Warthur
With its six tracks tending towards respectable lengths, the Japanese Sabbat clearly hadn't lost their appetite for long-form songwriting since The Dwelling but didn't take it to such an extreme here, instead presenting a terser album of high-energy, thrashy, catchy as hell black metal. The production drags out the guitar front and centre, and Temis Osmond makes good use of the spotlight.
Where the line is drawn in Sabbat's discography between thrashy black metal and blackened thrash is a tricky one, but here I'd say that the uncompromisingly aggressive stance of the second wave black metal spearheaded by the Norwegian cabal (and, of course, Sabbat's fellow countrymen Sigh) it sits on the black metal side of the equation, particularly since Sabbat's well-honed love for Venom doesn't quite extend into the sort of carefree sloppiness of Venom's classic releases.