HERZOG
HERZOG "Furnace"
By Dr. Abner Mality
Here's one of the more interesting black metal albums I've heard this year. HERZOG (no connection to Werner, as far as I know) hails from Belgium and is the creation of one Asgeir Amort. The press for "Furnace" mentions that it sounds like no other black metal out there and though I wouldn't go quite that far, they have a really intriguing sound that isn't just another tribute to a time 30 years ago.
The songs on "Furnace" are very involved, with lots of different riffs and a generally slower (but not really doom) pace. After a totally ambient intro, "Achemihement" rolls forth in a very hypnotic, steadily marching way. Immediately the vocals are strikingly different...more like a deep inhaled groan than the usual trollish stuff. Later on, the vocal style changes completely, becoming a bit more troll-like but even then sounding more like an angry shout than the usual agony. The riffing on this first track is quite majestic and reminds me of slower INQUISITION without as much distortion and with a clearer, ringing quality.
"Melted Tesseract" and "Oath of Weakness" continue with the more trollish vocal style and more killer riffs and tempo changes. The latter track in particular is absolutely outstanding and has a terrific shift in sound about 2/3 of the way through. By now, HERZOG has got my full attention.
"The Craftsman" is an elegant long instrumental that has some more traditional trebly and quavering black metal touches that builds to a huge climax. "All Rites" and "Oath of I" are faster and somewhat more traditional black metal tunes..."Oath of I" has a kind of folk metal feel the rest of the songs are missing. These tunes are good, but the better material is in the first half of the album, which ends with a melodic, piano-injected instrumental.
A very strong debut from HERZOG...a fresh wintry blast to blow away stale air.