Album Review: Bathory - Bathory

Bathory - Bathory

Black Mark Productions - 1984

8.5/10

When analyzing the early output of a band that would go on to define an entire genre, it's easy to immediately mark their debut as the best of the craft, especially when it sort of ties together the ingredients that were hinted at by earlier acts. Giving credit where it's due, Kill 'Em All, Scream Bloody Gore, and other genre-cementing albums do indeed contain the fervor of precisely what made the genre so wonderful. Despite obvious evolution in Metallica and Death respectively, there's absolutely no question that their debuts are still some of the best in their genres, at least in my humblest of opinions. Sweden's Bathory is different, because in a weird kind of way, that very evolution was what was needed to bring them to the top of their own craft. Maybe part of it is the fact that similar first-wave black metal bands were doing precisely the same thing that was found on their debut album, but the fact is I still wouldn't rate many of them much higher than this, so what's the scoop?

All of this is relevant because, whether I want to admit it or not, Bathory isn't as special as I had thought for so many years, and I say that as someone who absolutely adores this record. In less than a half hour, taking the form of eight tracks, the Swedes have crafted one of the most unsavory, grating sounding albums that anyone had heard at the time, chock full of degraded thrash metal riffing and solos. Vocally, Quorthon matched the energy with an equally rusty surface channeled through a nasally passage that, while in a vacuum isn't exactly pleasant, beside the music feels right. Without casting a darkened atmosphere through mixing and mastering, they instead created a life-crushing feeling through already existing extreme metal in what I imagine is circumstance. They simply didn't have the capital to clean anything up, so the end result was one of the most raw experiences that still captures the exact feeling I want when I pull this disc out; I can't hear it without feeling like I'm in an abandoned toolshed full of rust, metal chips, oil, and sharp objects with no lights to help me avoid these things.

The downside of such a dark and dirty excursion is that standouts are rare, a problem that early death and thrash outings didn't usually have. Many of the solos get pretty buried under the noise of breakneck riffs and blasting drums, adding to why I listen to this for the feeling rather than the chops. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to the rule. Indeed, when the tempo calms itself a bit, you can get the mildest gleaning of light at the end of the tunnel. "Necromansy" comes to mind, with its steadier rhythms and competent playing that still captures the hopeless imagery of being trapped in a rusty machine shop in the middle of a goat pen (Black Phillip, is that you?). I also must throw a nod to "Raise The Dead," since I think this is the biggest hint of the full, genre-defining black metal shape that Bathory would take in a few years. Its steadier drum-crushes and longer, drawn-out vocal snarls invoke an evil aura that blows anything else on this record out of the water.

Otherwise, it's a matter of picking your poison. "War" is compelling because of how mean it sounds, but is equally repetitive and unremarkable outside of the vibe that insulates it. "Reaper" seems like lots of fun, and like "Sacrifice," it at least has some clarity in the guitar solos. But taken bit by bit, Bathory isn't really anything more than what their first-wave contemporaries in Venom, Hellhammer, or early Sodom were doing. It just happens to project a rougher realization than their peers, and would soon evolve into what I call the black metal equivalent of Metallica; being in the right place at the right time likely helped so much in that regard. Thankfully, due to its short runtime and general craft that few bands have been able to replicate, I appreciate every corner of it, with all of its flaws and overlooked redundancies.