Fullmoon
United Aryan Evil
[Isengard]
As one of the more ideologically extreme and overtly NS bands in the Polish scene, Fullmoon is not for everyone. The cover artwork and song titles such as "Aryans Ride Over Falling Israel" bluntly assert Fullmoon's political stance, though surprisingly, the music is not the militaristic Capricornus-style war metal one would expect based on this demo's external trappings.
It starts off with a rather sinister Graveland-style intro (and this is not where the similarity to Graveland ends), with the screaming women and sounds of fire and carnage overlaid with ghostly Aghast-style keyboards. The music that follows is surprisingly melodic, mid-paced black metal of an extremely epic-sounding nature, not unlike a more complex Graveland. I think the drums are a machine, but it is well-programmed and not overly thin or mechanistic sounding - there are fills, cymbal hits and tempo variations. The vocals are gruff and reasonably sick, but not nearly as vile as Darken's, and the guitar sound is raw in that it sounds quite 'unproduced', but quite easy on the ear - almost a soft tone for black metal, and fitting in very well with the overall epic medieval feel of the recording. My only complaint is that the sound quality is pretty awful, even for a demo.
The tracks are quite long, and varied - sections of grim sounding BM are be interspersed with "Following the Voice of Blood" style pseudo-folk passages and lush keyboard sections - extra points are given for using varied keyboard sounds from strings to male choirs. Some nice clean bass work as well. All of this combines to basically produce what I consider to be one of the best recordings to come out of the Polish scene - if not one of the best period. The aura that this record exudes is difficult to describe, and few black metal bands have made me feel the way this does. This is magnificent, epic and malevolent art that deserves to call itself elite unlike the idiots who have raped that particular term dry. This may be hard to track down now, but do yourself a favour and get it - THIS IS PURE FUCKING CULT!!!11!1!
© 1999 the barrow man
It starts off with a rather sinister Graveland-style intro (and this is not where the similarity to Graveland ends), with the screaming women and sounds of fire and carnage overlaid with ghostly Aghast-style keyboards. The music that follows is surprisingly melodic, mid-paced black metal of an extremely epic-sounding nature, not unlike a more complex Graveland. I think the drums are a machine, but it is well-programmed and not overly thin or mechanistic sounding - there are fills, cymbal hits and tempo variations. The vocals are gruff and reasonably sick, but not nearly as vile as Darken's, and the guitar sound is raw in that it sounds quite 'unproduced', but quite easy on the ear - almost a soft tone for black metal, and fitting in very well with the overall epic medieval feel of the recording. My only complaint is that the sound quality is pretty awful, even for a demo.
The tracks are quite long, and varied - sections of grim sounding BM are be interspersed with "Following the Voice of Blood" style pseudo-folk passages and lush keyboard sections - extra points are given for using varied keyboard sounds from strings to male choirs. Some nice clean bass work as well. All of this combines to basically produce what I consider to be one of the best recordings to come out of the Polish scene - if not one of the best period. The aura that this record exudes is difficult to describe, and few black metal bands have made me feel the way this does. This is magnificent, epic and malevolent art that deserves to call itself elite unlike the idiots who have raped that particular term dry. This may be hard to track down now, but do yourself a favour and get it - THIS IS PURE FUCKING CULT!!!11!1!
© 1999 the barrow man