Summoning
Minas Morgul
[Napalm]


”Minas Morgul” was really Austrian SUMMONING’s masterpiece, the album that they won’t top ever again (they think so themselves, so…). It was their second one and it took them quite far from the screamy black darkness of the first album, into epic gothic medieval keyboards and melodies weaving a texture of 70-minutes lasting journey deep into the darkest caverns and brightest meadows of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

”Minas Morgul” wasn’t only about Hollywood fantasy cheesiness but it was about some of the true essence of mythicality, it was filled with darkness, longing and atmospheres from beyond. It’s not something that could pose as experimental, even with it’s folk and gothic influences, it stays within the realm of black metal but creates it’s own fortress – the ambient dreaminess of BURZUM reaches a new soundtrack-like quality here.

Vocals really scream hazardous terror here, perfect production emphasizing their inhumanness, chainsaw guitars have never sounded so beautifully melancholic and the drum machine and synths are both painful in their thinness of sound and the efficiency in which they stab the knives of anti-materialism deep into the heart of the listener.


© 2000 black hate