ABM Kitchen New Management/Summoning

Atmospheric Black Metal Kitchen is under new management! I wanna go straight to what we all care about (delicious, delicious metal) but you can see a brief blurb about me over to the side.

I'm going to admit something: I love J.R.R. Tolkien. Picture a once-green field ta'en over by ten-thousand fully-armed orcs, spanning ranks of ten by ten, all snarling, reeling for a conflict. On the opposite side (because everything has a side. It's a universal theme of good and evil, people!) a few thousand well-clad warriors await the start to a terrible battle. What they lack in numbers, they make up for in talent, and spirit - they fight for life, land, and honor.

Summoning is a band that fantastically depicts this scene in their music - especially the album Oath Bound. *drools absentmindedly*


Oh, sorry, I, uh, was lost in the music.
Because it's amazing!

Oath Bound is arguably more atmospheric than anything Summoning has released to date.
Listening to the first song, I am instantly on the field of battle, but less as an actual participant and more as a sort of ethereal spectator to thousands of screaming orcs, "Lord and master, lord and master!" in reference to Sauron, I believe.
Of course, in response to this war-call, the second track is an intensely visual, ten-minute piece about nature! But nature isn't exactly a deep topic for review, so I'll skip to the third song: "Mirdautas Vras". The song lyrics are actually written in "the black language of Mordor" which sends nerdy tingles up my spine left and right. That, and it has a slightly amusing brass line underneath all of Sauron's shrieking and screaming.

The album continues, every song hereafter averaging about 8 minutes in pure phantasmagoria; it makes me happy! No... that's a blatant understatement. If this CD was a woman, I would hold her hand and buy her flowers and take her to romantic dinners at the Italian Underground Restaurant. But just listening to the CD is a bit less creepy, so I think I'll stick with that.