Band:	Dead Raven Choir
Album:	My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind
Style:	Neofolk, Black metal, Acoustic folk metal
Release date:	2007
Guest review by:	Karlabos

01. Kigi Wa Haru
02. Our Mother The Mountain
03. A Rosebud In June
04. Genesis Hall
05. Sheep-Crook, Black Dog
06. It's All Right With Me
07. The Trees They Grow So High
08. Favorite
09. Bluenose
10. From The Stars

Those who know me well enough may be aware of my inclination to lo-fi indie black metal releases that may be crap to over 90% of the music listeners out there, but whatever. Here comes more one of those.

My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind is a work done by one guy known as D. Smolken, who manages to create an entirely acoustic black metal album consisting of versions of old folk and country songs. If you want it to be able to fit into any metal subgenre, I say black metal, because it's what the vocals as well as the production hints the most. However, when you look closely, there's not much metal here. (After all, what is metal? Distorted guitars? Bass? Drums? If so, I can't hear any).

But hey, when I say "acoustic black metal" I also don't mean a black metal album with some acoustic parts here and there, neither do I mean music like Impaled Northern Moonforest or whatever the heck appears on the interwebz when you type "acoustic black metal"; which always turn out to be utter crap. No. This is serious work, a solid album. It actually manages to capture the essential of black metal played in an acoustic manner, and it's not one more release made just for the lulz.

That being said, I don't think I need to explain again on how original this album is. Think for yourself on how many actually decent acoustic black metal albums have you ever listened too. I bet even the most underground person can't name more than a handful of them.

Production wise, well... it's lo-fi. D. Smolken himself said it was recorded within a microphone from the 70's and mastered with headphones of about the same age; so you know what to expect. Some may like it when in the mood, some may not, but honestly it doesn't make the music worse. The raw production here is actually fitting.

What kind of breaks the awesomeness here, is the lack of variety. It all sounds so captivating and original and innovative and all that stuff at first glance, but when you stop to listen to the whole thing you will see that it actually doesn't change much from one song to another; or even from one riff to riff, really.

I mean... picture this: as previously mentioned, My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind is a compilation of covers of country and folk songs. That means each song was composed by a different musician, and hence taking in account the variety of composition, they should sound pretty distinct from each other, right? Wrong. In fact, this is an album that you start to listen to and think to yourself: "wow, this is cool. Country black metal, acoustic black metal, what an interesting fresh addiction to the black metal scene." But when you reach the middle of the thing you are already like: "Is it not going to change? Does it really stay on that?" Which is really a shame.

The idea could be much more exploited if there was more variety. I can't blame it on the songwriting since the songs weren't composed by Dead Raven Choir, but I don't know... Perhaps at least changing the timbre of the instruments a little from one song to another wouldn't hurt.

In the end, lacking something or not, for fans of lo-fi experimental black metal this album is sure worth a shot. After all, can you really say you care about experimental if you hear about decently made acoustic black metal and don't give it a go?

And if you are ever too lazy to search, just click here.