Customer Reviews

Cainian Chronicle

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

 

 

Ancient has lost their original lead singer, Grimm, and attained Lord Kaiaphas. Aphazel's guitar and bass is not too complex, but they give a real neat and primal mood. Kaiaphas' vocals are higher and almost 'eviler' than Grimm's, with a clearness that is quite amazing. Though the guitar sounds pretty much the same through the whole album, it is easy to listen to. The second, third and fourth songs are the tale of Cain and his exile from Nod, with six different voices for the characters of Cain, Lilith, Adam, Michael, the crone and the narrater. A good Black Metal album with a few neat synth and keyboard tracks. More old school, and great cover art. END

ancient sounds like a tidal wave of screaming and guitars. the song the curse is a beautiful example of what i am talking about. the curse has an eye of the hurricane effect and then the full fury of the song comes slamming up against your eardrums. beautiful.

I feel Ancient is a highly underrated band, and this work illustrates my point perfectly. A half concept, half song record is unlike others in many ways. My favorite part of it is the way "The Cainian Cronicle" blends the cold atmosphere of Black Metals' roots ala Darkthrone and Gorgoroth with the magesty of the Symphonic Side of the coin, more along the lines of Cradle of Filth, Old Man's Child and Limbonic Art, another overlooked band. Another win is the moodiness of the record. The riffs are mostly grim, although it is notable that some of these riffs struck me as almost happy, or even spiritual, not a lite feat by any means in Black Metal, or in Metal as a whole, in fact, Emperor and Cradle, and Satyricon are the only that come to mind, quite possibly the very reason their great.

Overall, and exellent work by an underground band who deserves recognition and has for years.

this is a cool album just like the rest of ancients albums, i recomend this album, and i got it real fast through the mail for a price next to nother so well i can't really complain that the cd was missing its back artwork arrgghh! but the vendor said it was'nt perfect before i bought it maybe i can download it somewhere?

I initially reviewed this album about six years ago (though amazon still says 2003 - its 2010 now) when black metal was something I was fairly ignorant of. I was in high-school. That's before I realized all Death Cult Armageddon serves as (along with recent albums from Satyricon, Carpathian Forest, and Marduk) is something to feed a "poppy" black metal crowd of kids who think they listen to the most extreme music out there. Now I've graduated college. Ancient released their sophomore effort, The Cainian Chronicle, in 1996 and is a much better representation of the Norwegian black metal scene and, ultimately, black metal in its entirety.

In this album, you hear a sort of cross between melodic black metal (Dissection, Sacramentum, Lord Belial) and true black metal (just about any black metal that came out of Norway in the `90's). Sound production is above average, but the bass is still almost undetectable as is a must in true black metal (Moonblood, anyone?). This album came out the same year as Stormblast, Heaven Shall Burn, Malice (Our Third Spell), and Nemesis Divina, to put it in perspective. Meanwhile, Polish Graveland had begun the shift towards Viking-era Bathory, Fullmoon had released their almighty demo. Also, Greek black metallers Rotting Christ, Septic Flesh, Varathron, and Necromantia had their own scene already well underway. Speaking of Bathory, 1996 was the year Quorthon finally released Blood on Ice, technically the first Viking metal album ever written. For symphonic metal, Manes was in-between their demo eras and the debut album, Limbonic Art shocked the world with the Moon in the Scorpio debut, and Germany's Obsidian Gate had yet to even form.

This is an album I had tried to sell on ebay years ago, but it never sold, so I held onto it. Then, in my last semester of regular classes, I wrote a research paper on Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" and in it I made references to his poem, "The Wanderings of Cain." Needless to say, this album that was collecting dust at home came to mind, especially the first three tracks. I figure more of the world would have this album collecting dust as I did if it weren't for these tracks, so my review will focus on them as they are really the only thing the album has going for it.

So in the beginning, Cain slays Abel. Tremolo riffs, yet not always blastbeats, dominate the sound while we listen to Cain's parts sung by black metal growls and Adam's parts sung in clean, almost choir-like vocals. Keyboards are used to provide an atmosphere complementing the tremolo riffing when all other instruments go silent. (While I mention the keyboards... they're used, but you could never mistake an Ancient song for Thy Serpent or Moonsorrow.) Is the music fantastically original? Eh, it isn't the best I've ever heard, but it IS an amazing fit for the lyrical content, especially when the drum pattern becomes irregular (such as at the end of Part I during the spoken dialogue).

Then we get to Part II which opens like a slower Marduk or Dissection number. Enter Lilith as Kimberly Goss (Sinergy). Tremolo riffs enter the song well before blastbeats make a thundering entrance at about the 2:30 mark. Cain has five consecutive verses during the next big chunk of the song which is undoubtedly a candidate for my favorite part of the entire album. To me as an English major who's read works by Coleridge and other famous works like Milton's Paradise Lost, I'm always fascinated to hear how modern/metal bands add their music to accompany the telling of such a tale. Lord Kaiaphas's vocals here are as black as one could ever ask for. His harshness emits true hatred and evil - something that some of the bands I mentioned above sound like they've forgotten as they try to appeal to people who were never meant to know what black metal even is. Some of the growls get almost as high as Ihsahn of Emperor.

Late in Part III, the listener is treated to a very rare true black metal solo (that is, blastbeats and tremolo riffs are roaring, yet there's a guitar solo going on at the same time). Once we get to Part IV, there's some great rhyming embedded in the verses.

As if this wasn't enough reference to literature, track 5's lyrics are taken from Dante's Inferno (something I wasn't fortunate enough to read in any of my English classes).

This album doesn't have a good review on the metal archives - one guy gives it a 52% rating and says there's nothing memorable about the album. I recommend anyone interested in Ancient check out their page on that website as it is an extremely dependable wealth of objective information backed up by reviews on a much more professional level than what you see here on amazon. Ancient is a band you've gotta do that with as they have a unique place in black metal being instrumentally evil but lyrically not-at-all blasphemous. The three title tracks simply tell the story. Cain tells his story in his character without outside perspectives butting themselves in.

Then there's the rest of the album. There is not much to highlight here. The longest song, Song Of Kaiaphas, has a segment towards the end that drones on for what feels like 10 minutes that I imagine would come alive on stage very well, but is otherwise tedious and repeated more than enough times. Riffs seem to get recycled and reused to fill songs. There's certainly nothing memorable the way that, for example, the tremolo riff solo in Dissection's "Thorns of Crimson Death" is. Here's what I recommend: Listen to any full song in tracks 7-11 (except 8) and if you like it, buy the album. If not, just download the title tracks. But one can't be fully knowledgeable of the Norwegian black metal scene without at least a taste of Ancient. (Same goes for bands like Borknagar and the 21st century Tsjuder.)

I'd recommend this album well before almost any black metal that has come out in the 21st century (though there are plenty of bands keeping the black metal torch burning), but there are numerous other classic albums, EPs, and demos that are even more worth getting your hands on.

i was reading the Bible one day after listening to the second song and it lined up perfectly with the chapter where cain kills his brother abel. i like the screaming and the guitar playing on this album. the curse also has an eye of the storm effect, where aphazel plays a shimmering classical guitar bit, and then the second side of the storm hits your ears again like a category 5 hurricane.