black metal
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Ukraine’s Stryvigor (named after a river in the Carpathian mountains) are a perfect example to prove that you don’t need to adopt gimmicks, be fashionable or avant-garde to stand out of the black metal crowd. All it takes is two guys, a deep love for early to mid ’90s 2nd wave black metal and someone who clearly knows what they’re doing behind the buttons in the studio to create a decent, honest black metal album.
I have yet to hear their debut album ‘Forgotten By Ages’ so I can’t say if this EP differs much from that one, sound-wise, but ‘Into The Abyss Of Cold’ is 19 minutes of pure, no-frills, 2nd wave black metal done absolutely right. A black and white and grey cover drawing depicting a forest with bare trees, jagged rocks and a raven, a short howling wind intro to the first song, a Darkthrone cover song.. Some people would pass this off as cliché, I call it an homage or (better yet) paying rightful tribute. This album takes you back to the days when you went berserk whenever Immortal or Darkthrone or Gehenna would release a new album. Ahhh, the good old ‘Mid 90s’...
And those names give a good idea in my opinion on what to expect from Stryvigor. I mean, they’re doing a killer cover version of ‘Under the funeral moon’ so the Darkthrone influence is obvious, but I hear ‘Pure Holocaust’-era Immortal and some others as well. That does mean Stryvigor can hardly be called original, but ask yourself; is originality really that important? I would rather have bands like Stryvigor, ‘recreating’ the sound that got me into black metal in the first place, than some band hopelessly trying to do something new and falling flat on their faces.
So to conclude: have Stryvigor done something new with ‘Into The Abyss Of Cold’? No. Do I care? No, because what they do, they do near to perfection. Well done Stryvigor and thank you for taking me back to my early twenties!
Bjorn
I have yet to hear their debut album ‘Forgotten By Ages’ so I can’t say if this EP differs much from that one, sound-wise, but ‘Into The Abyss Of Cold’ is 19 minutes of pure, no-frills, 2nd wave black metal done absolutely right. A black and white and grey cover drawing depicting a forest with bare trees, jagged rocks and a raven, a short howling wind intro to the first song, a Darkthrone cover song.. Some people would pass this off as cliché, I call it an homage or (better yet) paying rightful tribute. This album takes you back to the days when you went berserk whenever Immortal or Darkthrone or Gehenna would release a new album. Ahhh, the good old ‘Mid 90s’...
And those names give a good idea in my opinion on what to expect from Stryvigor. I mean, they’re doing a killer cover version of ‘Under the funeral moon’ so the Darkthrone influence is obvious, but I hear ‘Pure Holocaust’-era Immortal and some others as well. That does mean Stryvigor can hardly be called original, but ask yourself; is originality really that important? I would rather have bands like Stryvigor, ‘recreating’ the sound that got me into black metal in the first place, than some band hopelessly trying to do something new and falling flat on their faces.
So to conclude: have Stryvigor done something new with ‘Into The Abyss Of Cold’? No. Do I care? No, because what they do, they do near to perfection. Well done Stryvigor and thank you for taking me back to my early twenties!
Bjorn