Album Review: Serpent Lord – The Once Forgotten Ways of Old
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Different albums evoke different things – obvious enough, but the different shades available even within the same genre are endlessly fascinating for me. There’s plenty of black metal that feels appropriately icy, but there’s also stuff that feels on the warmer side; some of the Mediterranean releases like Varathron or Rotting Christ feel almost sun-baked by comparison. Serpent Lord on the other hand remind me of a downpour; warm sheets of rain drowning the tropics. Humid. Surging. A bit like being trapped in a dishwasher. Still, as a pasty Brit marooned midway through an honestly obnoxious heatwave, I’ll take whatever relief I can get. So, with that in mind – how drenched in venom are Serpent Lord leaving me here?
There’s a sizable influence from classic heavy metal here that I took a shine to almost immediately. It’s the triumphant, steadfast melodies fished from the more epic tomes of ManOwaR’s back catalogue – think “Battle Hymn” or “Power of thy Sword”. Spot-weld those bombastic affectations to hurtling torrents of black metal and it makes for an irresistible combination. “Forever on the Grounds of Battle” is a textbook example – blood-pumping earworm guitar lines that march out at upbeat if still moderate tempo only to charge in halberds a-swinging with a hellacious war-cry of blasting blackened fury. The band has obviously epic ambitions, with three of these songs running north of eight minutes, though Serpent Lord is capable of penning snappier, more immediate fare too – “Constrictor” presents with a terminal case of Hellhammer riffs and rolling percussion that never seems to tire of nailing thieves to crosses. It dips out for a momentarily for coffee and cigarettes with a delicate plucked refrain, only to loose fetters about a winding Necrophobic-esque wyvern of a melody that crashes back into that same introductory riff with the force of a carpet bombing. It’s a touch derivative to be fair – yet no less impactful for it.
So it’s a good – often very good – album. But it does go on a bit at times. “Aries Ram” flings riffs, blasts and melodies around like live hand grenades, but it also slows down dramatically in the midsection. Not a sin of itself, but lord if it doesn’t get repetitive sometimes, and for all that there’s an argument for a hypnotic vibe to be made, I feel there’s at least as compelling a case that the songs are drawn out a bit further than their ideas can sustain from time to time. Take the title track – it’s 8.36 in length, and while there’s a lot to like about it (the ominous coffin-lid creak of an Atilla Csihar-ish vocal performance, the stark melodicism, the solemn doom metal atmosphere that seeps like tar from it’s ragged pores, etc) it also spends it’s first 3 and half minutes at this sombre trudge that I’m not wholly convinced it’s simple, consistent riffs were able to fully justify. I praised “Forever on the Grounds of Battle” a bit back with good reason, but even so, as one of the longer tracks it too could do with a few Ozempic shots to tighten it’s waistline a little. None of this gets to the point of being annoying but at the same time a bit of sensible editing wouldn’t go amiss for a fair few of these tracks.
So there’s room for improvement. Unless the name is “None so Vile” or “Stained Class”, there normally is. But if you like a heaping dose of epic heavy metal swirled into your typical black metal cocktail, then nestle awhile in Serpent Lord’s iridescent coils; methinks you’ll like what you find there.
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