A SUBTERRANEAN MIST
(5 stars out of a possible 5 stars)
Ok, your attention please & Witches take note: I believe we have the future of "Black Metal" before us! SVART UGLE conveys a non-flashy, dare I say "warmly" produced Black Metal album with such balls & primitive anger, that both the Black Metal & Doom communities will lap this up like a starved dog. I ask, why the fuck are there so few Black Metal bands, this oppressively slow & dense? Finally a rest from the fast & cold, over produced & boom box production bands of the genre. Not to mention the lack of actual "Metal" I must add is a big turn on. SVART UGLE'S "Blood of the Black Owl Vol. 1" is a lesson in meditative, snail paced blackend riffage! Featuring founding member Chet W. Scott, known for his woodland ritual soundscape under the moniker "RUHR HUNTER". Chet, has effectively & ritually combined the pace & head space of Funeral Doom, with Crusty Black Metal minimalism. The vocals are painful, tortured & meandering. No lyrics are provided, but I think this attributes to the harsh mysticism of the vocal showcase. The delivery is truly primitive, as if produced from the lungs of a Neanderthal man. The guitar & drum work, brutally hit & heavy as fuck, is straight forward & right to the point! There's no percussive filler at all regarding the kit! So if your looking for a technical blasting 10 piece metal experience...don't bother! Personally, I'd have this record no other way! I feel SVART UGLE are going for something much more spiritual than just jumping on the old "Black Metal" bandwagon. The ritual hand drum movements throughout the record, send your soul packing for another time. A time much more ancient & quite frankly, truly unsettling! I kept thinking of the amazing film Altered States & the brutality of transgression through hallucinatory experience! Audibly this record sums that up quite well I think. Svart Ugle is just solid & obviously void of what anyone might think of it. I hope the right labels take note & somebody releases this masterpiece to a wider audience. There's only 100 copies available & comes packaged in an amazing primitive sleeve with leather binding. For fans of the following: THEREGOTHON, WINTER, TEETH OF LIONS RULE THE DIVINE, NORTT, A FUNERAL ORCHESTRA, SKEPTICISM, DARK THRONE & BURZUM.
Noteworthy tracks:
"DRINKING THE BLOOD OF A LION"
"HAMMER COMES CRASHING DOWN"
"A COVEN OF VULTURES"

D.E.H. REVIEWS
A pure mass of sod covered despair that will cover and suffocate you the minute you spin the disk. Chet Scott of the amazing drone vehicle RUHR HUNTER has let loose a torrent of pure unadulterated doom destruction, an offering of pure punishment sure to crush some souls in its wake. This is a completely organic recording, full of guitar lines that trudge at a deadly slow pace and buzz like an unholy swarm of wasps, while the vocalization is some of the most tortured I have ever heard put to music. Scott's vocal chords rake over a truly bleak and pissed off landscape, grasping out to pull the listener down into his torrents of truly unholy pain, while drums like a funeral procession plod under the chaos. Yes folks, this is an amazingly emotional listen, to say the least.

Scott's use of Norse themes contained within the music and images of Svart Ugle lend a great understanding to the whole; Like the Totems of Thor and Odin, Svart Ugle is an ominous and imposing figure, full of all the dread a Germanic God would contain. Listening to Svart Ugle is to truly aurally witness the "Wild Hunt" of the OSKERAI over Scandinavia, there ghostly forms plucking the helpless from the ground to join their screeching train of destruction through the dark fog of the Stratosphere.

No lyrics are contained in this release making the vocal performance all the more intense, creating the semblance of another instrument over the dense guitar drones. On tracks such as "Hammer comes crashing down" Scott's anguished cries sound as a tortured human turned feral animal, and at the same time we hear samples warning of our earths destruction, another ever present theme throughout the release.

Over all, this is an amazingly CATHARTIC release, which is something we've been able to count on over the years from Chet's other endeavors. Yet Svart Ugle heightens the stakes with a yet before unused well of pitch black darkness, and drums of doom to hit you like a well thought out kick to the stomach. This is a MUST GET piece of legendary music, and will hold up for years to come in the annals of extreme music, as well as emotional and crucial music at large.