Band: The Black
Title: Alongside Death
Label: Pulverised Records
Distribution: Sure Shot Worx
Release date: 18/09/2009
Review: CD

The Black used to be one of my favourite underground bands from Sweden in half of the nineties, and the 2004-album The Priest Of Satan still belongs to my preferred Swedish Black Metal albums. At that time, by the way, Jon Nödtveidt, also known from e.g. Dissection, Satanized and Ophthalamia, was a member of the band, known under the name Rietas.
This new studio album was recorded by main man Markus ‘The Black’ Pesonen (also in e.g. Eternal Darkness and Karjalan Sissit) with assistance of Andreas Jonsson and D.F. Bragman, both in Tyrant and Vinterland, and both former members of defunct Porphyria. Alongside Death was produced, engineered, mixed and mastered at Studio Beast with Peter Bjärgö (guitar player of Tyrant, producer of e.g. Crypt Of Kerberos, Karjalan Sissit, Arcana, Sophia …) and lasts for half an hour, which certainly is a pity!
Musically, the early years are still recognizable. The blackish hymns vary a lot in tempo, with both ultra-fast and slow parts, and still exhale those ominous underground atmospheres from the Dark era. The sound is somewhat mechanically industrialised, lifting the whole up to a level of Kult. As from the beginning the listener gets uncomfortably covered by an oppressing mist from the deepest abyss, feasting on the lost will to resist, with the desolate knowledge that only death waits at the end. Death in its blackest form!

92/100

Ivan Tibos.