Bathory - Blood, Fire, Death

After Bathory released the masterpiece that was The Return, they were left with a big void to fill musically. The album written to fill this role was the overrated Under the Sign of the Black Mark, which unfortunately falls flat on almost all accounts. This album Blood, Fire, Death however succeeds where Under the Sign of the Black Mark failed.

Blood, Fire, Death is often hailed as the 'first blackened Viking metal album' and recognised as influential, to bands as varied as Graveland, Burzum and Neraines, for this reason. And while this isn't really any sort of departure from black metal, it is still a monumental album and representative of a transitional period for Bathory. In a genre that had inspired motion beyond the linear and reactive structures of their debut, Bathory made an epic statement of the spirit enmeshed in the ideology and symbols of the black metal genre, rendering from Norse mythology a series of views into a frenetic album that leaves no room for compromise.

Each composition is unique, in structure and in the essential juncture of melody and rhythm that forms the evolving core of Bathory's, and each holds attention through distinctive atmosphere. In a way reminiscent of early Vermin, each riff states a theme which then naturally expands into an overarching narrative structure that unfolds as the song progresses.

One of Bathory's best efforts, influential to both black metal and death metal.

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