Maybe it’s just the time it takes for bands, labels and PRs to find suitable outlets, but it seems that albums outside of the mainstream have a fairly slow diffusion. And so it is that Ancient Spell’s ‘Forever in Hell’, which is a long, long, way from mainstream and released in September only reached me only recently.
No-one could possibly say this album was overproduced. In fact, it would be a stretch to say it was produced at all. It makes Bathory’s 1983 debut sound positively polished, in fact. But the murkiness, the rawness of it all is integral to the feel of the appropriately-titled ‘Forever in Hell’. It’s the soundtrack to an eternity in purgatory.
The seven tracks have a total running time of 37 minutes. The guitars fizz and crackle, the vocals snarl and growl, and amidst the muddy sludge there’s some gritty, riff-heavy tuneage.
Tracks like ‘Fall of Humanity’, ‘Eternal Embers’ and ‘Black Flame Ritual’ deliver everything you’d expect, with Sabbathesque riffs providing the backing to lyrics dredged from the death of the underworld. It’s all ploughed through deep furrows of no-fi noise, and while it would be ideal to visualise it having been recorded in some subterranean cavern while the band’s members were tormented by the most malicious demons Satan could muster, the chances are it was recorded to four-track in the basement of one of their mom’s houses.
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But why let that spoil the effect? ‘Forever in Hell’ is dark, dank and messy and delivers everything it promises.
Ancient Spell Online
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