MALOKARPATAN - Nordkarpatenland CD

I often lament that so little of black metal is dedicated to the ancient, primal sounds of the genre, when Master’s Hammer was the biggest influence on a lot of the nascent scene and before the birth of any sort of “defined” black metal sound. There’s plenty of amazing black metal being made every year still, but not much of it really embraces the ancient sounds that I love the most; fortunately, the veterans at Malokarpatan agree that the call of the oldest of schools is the most compelling, and much as they have for years (both inside and outside of this particular band, which is a bit younger than some of their other projects) they’ve dedicated themselves here to bewitching the world with an adventurous, ambitious, and most of all amazing album that blends classic sounds in a new, fascinating way.

Malokarpatan refer to their own music as old school rural Slovak black metal, and merge their already rustic riffing with Slovakian folk elements; the album even opens with the sound of a Jew’s Harp being played alongside the happy noises of what’s presumably a Slovak deer (note; in the original review, I put "cow" and was corrected by the band), before a spoken word intro leads into the first (and absolutely ripping) complete song.