Bathory are a band that have lost a lot of fans over the years - first the "black metal" purists abandoned ship when Quorthon dropped the satanic elements and forged a new identity for Bathory, one of "Viking Metal", and while Bathory picked up quite a number of new fans in this period, even more once again gave up on the band when this album was released (after nearly three years of silence)...but I personally found this album to be quite excellent. True, this sounds nothing like either of his two earlier incarnations of the band, but I think that if more people were to judged this album on its own merits as opposed to comparing it to what Bathory once was, they might walk away going "Ok, it's definitely NOT the Bathory I'm used to, but this does SHRED", because that's exactly what this albums does : SHRED!!! Gone is the "black metal", gone is the "viking metal", but in it's place, we have some of the most caustic and vehemently poisonous sounding death/thrash metal ever recorded. The closest musical comparison I could make would be Slayer (Reign In Blood era), but SO much more vile sounding. The production alone on this album is harsh as hell - vocals are hoarse, grainy and throaty, ugly sounding guitars, the bass overpowering quite a lot of the overall sound field, and drums (a machine more than likely in my opinion) pushed to the nines in every way possible - the whole album has this sickly grainy sound, as if the signals were compressed and then maxed out constantly during the recording...Bathory once again manages to get a completely horrible production that will cause quite a few grimaces on initial listenings. A lot of people just dismissed this album as primitive thrash (which it does resemble on the surface level), but it's far too violent (in my opinion) for that category. In spirit, I would say this is as misanthropic as any black metal band today, but "song" wise, there are no similarities. I can see why the "viking metal" fans of Bathory would dislike this, but I honestly believe that if you're a fan of "The Return", and you can get by the "riffs" used here, the spirit of this album will win you over...it's THAT evil (although in no way "satanic" really). If you didn't give this a fair shake the first time around, give it another try. This isn't for everyone I admit, but I think that a lot more of the black metal scene could get into this if they were to give this an honest listen (without invoking the image of the Bathory past/legacy)...

© 1999 chorazaim