Blood on Ice [Import]

Bathory | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 4, 1996)
• Original Release Date: June 28, 1996
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Black Mark Germany
• ASIN: B000001H3C
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #247,871 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Epic BM of the Northland, April 21, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood on Ice (Audio CD)

Though recently released, Quorthon claims this material hails from the era of "Blood, Fire Death" and his masterpiece "Hammerheart". The music is more Folk/Black with obvious old school Punk influences. As usual, the recording quality is not the best, but it does boast some nice samples and catchy rythmns. The vocals are all clean, with a few variations, and on "The One-eyed Old Man" a neat sort of narration is given by Mr. Tim Earl in verse. The whole CD, if you are not familiar with the Epic music, tells a story, in this case a story of a boy whose village is razed in the intro and first song. Each song thereafter tells a part of his quest for vengence all across the Northland and even the realms of the Gods. A good album, but not as good as Quorthon's earlier "Hammerheart". The book with the CD is VERY nice and lyrics are given in both English and German. END

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes Me Want To Raid A Village......And My Wife!!, January 24, 2008

By 

Stanley Runk "Runkdapunk" (Camp North Pines) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blood on Ice (Audio CD)

Blood On Ice is a viking themed album that Quorthon began in 89 and shelved until fan interest built up and he finally went back, tweaked it, and released it. It's a great thing he did coz few albums conjure images of the snowy Nordic wasteland like this. You almost feel cold listening to it! Usually heavy metal bands that use wintery fantasy/barbarian imagery tend to fall into either the Black metal or Power metal categories. Bathory is neither, yet will most likely appeal to fans of both. For those unfamiliar with Bathory's "viking" era, it tends to be of a heavy mid-paced sound. Even the "fast" songs here are still more or less mid-paced. Now don't go mistaking mid-paced for boring, coz this album is anything but. This isn't extremely complex and technical music, so if you've been spoiled by countless Prog/Power metal bands, you might be thrown for a loop. It's very epic with alot of "aaaaaaaaaaaaah", "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh" type choir background vocals(I hope you can see where I'm coming from with that rather generic description). Lots of sound effects of galloping horses, running water, birds, even the sound of boots crunching through snow. The production is very raw and rough sounding as it is on every Bathory album(it's pretty much his trademark sound). Normally this could be a major complaint of an album, but in Bathory's case, it works the exact opposite and enhances the album immensely. I guess my only complaint about the raw production is that Quorthon's vocals tend to get a bit muffled and buried in the mix. Though he's using clean vocals, you need the lyric booklet to understand all he's saying. Speaking of the lyrics, Blood On Ice is a concept album. It's kind of a cliched story of a man seeking revenge for the slaughter of his village, but Quorthon adds some cool touches. One example is when the hero prepares for his battle with a creature that can't be looked upon, he has to remove his eyes and throw them in a magic lake that will grant him some kind of mystical second sight. Normally these kinds of lyrics and themes come off as extremely corny in the hands of many Power and Black metal bands, but Quorthon has a way with words. Not to mention that the songs are so damn catchy and memorable. In the cd booklet, Quorthon writes about the conditions under which this album was recorded and they're anything but epic and majestic. It's amazing he got this sound under such conditions coz you'd swear he recorded this album on top of some mountain during a blizzard. It makes for great listening, especially for this time of year(this time of year being January. It's about 8 billion below zero here as of this writing....perfect!). Very, very, very highly recommended for those who love metal, fantasy/barbarian/viking stuff, or if you're like me, a lunatic Beastmaster fan. If you like this, Bathory's Hammerheart, Nordland, Nordland II and Twilight of the Gods are also in the same vein and also excellent. It's a sad thing that Quorthon died so young, but at least he left us with some memorable and original music.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For Serious Bathory Fans Only, June 25, 2010

By 

Oliverio Casas "Heavy Metal Fan from Northern... (Montevideo, Uruguay) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on Ice (Audio CD)

Blood on Ice was originally recorded in 1989, but was shelved at the time since Quorthon feared a possible fan backlash because of the drastic departure from the band's previous sound presented on this album. Due to fan interest, Quorthon eventually decided to re master, re edit and finally release the album in 1996. Both tematically and musically, Blood on Ice bridges the band's early, thrashy, under produced black metal albums and its subsequent viking trilogy, so for a Bathory fan this CD will undoubtedly be a holy grail of sorts.
On the other hand, as influential as Bathory's work may be on virtually every black metal band, to my ears this album is simply unlistenable because of its extremely low-fi production values.
A big part of Bathory's charm was the way Quorthon's strong songwriting and musical ambition managed to overcome his albums' awful sound, but in this case, it is just too much to handle and it can be really distracting and frustrating.
Aside from the dirty, analog four track demo machine sound, sometimes atmosphere killing extraneous noises are clearly audible, probably the product of bad sound insulation while recording. Particularly bad in this respect is Man of Iron: the song is a heartfelt and moody, acoustic guitar ballad featuring one of Quorthon's earliest clean singing performances, yet you can clearly hear car engines starting and revving in the background at the beginning!
Serious Bathory fans will surely enjoy this album since it offers unique insight on the development of the band's highly influential viking era albums, but be forewarned that the sound on this CD can be really rough sometimes, even by raw black metal standards.