Label: Mighty Hordes Productions

Distribution: Manitu Records / Black Seed Productions

Mighty Hordes Productions are a small and rather young label from Madrid, Spain, with a huge division in America as well (located in Manizales, Colombia). In the early years (beginning of this century), the label released two highly interesting splits, Opvs Leviathan – Assur and Infernal – Exelsus Diaboli. After some years of silence, the label returned with releases by bands like Infernal (the Colombian one indeed), Esbbat or Lemures. Last year two other albums got released and a new one was foreseen for earlier this year, and since we did receive a copy of these three recordings recently, this review will deal with all of them, even though they are not completely new anymore. Who cares anyway?
With exception of 2008’s album The Quietus by Mexican band Meltdown, which brought a melodic form of Death Metal, all bands on Mighty Hordes’ roster are classifiable within spheres of corpse-painted Black Metal, and the same indeed goes for these three albums.
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Band: Atanab
Title: Black Magic
Release date: 2010

Atanab (Abatan, Darkbegoth and Harcom) are one of the oh so many bands from South America that found their way to Europe lately. Luckily I could welcome many of them with pleasure.
In Atanab’s case: same shit: come thee well…!
Black Magic was originally recorded and mixed during two different moments, in between winter 2005-2006 and spring 2006 (main part), and at the end of 2008 (some of the additional tracks) (you can hear the difference in sound clearly, even though both recording sessions took place at the same studio), with a final mix done by frontman Abatan (who also writes most of the lyrics and music) and Manuel Andrade. The drums, by the way, were performed by Demolt, but he won’t be part of the band’s permanent line-up.
Black Magic lasts for thirty eight minutes and opens with some evil summoning as intro, which does give a clear hint of what to expect. Indeed, this album brings burning fast, primitive and blaspheme Black Metal with a touch of nineties’ Chaos and Destruction. It lacks of originality, both musically and lyrically, and unfortunately it does sound much too passé. However, most of these tracks are nice to listen at, with a remarkable energy and persuasive craftsmanship. Like many bands within this specific sub-genre, many clichés are over-present: keyboards, intros and outros, mystic / mysterious intermezzos, additional grunts, eighties’ Thrash-elements, obscure decelerations and nicely built-up tempo-changes, etc. Remarkable as well is the inferior drum-sound, which is not that uncommon either for this type of bands. Some parts are slightly stupid or pathetically would-be-ish (like that opener Is Sentence Of Satan or the intro on the title track), but more than once Black Magic draws my attention with a quality that buries the mediocre deep into nothingness.
FYI: there’s an edition with two bonus video clips and one live-clip…

78/100
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Band: Frozen Dawn
Title: The Old Prophecy Of Winterland
Release date: March 30th 2011

Spanish combo Frozen Dawn, with former members of e.g. Haemorrhage, Atmosphere Grey and Greenfly and formed by Grinder in 2005, debut on Mighty Hordes with an interesting concept around Winterland, a permanently frosty region in which natural forces combat each other, where the mystical meets the supernatural.
The quartet (Grinder, Lord Morgoth, and Spiritual Intervention-colleagues Arjan and Davinia) recorded this stuff in Winter 2009 in Madrid, and they had it mixed and mastered in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Sparta Recordings Studio. The album clocks near fifty minutes and comes with a rough but well-fitting production. There were a couple of releases before, which were some compilations with old recordings, done at different occasions, but these promos got distributed in a limited edition only, making it a collector’s item.
Note: since the band underwent several line-up changes, and since singer Lavin left when the band started recording their full length, and because he used to do the vocals on some of his oldest tracks, Grinder now takes care of the vocals as well, besides playing the guitars.
The Old Prophecy Of Winterland brings an epic yet chilly form of raw Pagan / Black Metal in the vein of many Scandinavian bands from the nineties. It means non-originality, yet in this band’s case it comes with an ideal equilibrium between melody and rhythm. The tempo varies a lot, yet in general it interchanges between slow and up-tempo. This makes the whole much heavier and darker in atmosphere, because this dense approach is suffocating, asphyxiating.
Think: Necrophobic, Watain, Satyricon (the album ends with the cover Fuel For Hatred, by the way, but in a minor performance), Dissection, Bloodthorn, Tulus, Falkenbach, Gorgoroth etc…

87/100
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Band: Eternal Chaos
Title: Dark God Of The Eternal
Release date: 2010

Eternal Chaos, where do I know that name from? Aha, the Belgian Death horde, or the Swedish one (that changed its moniker to Ethereal)? Or the American Thrash / Crossover-band that was rather popular during the late eighties? No, in this case it’s all about the Spanish corpse-paint orchestra Eternal Chaos.
The formation originally recorded this album in November 2009. It lasts for thirty three minutes and it comes with a sound, again, that is way too inferior. A shame… Especially those drums…
Musically, Aleitan (g), Mayon (v), Amasarac (b) and Apokalypse (session-d) perform a brutal, aggressive and fast form of evil straight-forward Black Metal with an artillery-tempo, a massive instrumental wall of noise, and deep, guttural screams. The melodic songs are intense and extremely powerful, with blaspheme and misanthropic lyrics, somewhat obscure and occult. The whole isn’t that varying – the tempo does not change that much in its totality (yet of course there is the necessary amount of obliged tempo-changes) – nor can we consider Eternal Chaos an album that reinvents the scene at all. No, the band does not copy any American, Swedish or French ensemble just like that; but I do miss an own identity, again.
In general, I can appreciate this album enormously. The ideas of extreme anger and utter darkness in an audible package are both written and performed with sardonic and sadistic pleasure. A pity of both the bad production and lack of originality though…

81/100
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Ivan Tibos.