Charnel Valley: The Dark Archives

Charnel Valley is the black metal musical brainchild of magazine writers Marty Rytkonen (Worm) and S. Craig Zahler (Czar) and The Dark Archives is their debut 5 song EP originally recorded over 5 days back in late 2004. The duo intended to keep the sound as simplistic and as true as possible to analog as possible and when you find out that they did it with 2 microphones and an 8 track cassette, it appears they succeeded. Fans of true black metal may be divided over this release and there are a couple of reasons why you may either love what Charnel Valley are doing or hate it. As far as keeping the raw spirit and attitude of black metal alive they've captured it perfectly in my opinion. Black metal has always been about attitude and traditionally most releases tend to be of a low-fi quality anyway, very similar with its DIY spirit nature aesthetic to punk in that regard. As for the instrumentation on this CD, well calling it rudimentary would be a bit of an understatement. So why then does The Dark Archives hold so much appeal when many of today's newer bands are trying to push the boundaries of the genre? Look at The Dark Archives as a tribute of sorts to the genre as a whole as it originally was and appreciate it's dirty garage-style appeal. Not an essential requirement but not to be dismissed entirely either.

Track Listing
1) Catapult
2) The Drowning Forest
3) Demonic Science
4) They Sleep In Open Graves
5) The Beast of Six Thousand Bones

Added: May 17th 2006
Reviewer: Ryan Sparks
Score:
Related Link: Paragon Records
Hits: 2332
Language: english

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