### Alastor: Noble north

#### 16/10/07 || Lord K Philipson

No Colours Records sent us a package with a bunch of albums to review… It would be an exaggeration to state that the included discs looked promising. Bands/solo projects named Diabolic Force, Nargaroth, Those Who Bring The Torture, Satanic Warmaster, Orenda and finally the band at hand, Alastor. Complete with crappy layouts and tons of corpsepaint, this is bound to be a huge Fest of Suck. We will get to all of these projects eventually, but let’s start with Alastor, the one cd that at least looked ok layout-wise with its nice and clean black cover and shit. Oh, and thanx to the label for sending us this shit, understanding that GD is what counts and all that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they stop delivering cd’s to our headquarters after some of the reviews that are coming, but hey, that’s life. You asked for our opinion and you know you’ll fucken get it. Sucky bands will know the truth here at GD and not-so-sucky ones will get the same treatment. So, with these words of infinite wisdom – on to Alastor…

Whaddya know, these fuckers aren’t exactly bad at all, much to my surprise. Can’t say the production makes the music a shitload of justice, but they have some nice melodies and stuff going on with their black metal. And safe to say, they are not doing anything to stray away from the concept of said genre. I guess this is about as fucken tr00 and shit as can be, though I couldn’t care less. In a time where well-produced Dark Funeral albums get flack for being too clean, I think people are missing out on the whole thing anyways. Black metal to me is supposed to sound good, it’s supposed to be executed with fierce aggression and tons of atmosphere. Dark Funeral are the masters of that in my book. Alastor are probably not huge fans of that brand of black metal since they go for the more simple approach, with needed spices of melody though. And to me that’s fine as long as it sounds like this instead of some shit recorded in mom’s kitchen with pots and pans as the “instruments”.

It’s not like I can elaborate much more when it comes to Alastor. If you like black metal that is kinda poorly produced (ofcourse intended – or it wouldn’t be tr00, you know… sigh), there’s no reason you won’t like this. It’s definitely a hella lot better than I expected it to be.

I can’t say that I have many fave bands coming from Austria (actually, I have exactly NONE), but it’s safe to say that I have heard way, way more shitty music from that country. But for the time being, I can’t fucken come up with one single name. Lemme wrap this up by saying that Alastor’s disc in this package sent to us from the label is by far the winner, for me. Yeah, I know, just wait for the other coverages… Poor bastards.

5,5/10.

- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: No Colours
- Website: www.alastor.dr.ag
- Band
- Reingoe: vocals
- Rambeer: guitars
- Thonislav: guitars, bass
- Isbor: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Cut Throat
- 02. Death Moral
- 03. Dark Path
- 04. Forgotten Woods
- 05. Thousand Horns
- 06. Mystery Moor
- 07. Instrumental Past
- 08. Noble North