|
(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Sweden's Bathory,
the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Quorthon (Thomas Forsberg),
inaugurated Scandinavian black metal.
Inspired by Venom, he unleashed the deliberately raw and aggressive
thrash attack of Bathory (1984) and The Return (1985), but
the third album, Under the Sign: The Sign of the Black Mark (1986),
already veered towards slower tempos and a crisper, evocative sound, closing
the "satanic" trilogy while de-facto opening a new phase with the
brutal albeit majestic eight-minute Enter the Eternal Fire.
After the transitional Blood Fire Death (1988),
Bathory coined a truly "Nordic" style with the epic pagan mythological martial
tour de force of the concept Hammerheart (1990), structured as a sequence
of lengthy solemn oppressive suites. They got
even longer and more tragic (but now bordering on self-parody) on Twilight of the Gods (1991).
|
