BEHEMOTH - Sventevith (Storming Near The Baltic) LP (White Vinyl)

Fuck the naysayers and revisionists. Before their slew of mind-numbingly bland death metal discs and before their turn to little more than quasi-Satanic lifestyle brand, Behemoth crafted some inspiringly dark and masterful pagan black metal. I would go so far as to say Sventevith is precisely what a black metal album should be - it’s got all the rawness and intensity one expects of extreme metal, but balances it out with a romanticism that pervades the somewhat-folky guitar melodies and the especially memorable instrumental interludes, which easily evoke images of fur-clad medieval Europeans huddled around a fire in the Pomeranian forests.