Band:	Summoning
Album:	Stronghold
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	May 11, 1999
Guest review by:	R.Baldur

01. Rhûn
02. Long Lost To Where No Pathway Goes
03. The Glory Disappears
04. Like Some Snow-White Marble Eyes
05. Where Hope And Daylight Die
06. The Rotting Horse On The Deadly Ground
07. The Shadow Lies Frozen On The Hills
08. The Loud Music Of The Sky
09. A Distant Flame Before The Sun

Bloody-Red sunset ...

Stronghold, with its bloody cover taken from an ancient painting - its epic and warm weather does not look like the previous Summoning's cool and atmospheric work, with massive spaces and assemblies just like the start of the album. You feel like an eagle rider, flying over the mountains and plains in the reach of Rohan and the Pelennor Fields, flying alongside the armies of elves and dwarves on the march, or taking up an ancient force like the rising of the sun against your eyes. The books that form the foundation of Summoning are very powerful in the space of the minimal, quiet album, revealing new and greater effects of the deep, epic music on us. Combined with very skillful craftsmanship, a kind of specialist black metal, the music has high production values for black metal, and because of this I would call it "black metallic music," to distinguish from the habitually low-quality productions of most black metal.

This album has come to bring new effects out of ancient history. You can make your own space and live in the sound of history, as if you were a wandering soul whose bady had been blown apart. This has inspired me to point out that these elven halls, alongside Middle Earth as a whole, are perhaps the embodiment of our own world, a description of the days that have been forgotten and buried under the bonds of the soil - the days when there was no energy except what we worked for, no factories, nothing but the nature of God, the candle, and the soil?

The music emitted from the keyboards, melodies with their own accent, along with the sweeping, dreaded, distant black metal riffs, make you feel the majestic halls of kings with strange architecture, full of desolate, cool, dark structures. It's a classic black-and-white distribution, the culmination of which is the last track on the album, "A Distant Flame Before The Sun." That track, which is also not produced like much black metal, is like the fires of hell and a sunset of blood. Your ears, when you get a little bit of the album's atmosphere, turn red just like this hell as you find out more and more about this album.

One of my friends has said that if Richard Wagner were alive he would become a member of Deep Purple, but I say that he would undoubtedly be a member of Summoning, because he always sought to create magnificent works and spaces of this kind. Here he would be among colleagues who in their work have references to more classic works, and take the same pride in its perfection; that borrowing is clearly visible in "Where Hope And Daylight Die," a track that shows the glory of classical music, combining a mysterious musical accompaniment with the description of a wounded warrior.

Finally, Stronghold is?

Crimson, but not conquered?
Dilapidated, but steady?
Old, but young?
Hidden, but showing?
In the bloody-red sunset?
Strong castle? strong fortress?
Stronghold?