[Review] Blackened Dred - ‘Satan Is The Law’ LP.
Author: Brady.
Full Album Streaming Links (Youtube/Spotify):
Something evil is astir in the nations’ capital. Thought of mostly for excessively frequent, large roundabouts, a bunch of buildings housing the very authorities we love to bite our working-class thumbs at and Questacon - extreme metal isn’t the first thing one normally associates with Canberra.
What is equally warming to my impish heart, is not only the fact that this local blackened-thrash-by-way-of-trad-metal outfit lurks and sneers at the swarms of APS robots, but that there’s an equal number of basement-dwelling WoW players who might scream betrayal at their Dorito-dust encrusted screens whilst Mum warms up their next round of chicken tenders.**
** - I’m not hating on nerds, here. I’m a metalhead. Shit, I was setting up a damn solo tabletop wargame RPG session before I started the review. It’s just fun to have fun around Super Serious Metalheads, ain’t it.
“So - why the potential ire from keyboard-warriors, Brady?” I hear you ask.
Well, were one to have a listen to the album over at Bandcamp (which you can and should do, right here!), we’re given a promise of, quote:
“UNRELENTING BLACKENED THRASH FROM THE HEART OF THE NATIONS CAPITAL.”
And whilst yes, that is certainly here in spades, it’s far from the central aesthetic of the album. If anything, this cheeky little LP is more reminiscent of Hellripper’s hearty sampling of classic-rock riffage than, say, insert eight million grim/trve/kvlt 4-track raw black metal demos. I can imagine quite a few curmudgeonly black-metal nerds screeching with fury as they work through what is actually a fun, rocking and decidedly classic-metal-infused effort by Blackened Dred in their debut LP, Satan Is The Law.
What’s really fun about us metalheads is often that we’re both equally tongue-in-cheek, and easily offended.
Written and recorded primarily by Adam Oppliger (of Claret Ash and Immorium fame, among others), the project is clearly a love-letter to heavy metal as being equally about entertainment and a good time, as it is scaring Boomers still pilled by the 1980’s PMRC moral panic.
That’s right. Call the cops!
Someone in the extreme metal community is daring to have fun with their music, and I’m daring to express mirth and joy by virtue of having listened to it!
Oh, woe betide the serious crossed-arms among us! Heavens, no!
Anyway. On the other side of the now-King-Charles-minted coin: those expecting a more lazy, satirical take on metal will be delighted to know that, contrasting with a lot of bands who bring such a spirit into their work, Blackened Dred goes hard on the riffing front. In an earnest and technically proficient manner.
Now, enough bagging on myself and the more So-Serious among us metal-folk - onto the album proper.
First, we’re subjected to an eerie industrial soundscape that permeates the ‘Intro’, an interlude that is more suggestive of, say, Fear Factory or Sybreed, than what’s to emerge from the bullet-belted underground as we launch after a minute’s mechanical broodiness into ‘Hammer Down’.
With a very Kill ‘Em All -era jagged guitar tone, sheets of highly distorted chugs, fills and and palm-mute rifle over rollicking drums as this track wastes not a second getting down to business. Firing off salvos of chord progressions, lead fills and rumbling, punky rhythm sections that hearken to another era, it’s a track that’d be arena-ready were it not for the bellowing wails, roars and gang-chants within. The breakdown riff, with an interplay between chugs and lead trills, just lends to such a classic flavour in a catchy, narky way.
Refreshingly, the fact SITL is such an on-the-nose homage to all things NWOBHM, thrash and early black metal means we’re not subjected to multi-minute ambient soundscapes and other elements you’d find on a more contemporary equivalent. Nope, title track ‘Satan Is The Law’ only spends a couple of bars ruminating on a punky, trundling bassline before kicking straight into gear. The almost sarcastic gnarled roars of “"Lay down/give up/sell your soul to me/Satan is the law"”, alongside some more gang-chanted chorus attack, gives the whole track the feeling I’ve stumbled into the drunken after-party of some Uruk-Hai chieftain’s return back to Barad-Dur. As if on cue, the latter third of the track picks up from punky swagger into a frenzied chain of harmonic-heavy soloing, ringing out in a chaotic ball towards a very arena-ready finish.
‘Witch’s Tit’ features a chorus which made me laugh out loud. Not because it’s bad, by any measure. But having a very Motorhead-leaning structure interspersed with more blackened blasts and shredding? Yeah, that’s a very fun juxtaposition to being asked to erm, yeah - witches’ tit things. This one keeps it simple, straightforward and pulls back on the grimness for a few minutes of just plain fun. It’s campy, fun and engenders some head-nodding, and that’s fine by me.
Following up with more of a sense of urgency and serious malice, ‘Graveyard Shift’ punctuates the punky progressions with more angular, dissonant riffs, key changes and up-tempo tremolo. More of those deliberately discomforting (and classically black metal) minor tones and abrupt changes, combined with a more drawling and snarling lead section, help bring a sense of true evil to the fore, here. The semi-shouted bellows of the vocals are given a healthy dose of reverb, adding to the sense of impious mischief for the track as a whole.
It’s around the albums’ midpoint that we get a really cool tonal and stylistic shift that I think works just wonderfully in ‘Hell Sent Me Back’. Beginning with almost painfully-lumbering bass and guitar slides, an upper-register snarl accentuated in the vocals, the otherwise consistent drum-and-bass stomp gives this mid-tempo bruiser a seriously doomy feel. It’s almost jarring, unexpected after being served multiple sheets of traditional metal/arena-ready thrash vibes in the previous tracks. The icing on this sneering demon of a track is the atonal, wailing and discordant soloing that permeates the second half. Equally discordant and shred-heavy, it’s a deliberately off-putting outro that sets the track apart in an effective way.
As is the heavy metal tradition, one can’t have their lumbering giant of a mid-album plodder without cranking the tempo notch back up again, can we? ‘Fires of Disdain’ begins with a classic-thrash and up-tempo pace, the palm-muting raising the room’s temperature back up to steaming. The gang-chants, wails and snarls atop the lead tradeoffs help the track feel transplanated directly from the basements of underground thrash venues across the world in the mid-80’s, particularly with the buildup in the final crescendo towards the end.
‘Lord of Goats’ plays off the insinuation we’re on the faster end towards the albums’ finish, beginning more urgently and chaotically than the preceding number. Implying a more methodical opening, the more consistent martial d-beat joins back up with the guitars for a blastbeat and tremolo-heavy chorus. Now this is (blackened) pod-racing! What I found great about this track in particular was the way which these faster sections are scattered around varying up-tempo, punkish sections. Overall, it’s a progression that feels unique and decidedly Blackened Dred’s own. Combine this with some of the more pained and vicious shrieks on the album proper and you’ve got both something unironically intense, and one of my favourite tracks of the LP.
But you’re not going to get any Belphegor-coded relentless tremolo-and-blast attacks off a track called ‘Whiskey and Leather’ as follow-up. And y’know what? Totally fine in my book. Keeping consistent pacing that veers between thrash and classic rock, the heightened presence of the bass helps the woah-oh gang-shouted chorus in making the track one for the beer-sloshers. I can picture many litres of house ale being sloshed around to the catchy, bombastic chorus, especially in the latter half - that slow bass rumble into the histrionic, duelling-lead outro would have Rob Halford himself grinning. And covered in VB.
Of course, of course Ace of Spades is the cover of choice for this band, this album. Honestly, could we expect or want any less? No. And the transmogrification of a Lemmy classic into the jagged, harsh tones of this band fit love a glove with the bellowed punk-rock vocal delivery. The Motorhead classic is given a bit of blackened thrash grime, sure, but overall it’s employed with exactly the respect the prior tracks would call for. By this stage, I’m picturing pint-glasses shattering and a circle-pit opening up.
Which brings us to a very interesting and stark conclusion, overall, via instrumental outro ‘Desecration Mantra’. Showcasing all manner of labyrinthine directions by both the rhythm and lead sections, there’s an almost lovelorn feel to the lead guitar between the more frantic sections later on. In true metal style, the rhythm is given ample footing to show off their prowess as well, throughout. Normally, closing off an album with an interlude can feel like a trite afterthought; not the case with this final number.
As the final refrains ring out on the closing track, my summary thoughts are as they were to begin with. If you’re expecting unrepentant, one-dimensional blast and tremolo, you may be disappointed here. If you’re after a safe arena-rock album, maybe stick with GoldFM for now. If, however, you want to explore the snarkier and more bombastic side of black-n-roll, merging the obstinately-gatekeepy underbelly of black metal with lackadaisical punk fun, Satan Is The Law is maliciously fun.
If you want to see this blackened thrash/trad metal outfit in the wild, alongside two international scene luminaries in Abigail and Stalker - check below for tour dates:
