Taking their name from a skeletal, flaming daemon from the D&D universe, New Jersey’s Immolith specialise in a hybrid of the old Norwegian and Swedish styles of BM, the songs forever tumbling into the abyss as they are dragged along by remorseless buzzsaw guitars, coarse tremolo riffs and endlessly clattering drums. It’s a very convincing formula, combining the lean savagery of Marduk with the raw and droning bite of classic Mayhem, exhuding a pretty ferocious energy yet unafraid to break things up with the odd galloping break or unexpected doomy crawl.
The main emphasis is on breakneck blasting however, with everything else feeling like it’s built around the passages of cyclonic and cacophonous riffs that get spat out alongside some very solid rasped vocals. Opener ‘Torch of Baphomet’ is particularly scathing and simplistic; all churning, half-demented guitars and overclocked, Anaal-Nathrakh-like momentum, whilst ‘Rites of the Blood Moon’ sounds similarly Mayhem/Nathrakh-indebted, with droning, bulldozer-riffs at its heart that just plough through everything in sight.
Time-changes are employed skilfully throughout the album; the title track balances the carnage out with a bombastic, mid-paced bridge and reedy, rousing melodies, whilst ‘The Ghost Tower of Inverness’ flits from intense riffing to bouncy middle-time to drained-and-despondent doom in Candlemass vein. Slower, brooding sections punctuate the furious riffing throughout most of the songs, so that the album manages to repeatedly batter you over the head without simply numbing you into indifference. Similarly, the sheer immediacy and power of the faster passages draws your attention away from fact that the songwriting can be a little formulaic at times.
The songs tend not to deviate much from their fairly narrow remit, but this is no bad thing when handled properly, and the execution and overall sense of conviction are strong enough to ensure that things never become dull. Final track ‘ A Pact of Blood’, feels like something of a departure, with a slow-pounding, dirgey rhythm married to a raw, melancholic melody that reminds of Horna, the song building up to a massive, galloping riff that could be from an early Gorgoroth album. It’s a good closer, but it would have been nice to hear the band branching out in similar fashion elsewhere on the album.
‘Storm Dragon’ isn’t a hugely original or adventurous album, but neither is it short on atmosphere or raw power, and fans of mid-90s Scandinavian BM are unlikley to be disappointed with what they find here. A stronger sense of character is needed though, and Immolith need to step out a little further from the shadows of their influences if they are to create something truly special.
(7.5/10, Erich Zann)
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