Band:	Blodulv
Album:	Pagan Panzer
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	March 2004
Guest review by:	Baliuz

01. Pagan Panzer
02. Dead Star Rising

I find it depressing that you have to dig through heaps of faceless dung until you come by a real gem. Blodulv is a rather obscure black metal band from Sweden. To the date they have released two full length albums and lots of smaller outputs. Pagan Panzer belongs amongst the latter: it is a 2 song EP clocking around 15 minutes.

The opening title track "Pagan Panzer" immediately presents us with the character of the release: melodic riffs showcasing anxiety and sorrow in a rather vigorous fashion. Incidentally the band does not have an actual drummer and therefore uses a drum machine. It's not that bad actually. Of course the drawback is that the percussion sounds a tiny bit artificial but I might as well mention it is rather tight and clean. Fenriz himself has once said that drums are not important in black metal, "They're just supposed to be there". Such is the case here as well - beats are repetitive, they cooperate really well with the riffs that are taking place. I might congratulate Blodulv upon riff crafting - simple yet amazingly compelling. Some effective tremolo picking doesn't hurt as well. The vocals also require additional credit - a nice touch of distortion, memorable lines such as "burnt by the morning sun". All of that is delivered with enough passion and articulated so that you can understand the content is important, instead of being a random stream of consciousness spit without any interest or emotion. The pace of vocals is kept pretty much the same but it sounds very right. All of the sound is some sort of minimalistic perfection wrapped into decent production.

Both songs are high quality examples of competent songwriting. Respectively 8 and 7 minutes long the tracks do not give the impression of dragging despite the repetition that happens. Most probably we should be grateful to this repetition for the memorability and fact that the songs sink in very well. However the second track "Dead Star Rising" stands out a bit with its mid-paced choppy motif. It makes you want to nod your head instinctively. This release is rather hard to come by since it's released as a 7" EP (unless you'll use a bit different means to get it), but if you do - don't hesitate, take the opportunity to hear this short yet worthy piece of sincere and well thought out black metal.