Customer Reviews

Blood on Ice

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

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.

if you are a fan of Bathorys Hammerheart,you need this NOW.apparently Quorthon shelved this at the time,not being satisfied with the results.Wow,so fortunate for us that he finally saw fit to release!Truly grand,epic tunes fill this release in my opinion more-or-less where Hammerheart had left off.Even if you are totally unfamiliar with Hammerheart and/or Bathory I think this would be a good introduction to his "Viking" phase as its great music!

This album is the epitome of Viking Metal, and one of the most majestic pieces of music in creation. Recorded by Quarthon at the height of epic metal journey, it contains 10 tracks of rousing and powerful Viking metal hymns that make my heart pump faster, even 5 years after my first listen. The story is pieced together masterfully from various bits of Norse mythology and folklore, with added twists by the mastermind of Bathory. From slow acoustic songs like "Man of Iron" and "The Ravens" to the thundering heavy metal, and possibly best song of all time, "Gods of Thunder, of Wind and of Rain" this is an album every true metal fan should own.

Continuing in the vein of Twilight of the Gods, Bathory releases another album of epic Viking metal that far surpasses anything he has previously done, and can safely be labeled as the best example of Viking metal yet to be released. The songs are grand, sweeping, utilizing a full choir to enhance the music. Hardcore fans of Bathory's more straightforward Black Metal approach may disapprove, but in truth the Viking metal approach-with it's more complex arrangements and clean vocals-is more powerful than the most fast paced metal record out there-and is easier to listen to.

Bathory made their name via some of the blackest bile ever recorded, beyond metal to something more infernal. They certainly pushed boundaries and were also quite obviously not quite right in the head bless 'em. Main man Quorthon chose his name because it was hard to pronounce and people mucking it up would stop him from getting a big head - well at least that was one of his explanatory stories. Like I said, not quite right upstairs....

Well Quorthon seems to have been pretty much the entire band at this point and his style and vision are stamped all over this release. It should be noted that in Quorthons liner notes that he states the lengthy gestation period of this material - from being written in '88 and '89 to being finally mixed in '96.

But enough of the history lesson then - what's on the disc! Well nothing as heavy as some of Bathorys prior releases. And this is a concept album - the synopsis of the story is;

# Cliched small boy sees village wiped out. A la Conan the Barbarian
# Cliched boy lives in forest - remembering that closeness to nature etc was a regular motif of Scandinavian extreme metal. Not a la Spinal Tap and Stonehenge relics.
# Cliched boy meets old mystic dude. Kinda like Karate Kid or maybe Quorthons vision of some Scandinavian Viking Obi Wan Kenobi.
# Enter inevitable magic sword along with babble about prophecies, mighty steeds and a magic lake and keeping mean spirited gods happy.
# After suitable adventures the bad guy is slain yea verily and forsooth.

Kinda looks like the plot of every other self important 'epic' concept album huh? Well that's cos it is. Though at least Bathory did it in one album unlike Rhapsody who went on and on with. Dodgy concept aside this isn't a bad album. From the awesome cover art that directly relates to the story to Quorthons informative liner notes this was a well thought out project, exuding confidence and a purity of mission.

The musical problems are the quite average production qualities. Bathory and their ilk were well known for this but seriously, your supposed to grow up at some stage. Much of the riffing is dull though it cuts nicely on some tracks, such as One Eyed Old Man and The Lake. A plethora of bells and whistles and other studio tricks are thrown in when appropriate but the vocals are so darn unexpressive. And they sound like they were sung in one studio while the actual recording equipment was in the studio down the hall.

This was a good idea and could really have broadened the bands appeal but it just doesn't live up to the packaging.

Quorthon has dominated Scndinavian black metal for more than a decade, even though he has publicly admitted that his music is most of the time low quality. After the "Twilight of the Gods" I did not expect to see another epic album from Bathory, but the man behind them surprised me with the release of this material, which is well out of the black metal norms he has gotten us used to. Epic metal ladies and gentlemen (maybe only gentlemen.) The recording is awful (I thought I heard an aircraft pass by during a song) but the music is something else. Think of this album as something that a friend of yours recorded at the basement of his house. The rest is left to the melodies from the northern provinces...