Handling that open chord tremolo trill like a solo melody line, Thy Infernal (a brutal four piece hailing, I believe, from Portland, OR), transform what I've always felt to be an unfortunate artifact of black metal formula playing into something truly stirring. In fact, "Immortal Satanic Spirit," the fifth of seven tracks on this fine album, makes the case for this playing technique in a magnificent weave of sound components.
Although the guitar parts suffer from a slight thinness of texture on the production side (a flaw that clears up eventually for some reason), Warlords shows few missteps and overall a keen, even thrilling, black metal attack that emphasizes the stripped-down quality of thrash and speed with the usual martial rhetoric about Armageddon and the superiority of spikes and swordsmanship to piety and faith. What makes it work in this case is that the lyrics are anthemlike, almost slogan recipes, better for bashing your head emphatically than thinking too much about the metaphysical ramifications. Lean, furious and bad to the bone, Thy Infernal know how to sustain aggression while still keeping things varied enough to be interesting. An incredibly cool effort I would recommend without reservations.
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