Gorgoroth
Under The Sign Of Hell

Third chapter for Gorgoroth dated 1997 and a closing gem of a trilogy that has made history and the school of old style black metal.

This black pearl is the classic bold and personality-rich composition that winks at no one but goes straight on its rugged path made of icy metallic clangor. This album delves even deeper into the lightless abyss of the band's soul, evoking all the rottenness the Norwegians had made us listen to before, but with more combative and piercing tones than in the past.

This record, which has nothing to do stylistically with ambient, has the remarkable ability to create icy atmospheres that make us find ourselves immersed in bloody battles of bygone times, or on ice slabs, in complete solitude and shrouded in mist. But the underlying feeling is that beneath you boil fetid liquids at high temperatures. It is striking how, from the care of a sound never repeated at these levels, emerges a heart-wrenching idea of the concept of man in which the band seems to revel with great enjoyment, born from the conviction in their own ideas.

From a stylistic viewpoint, I think it is worth repeating that 'UTSOH' is a great album for the fact that here the sound is still raw and basic, yet surely well-calibrated and designed to hit the listener's eardrums with surgical precision. The drumming throughout the album is swift, frantic, and precise, but never to the limits of unintelligibility. The guitars offer a detached yet muscular riffing, sometimes warlike sometimes funereal, building true fortification walls around Pest’s voice, whose screaming this time is even more dug from the chest and arguably sounds like the best instrument used by the band on this album. It might seem a bit monotonous, too similar from track to track, but to me, it represents a coherent choice with the basic concept upon which the album was built. In any case, tracks like Blood Stains The Circle and Profetens Apenbaring present a more human voice, even epic in the latter case.

Among the songs, I wouldn't give a note of merit to any particular one because they all deserve it. Starting right with the opening one, Revelations Of Doom, a battle horse still today in the band's live shows. Certainly, the piece introduces perfectly into the album’s atmospheres and, with a frantic drumming that then slows down only to resume hammering followed by a skillful and icy embroidery of guitars and bass, presents us with the essence of the work: battle (as in The Rite Of Infernal Invocation which features a beautiful and sharp solo by Infernus) and a funereal sense of loss in the cold (listen to Funeral Procession to believe it).

I believe discussing each individual song is superfluous. What you need to do is just listen to 'Under the Sign Of Hell' and revere it as a unique album (in my opinion) in its genre, an absolutely original work that will divide... with good reason. This isn’t music for everyone!