Abigor is quite a well known black metal band, the first one most people remember from Austria, besides Summoning. Yet, often they are called under-rated and I could not disagree, since they are one of my all-time favorites.

”Verwüstung” is their first full-length album. Most, if not all, of the songs in here appeared on their demos, so ”Orkblut” was their first piece of new material since they got a record deal and the old vocalist Rune/Tharen was replaced with Silenius of Summoning.

There is something definitive and far-reaching about this album. It is as an overview of what happened in black metal before the release of this album, from the violence of MayheM to the emotion of Burzum and the grandeur of Emperor. This is not yet as technical as later Abigor material and has lots of the spirit that everyone serious about black metal philosophy knows and associates with the releases of the first half of this decade.

There is quite a lot of epic melody appearing in these compositions, alongside blasting, screaming and all-around darkness. The painful emotion of Burzum is right there in tracks like ”Weeping Midwintertears”, accomplished by the evil and powerful vocal performance by Silenius, and the tight execution of the musicians. Old melodic death metal like At the Gates and Sentenced have their part as musical influence here, possibly recognizable even before looking at the lyrics of their later albums which contain unbelievably many rip-offs from those two mentioned.

The old vocalist Rune appears here with two keyboard tracks, simple semi-symphonic nocturnal tunes.

So, this is an album about fire, demons, war, magic, forest, life and death. It did not break new ground but it brought together into one vision many needlessly separated currents. Pure it is, and ”sophisticated” in the way the word should be used.

HEIL SATAN

© 1999 black hate