Album Review: Rat Lord - Blazed In The Northern Sky
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I’d like to start this review off by relentlessly fellating the production. I’m no sophisticate when it comes to these things, I couldn’t go into the requisite detail about “dynamic ranges” or any adjacent subject matter if I tried. I can only go by the infallible metric of my own ears. And they are very happy with what they’ve been subjected to over and over again of late. Drums like gunfire. Bass bodacious and forthright, swaggering through the mix like a man assured of victory in carnal conquest. Guitars blaring, a tsunami of distortion smashing the shoreline to atoms. But that’s only part of the equation isn’t it? If production choices alone mattered the black album would be everyone’s favourite Metallica release and in consequence, I would not want to live.
Praise be, then, that the songs rule. By most standards this is not a long album, in fact it probably clocks in somewhere around the 15 minute mark, and even that might be generous, but all that meant is more opportunities to jam these jams into my cochlea. Rambunctious in energy and snot-nosed in attitude, “Blazed in the Northern Sky” here presents a magnificent display of the ol’ powerviolence in action. From the Rotten Sound vs. Terror mashup of “Wo-Tan Clan” to the surfin’ bird on methamphetamine stylings of “Raised on Kneipp” the album fires on all cylinders, relentlessly seeking for fresh subjects for remorseless pulverisation.
Except when it isn’t. Rat Lord really hit me with a curve ball when it turned out they could pen a hell of a chorus too. Title track “Blazed in the Northern Sky” and penultimate uber-banger “Party like it’s 1349” cartwheel fists spinning into punk and post-punk influences, demonstrating a...not “soft” exactly, but certainly less unwelcoming underbelly. These songs are taut meshes of angst ridden swing and pure catchiness, fist pumping yet with a sardonic sneer so very redolent of punk rock’s jaded cynicism. It doesn’t always work; closer “Yggdrasil” is bit of downtempo grungy alt-rock which isn’t offensively terrible by any means, but it does mean that the release closes on something of a damp squib. At around a minute in length it’s hardly a deal breaker but when your album clocks in a quarter-hour (if that) then even the faintest examples of filler are gravely unwelcome.
Still, a moments divergence into tawdriness can’t burnish the overall regard I hold this album in. It’s a prime example of modern power-violence, appallingly heavy, imbued with passion yet never taking itself too seriously, plucking influences from hardcore to grind to classic punk and blending them all into a delicious short sharp shock of an album. In this world of ours, frenetic and hissing with ceaseless activity as it is, even the busiest of us can find space for 15 minutes; I strongly suggest you fill those minutes with this album.
