Of all the CDs I've picked up this year, "Of Battle And Ancient Warcraft" wins the "so fucking boring that I had to hit the pause button 3 times and take a break from it so as not to fall asleep from it's monotony" award. Words cannot describe just how completely turgid this CD is, and I feel the fool for actually listening to it all the way through when it pretty much reached it's zenith 45 seconds into the first song. To be fair to the band, I'll give them credit for being competant musicians, and I suppose I should also admit that they play a genre of music in which I have very little interest in (that being your cookie cutter swedish black/death hybrid), but even for a band of that style, Battlelust are sub-par. The basic problem with the CD is it's monotony - there's absolutly nothing "stand out" about it, and nothing seperates one song from another - they all follow the same formulaic approach (the exception to this would be the two acoustic interludes on the CD...they weren't very interesting, but at least they were uninteresting in a different way from the rest of it). The production on this was also very weak - I'm not one to usually bicker about production, but the mix on this CD was so flat/lifeless sounding that it robbed it of any potential power it might have had. The guitars just kept cranking the same thin chainsaw sound all the way through, the bass was beyond non-descript, vocals were uninspired, and the drums basically ran through at one neck break pace with very little variation, and the whole performance on this CD was lackluster...it was as if the band themselves were as bored out of their skulls playing it as the listener is having to endure it. I don't really relish carving on a new band (which I assume Battlelust is as I've never heard of them before), but these guys really should have spent more time develloping their own identity before releasing an album, as the result is a snorefest of a CD which has nothing to offer that you haven't already heard done a million times before (and with more conviction). Not reccomended unless you have some sort of fetish for bland Marduk/Allegiance/Dark Funeral copies...

© 1999 chorazaim