‘Wounds of Hatred and Slavery’ is the second full-length from French traditionalists Eternal Majesty, released by interesting fellas Appease Me, via Candlelight. It offers up choice cuts of familiarly icy and orthodox Black Metal, given charm and character by a talent for understated but epic atmosphere, and a predilection for bassy groove.
The dark melodies and biting riffs of ‘Night Evilness’ mark the point at which this album gets into gear, with switches and tempo changes arriving right on cue, but in general the first half of the album is a bit patchy. The drumming and rhythm guitar have a stilted feel at times, and the leads feel frankly haphazard on ‘Under Hate Red Star You Born’, despite its primal reverb-soaked sound. Navint has a strong, classic-sounding throat, although why he couldn’t sing in French and avoid such ridiculously ungrammatical track titles is beyond me. Fortunately, the song-writing confidence picks up after cyber interlude ‘Hatred’, with ‘The Last March of the Crucified’, ‘Corrupted Shadow’ and ‘Through the Mist’, previously unheard tracks, offering a gorgeously sinister blend of the epic and the straightforwardly nasty, fraught with dark feeling. It’s impossible not to walk away from this album feeling rather pleased and invigorated by the old-school, driving spirit that finds a more sharply-structured expression on the latter 4 songs.
The production is often intentionally murky, occasionally to the detriment of the carefully-constructed melodies, but generally the approach works, with the guitars sounding as gloriously harsh as those of the Black Metal forefathers Eternal Majesty clearly hold in such high regard. Sagoth’s solid, rumbling bass lines hold everything together and give the slightest hint of a more modern, rolling approach to the genre. In all, this is traditional but not dated; Eternal Majesty have been around since 1995 but they do move with the times. They’ve kept their melody grim by reining it in with sheer malevolent viciousness. It’s not perfect, but it’s worthy of multiple spins, and marks a sure-footed step towards the future.
