This is the debut album of Dominus who later have desecrated their earlier ideals and music style. This is vicious brutal raw and filthy black/death, although this album has a viking concept/theme to it, Dominus was a highly satanic band in their old days, their "Ambrosias Locus" and "Asteroth" demo testifies to that, but they have later started worshipping Elvis and become life loving fools, "Vol. Beat" my ass, but my hatred of what they turned into doesn't diminish that this is a fucking great album. If you are familiar with the forerunners of death metal from Denmark, you will pretty much know what to expect. Fucking brutal death, and if you are not, then I can tell you the first couple of Danish death metal bands had a special feel to them, bands like Illdisposed, Konkhra, Idiosyncrasy, Detest and Iniquity, they were all very brutal death metal, mainly orienting themselves on the US death metal sound, and even at times out did them in terms of sheer brutality, and Dominus certainly did belong to that group. But they have all changed, except idiosyncrasy which broke up ages ago, and then there is Iniquity, who doesn't even have a single original member anymore, so in my eyes it's no longer the same band... but none of them could ever reach Dominus in their glory days, and none of them has gone so far from what they did in their old days as Dominus has. If you can find this album then get it, but unless you see their demos somewhere, all their other material is to be avoided like the plague...

© 2000 sharund