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Music > Albums > Bal Sagoth - Chthonic Chronicles (2006) Retail CD
added on December 27, 2007, at 22:13 by Sarge!

Bal-Sagoth. Well well well. This is the first album i have ever purchased by these mad fantasy creating, war metal brandishing Northerners.What a buy !!! I once read a review of the film Conan the Barbarian (not to be confused with the substandard follow up, Conan the Destroyer). It said "This film would be laughable, embarrassing and not fit for human attention, if it were not for the fact that in its creation, a plausable story has been born, and in its conviction, its utter self belief, it pulls of the job of coming across as epic, exciting and worthy of praise."Maybe Bal-Sagoth read this review before penning and then recording "The Chthonic Chronicles". Because that same description could be used to sum up this album. In its conviction of playing, it stands up like a metal clad warrior and screams, "listen to me in all my pomp and gradure and worship me for my ideas and feeling".Simply put, this album is a rolling story of epic fantasy. If you like Black metal, and fantasy books, you'll bloody love this !!!If you don't like either, i can only be honest and say that you will probably groan, maybe even laugh when you hear it. But thats fine. Each to their own.I think Bal-Sagoth have done a magnificent job of painting great stories over a canvass of operatic orchestral music, warrior voiced narration and of course (and probably most importantly) very catchy, evil black metal.I'm so glad of the chance to break out of the agendas of the extreme metal genres, be they gore, violence, satanism, politcal injustice etc...With this album in your player you can forget all that for a while and just revel in a well told fictional story, arranged around some brutal black metal. Its like reading non-fiction for ages, you need to go and have a bit of escapism into a good story book occassionally. Bal-Sagoth offer that escape.The even beter thing is I can look forward to buying the other 5 albums that make up the Hexology.The world needs more bands like Bal-Sagoth, who are not afraid to break with trends, and write something they want to write for the pure fun of it.Its only unfortunate that Extreme metal is so inaccessable to 99.9% of the population, as it would make a great film score for a big bombastic epic fantasy.Great stuff.

front 1425 x 1398 px

back 1769 x 1381 px

cd 1427 x 1439 px

inside 1425 x 1398 px

inlay 1775 x 1386 px