Vehemency The Polish black metal scene in the 90s is often underrated even though that period included many great and influential bands, and albums that were ahead of their time. Graveland’s Carpathian Wolves is one of the finest albums from that era along with Veles’ Night on the Bare Mountain.

Carpathian Wolves is an almost 50-minute furious yet epic album. Such tracktitles as ”Barbarism Returns” tell quite much already. Although often hateful, the music has its climax moments every now and then when folkish guitar riffs appear, and also synths that are mixed quite high. Thus the tempo often varies from Capricornus’ sloppy blast beats to slower and more epic sections. I can not even name any example tracks because this is pretty much the manner how all the songs are composed - and what a sweet way it is indeed.

”Witches Holocaust” differs from the rest of the album in that it’s a slow, haunting track from the beginning to the end. It’s a truly magical track with its focus on creating a creepy atmosphere, made possible by almost saddened guitar riffs and chanting vocals in the background.

Carpathian Wolves is an album that showed great enthusiasm and power already in 1994, around the same time when things were happening in Norway. Graveland never made a record like this anymore, not to say that their (or more specified, his) later career would be bad. It’s just that Carpathian Wolves was and still is quite a unique album that I would only compare to Night on the Bare Mountain, perhaps.