Dagorath - Glare of the Morning Star

DAGORATH - Glare of the Morning Star (UNDER THE SIGN OF GARAZEL CD 2017)

It's always cool to get CD, which you would probably never buy, because you simply don't know the band and you wouldn't even bother to check it. But you get a CD for review and it turns out that the music is pretty damn good and you like it. So, it's good to add it to your collection. This is what happened to me with Polish Dagorath and their debut album "Glare of the Morning Star". I never heard of them before, although I think they only released one demo prior to this CD, so there wasn't much to hear about. Anyway, my expectations for this band and this CD were rather small, but it turned out to be a nice surprise and pretty solid and worthy black metal. I am grateful then that Under the Sign of Garazel sent me a copy. 

Newcomers or not, but Dagorath plays some killer riffs here, I like the whole cold and obscure aura of their music a lot. They definitely lurk a lot into the past and take influences from the classic Scandinavian black metal with full grasps, from the likes of Gorgoroth or Mayhem. But on the other hand, there are many fragments, which remind me some nowadays black metal bands from Germany or Sweden, with their occult, vicious black metal style. So, it's good combination and definitely good performance of Dagorath. I like the harsh production of "Glare of the Morning Star", I already mentioned also that there are some really great riffs and songs... and probably only vocals could have been better, but that's a small complain from my side.  

A lot of this album is fast and aggressive, but slower songs are also here, so there's at least a little bit of variety to make the album more interesting. It does help, especially because "Glare of the Morning Star" is a bit too long for my taste. Three songs - "Crushing the Falsehood of Divinations" (9 minutes), "Przemienienie" (8,5 minutes) and "Black Magick Covenant" (12 minutes) are particularly long, but I have to say that Dagorath does well in such longer tracks and their compositions always have some interesting riffs, some melodic accents or whatever, that gives a positive and good result. Especially "Black Magick Covenant" is interesting, with its diversity from blasting parts to marching, monumental black metal. And in "Przemienienie" towards the end of the song, there's a melodic riff, which I truly like a lot! But as I already mentioned, basically every song has its moments, so I did enjoy "Glare of the Morning Star". Give it a chance also, a nice band to remember and support. 

Standout tracks: "Whore's Throne Successor", "Przemienienie" 

Final rate: 70/100