When I was a kid and started to be interested in Extreme Metal and to get along with people in that environment, I was soon introduced to a tradition of metalheads here in my city. We’d usually get together at a friend’s house and take some stuff from a band that had caught our attention and play it around. But the best thing about these meetings were the conversations and the many other bands that were mentioned, I got to know many names that way and I soon realized that the more bands someone knew and mentioned in the conversations, the more respected that person was. Of course, in my adolescent need for approval from others, I always made an effort to bring as many names as possible to the conversation circles and at that time, perhaps a little because of this distorted mentality, I took a special liking to compilations and split albums. “Sound Riot Sampler”, “Sverd Storm Compilation”, “Castle of Solitude” and the legendary and iconic “The Night and the Fog” and “Warfare Noise” are some of my favorites from that time in my life that I still have and cherish. the greatest admiration and respect. Over the years and the facilities arising from technological innovations, this release format unfortunately became less and less used by labels. And it was with a mixture of nostalgia, immense satisfaction and pleasure that I played for the first time on my stereo “Sorceries of Blood and Iron” which is being released by the labels Hammer of Damnation and Signal Rex recs. Featuring four of the bands from Hammer of Damnation’s roster this release can best be described as a 4 way split that follows in the tradition of the historic “Warfare Noise” but with a more extreme approach in the vein of the classic “The Night and the Fog”. The bands chosen in this first volume (And I sincerely hope that others will succeed) are INEXISTENCIA, WEREWOLF BLOODORDER, PROMETHEAN GATE and WINDSPIRIT, four names with very individual and distinct sounds, but that managed to maintain a rare cohesion among themselves. All bands present two unreleased tracks with the exception of WINDSPIRIT which shows us only one composition. The first band from “Sorceries of Blood and Iron” is INEXISTENCIA with the song “The Cult of the Death Skull”, a track that is a real kick in the face, fast, raw and direct. It is noteworthy the way in which the band manages to polish the songs in a rustic block, eliminating everything that is useless and unnecessary and leaving only the essential, that is a succession of memorable, violent riffs, with the exact dose of melody, a raw and cold drum work and agonizing vocals that result in compositions full of feeling and pure dark energy, something that is proven in the following track “White Wolve’s Black Lair” which follows the same formula. Highlight for the production full of sonic spikes that makes the band sound like every Black Metal band should necessarily sound, that is, hateful. And since we mentioned that sweet feeling, the next band is WEREWOLF BLOODORDER with the song “Spell of Hatred”, a mid-tempo track that exudes fury in its riffs and that has surgical forays of keyboards something that gives a very interesting atmospheric taste , at the same time Warlord’s vocals literally spit his curses in our ears. The next track is “Blood and War’, a cover version of the horde EVIL that was first heard on the iconic demo “…Evil Storming Onwards to the Battlefields” from 1997 and which here received a version that maintains the strength of the original and updated it , paying due homage to the past while keeping an eye on the future. In the sequence we have PROMETHEAN GATE with the track “Alquimia da Alma” and it is impossible not to highlight the unique vocal work of Promethean Priest that manages to convey a range of feelings in a wide spectrum, the track ends perfectly with an arrangement that uses only voice and a marking drum with a more recited vocal, the following track “Os Caminhos da Morte” has a guitar work that in some passages reminded me of Gorgoroth at the time of the album “Incipt Satan”, however the composition transits through several very distinct soundscapes, with a very reflective and intimate second part. The last band is WINDSPIRIT that presents us with only one track, “Inner Wilderness”, being however a ten minutes song and that until the present moment is for me the best composition of 2023 with its guitars full of beautiful harmonies, an epic atmosphere that evokes with it a heroic feeling and a strange, weird melancholy, The band’s first full length will be released very soon, we at Black Metal Terror magazine already had first hand access to this album and we already anticipate that it will be one of the best releases of the style this year and we will bring our impressions in more detail in a review in the coming days. Finally “Sorceries of Blood and Iron” is being released analogue only and will be limited to 50 copies on tape and 200 copies on vinyl with a totally old school layout and as I mentioned earlier, I sincerely hope that “Sorceries of Blood and Iron” becomes a series of releases as good as this one. Totally mandatory and hurry before it sells out.
“Sorceries of Blood and Iron” can be purchased HERE.
