Rating: 8.0

Country: Norway

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: Drakkar

Track list:
1. Pissdrained Castles of Gold
2. The Blasphemic Art
3. Divided by Three
4. Detector of Evil
5. Not Even Human Fucking Beings
6. The Ancient Light
7. The Abyss Desecrator
8. Trifolium Repens

Total playing time 34:59

Band Website: Slavia

Slavia - Strength and Vision

Jonas Aus Slavia (with participation of session musicians at concerts) - everything
Vicotnik - some guest vocals

With 10 demos and EPs under their belt, Slavia have apparently been around for at least a decade now. The Norwegian scene has been shambling haplessly through a swamp of gimmicks and ironic posturing for a while now, so it figures the first Norwegian black metal album to actually surprise me in recent memory isn't from some Southern Lord-signed norsecore newcomer. Strength and Vision is fundamentally a crust-ridden blackened thrash album, although more along the lines of Carpathian Forest than the self-consciously retro hijinks of post-Sardonic Wrath Darkthrone. Also notable is that despite my use of the word "thrash," much of the music is mid-paced (although it's seldom obvious; the drums are for the most part buried under the maelstrom of guitars and howling vocals). While the album stands out from much of underground black metal of this nature thanks to its thick guitar tone and gargantuan, agile bass licks, it's often reminiscent of Dodsferd and Horna in that feverish melodicism is not sacrificed for its riff-heavy stride. Militantly palm-muted segments clash with samples of gunfire and marching songs throughout Strength and Vision to establish a rather propagandizing atmosphere that, juxtaposed with clips of what I suppose is Slavic folk music, may offend anyone opposed to flagrant nationalism in their metal. While the sampling demonstrates discerning taste (note the opening excerpt from Antonín Dvorák's excellent New World Symphony, the most exhilarating movement of the piece at that -- but make a note to listen to it in its entirety some time, you stodgy urchins), it does grow a bit tiresome by the time Slavia collapses into the cliché of using a Chopin piece. You know, the Funeral March, the one we're all sick of because we've heard it a million times, but can't quite recall where or when.

Black metal as a whole is an egregiously polarizing genre, but that doesn't inhibit Slavia from the occasional resourceful flash of hookiness. For example, "The Blasphemic[sic] Art" begins as a simple-minded blackened thrash number, but half way through, the focus shifts to anthematic interaction between trem picking and an array of serpentine leads -- like a shamelessly top-heavy fusion of Urgehal at their most crusty and Taake at their most epic, but with a singular purpose to inflict a battering expression of stoicism upon anyone fortunate enough to hear it. Listening to songs like this reminds me of why I like black metal in the first place; at its best, no matter how flecked it is with morbid realism or childish fantasy, there is a fanatical pride behind it all that embodies the acceptance of power as the morality of higher humans. It's a message to the indifferent vacuum that as a fundamentally tribal race, we still bleed and suffer horridly, but can summon the uncompromising volition to turn our simian palms to the future and carve the world in our own imperfect image -- even if that image turns out to be a depleted mockery of humanity's aloofness in an absurd, meaningless universe. Is there really enough time in life to listen to Dark Funeral with songs this ambitious around? Hell no. Otherwise you could get hit by a bus or something tomorrow, and then you'd be remembered as "that asscrab who liked Dark Funeral, then got hit by a bus." Is that what you want? Didn't think so.

Strength and Vision peaks early on, with the midsection of its playing time occupied by sloppily grooving, punk-infused blackened thrash that's undeniably solid, but only manages to gain the momentum of the aforementioned first (real) track near the album's end with the equally valid songs "The Abyss Desecrator" and "Trifoliums Repens." As if to compensate, the album's untitled coda is a genuinely moving acoustic piece with a wealth of powerfully intimate tone colors. I'm not sure if it's sampled or if it's their own, but if Slavia wrote it, the band clearly has a degree of compositional aptitude that their thrashy black metal hackn'rasp doesn't always reflect. It almost frustrates me how good this piece is in contrast to some of Slavia's metal.

If black metal as a whole has savored one lyrical triumph, it's that of bringing Nietzschean concepts to an intellectually foreign audience raised on hard rock, and Slavia is no exception. When we think philosophy, lofty pretense tends to come to mind. That disposition is a pretense itself, and is above all fatal to free thought; what should instead spring to mind is the romantic energy of music like this. Perhaps more of a display of strength than vision, Strength and Vision delivers fine crusty black metal with a sense of raving fascism that will ultimately be what either attracts or repels you.

May 15th, 2008