Review Summary: Run of the mill black metal, Blazebirth Hall style.
Vargleide are one of the less well known Blazebirth Hall (a group of Russian bands comprised of several core members like the LLN, or the more well known Norwegian "Black Circle") bands, and a continuation of the more popular Forest, featuring several prominent BBH members. The second known release of these Russian Black Metallers, they really do not offer much new music to the BBH scene, and are very run of the mill if you are familiar with Forest, Raven Dark, Branikald, etc.
The musical instrumentation is fairly simple. Guitar Bass (not to be heard though) Drums and Vocals are present, no keyboards on this one. Guitars are highly distorted and generally bash away at simple tremelo riffs that have the occasional interesting melodic moment but are generally very standard and extremely basic. The drums blast away and usually have a double time feel created by the large amount of snare hits in the drum patterns. Vocals are deep and almost guttural, resembling some of the more powerful Russian Black Metal vocals, and fitting the themes of war on this album nicely. The guitars would be helped greatly if they didn't sound like every other demo tape quality guitar out there, because the riffs are far from attention grabbing or inventive. The whole thing relies on the atmosphere to be there, because Vargleide are not counting on you being interested in the guitar lines or drumming.
The atmosphere is however not really that great. I haven't heard the CD version of this but the tape is typically under-produced and has a somewhat raw feel to it. I would prefer on this particular album if the rough edges were smoothed just a little production-wise. The higher register guitar parts sound pretty good and fit nicely with the vocals, but the lower parts are very indistinct and noisy, and sometimes really bleed together with the cymbals. The vocals always stick out of the mix, but have little variation and are almost monotone, though they do have a good full sound to them.
What really plagues this album is that there is no reason to check this out other than being interested in what Forest's continuation sounded like. The band doesn't do anything badly, everything is solid and in place. Unlike similar bands like Darkthrone, however, this band is not able to produce the memorable riffs needed to carry this album. The repetition of standard black metal riffs and forgettable production does little to help the album. It's good for a few listens and has the BBH sound similar to Branikald and Forest, but I think most listeners will probably stick to those two bands. This album is just an exercise in standard black metal.
In general the album really doesn't do much to further ones appreciation in black metal or do anything to expand the genre. This is just one of those albums that you get if you're interested in the style of related bands and are fine with this band being a continuation of those bands. I would recommend everyone check out some of the bigger names in the Russian Black Metal scene first, and then if interested hunt down this album. It's one of those niche albums that needs some context to be fully appreciated. 3/5 For being very average but achieving it's goal of being that average band that is rudimentary and solid in what it does.
//Does contain NS lyrics/glorification in case that is a problem for you (although the lyrics are in Russian so it's not apparent from just listening to the CD)
