehemency
As I have lately heard a lot of new metal releases that are heavily compressed and polished to maximum, it’s such a pleasure to put on a, say, Countess album. Rather weak guitar sound, cheap programmed drums, none effects on vocals, and generally nothing fancy at all. But what Countess still has is real enthusiasm, still kicking good after almost 20 years and with a very minimum fanbase.
Burning Scripture, his 12th album, continues in the certain vein of mixing traditional heavy metal elements into Bathory inspired black metal. In the midst of fast-paced black metal, almost every song has its mid-tempo epic moments including some lead guitar melodies (and solos!) and synths. This sort of climaxes are best experienced in ”A Poet’s Parry” and ”The Mad Pharaoh”. While the songs are generally chorus-based and many choruses are actually very close to some other tracks (hear the similarity in ”Chariots of Thunder" and the title-track), there are songs such as ”History Not Forgotten” and ”Worship Forbidden” that don’t rely on a recurring chorus.
The quality of Burning Scripture’s song structures is something I was a bit surprised of, actually. A fast listening says that it’s very general black / heavy metal but taking a more careful look at such songs as ”A Curse Upon the King” and "The Mad Pharaoh" tells that Orlok has put some serious effort into song writing. Before the epic album ending ”Blood of Our Gods” there is also a Manowar cover of which original version I haven’t heard, but at least this cover version fits to the style of Burning Scripture very well.
The album also includes two unmentioned bonus tracks that have originally appeared on previous albums ”The Revenge of the Horned One Part I” and ”Heilig Vuur” (thus making this album’s length over 70 minutes), now most likely recorded anew and based on them I have to check out those albums too. All the lyrics are in the booklet and all in all Burning Scripture is a great album - I can’t find a moment when I wouldn’t enjoy it. Definitely not anything ground-breaking but still one of this year’s highlights so far.