{"id":70963,"date":"2017-10-05T13:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T18:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toiletovhell.com\/?p=70963"},"modified":"2017-10-05T14:51:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T19:51:21","slug":"review-malokarpatan-nordkarpatenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/review-malokarpatan-nordkarpatenland\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Malokarpatan – Nordkarpatenland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I often lament that so little of black metal is dedicated to the ancient, primal sounds of the genre, when Master\u2019s Hammer<\/strong> was the biggest influence on a lot of the nascent scene and before the birth of any sort of \u201cdefined\u201d black metal sound.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s plenty of amazing black metal being made every year still, but not much of it really embraces the ancient sounds that I love the most; fortunately, the veterans at Malokarpatan<\/strong> agree that the call of the oldest of schools is the most compelling, and much as they have for years (both inside and outside of this particular band, which is a bit younger than some of their other projects) they\u2019ve dedicated themselves here to bewitching the world with an adventurous, ambitious, and most of all amazing album that blends classic sounds in a new, fascinating way.<\/p>\n

Malokarpatan refer to their own music as old school rural Slovak black metal, and merge their already rustic riffing with Slovakian folk elements; the album even opens with the sound of a Jew\u2019s Harp being played alongside the happy noises of what\u2019s presumably a Slovak cow, before a spoken word intro leads into the first (and absolutely ripping) complete song.<\/p>\n

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Though Malokarpatan\u2019s first album, Strid\u017eie dni, <\/em>was absolutely fantastic and is a recent favorite of mine in the genre, Nordkarpatenland <\/em>absolutely dwarves it in just about every way possible. The songs are more ambitious, better written, better produced, and though it\u2019s strange to hold up a lack of convention as a beneficial trait, less tied to black metal; Malokarpatan has stepped outside of the boundaries of their chosen genre to deliver something that\u2019s impossible to really narrow down or box up, because these mad Slovaks, much like their musical ancestors, care more about making rocking and drunken evil metal than they care about sounding like any particular band.<\/p>\n

Riffs range from the galloping, fast horror of the faster Mortuary Drape<\/strong> songs to plodding, groovy classic heavy metal ones, and sharp Mercyful Fate <\/strong>influenced leads pop up over horrifying rhythms similar to those of pounding early Bathory<\/strong> songs. Black Sabbath <\/strong>type trilling doom rhythms crawl in a decidedly more evil context before speeding back up. Harmonies come in to extend a cool riff, synths carry spooky atmospheric sections, and refreshingly, tremolo picking takes a backseat to heavy riffs and leads that don\u2019t at all rely on it.<\/p>\n