Review by Allan on April 30, 2003.

There’s little to be found about Summon, one of the US’ lesser-known black metal bands. Combining thrash and even a bit of death metal with their black metal, Summon’s latest album “And The Blood Runs Black” is quite a delve into the past. For what they are, Summon demonstrate the old school fairly well, but “And The Blood Runs Black” is still a hair short of being good.

What you’ve got here is basically run of the mill death/black/thrash metal. Not the modern kind, but old school. It’s fairly decent. A slick production courtesy of James Murphy beefs things up quite a bit. But from what I’ve heard of Summon, “And The Blood Runs Black” is simply the same album again, with that better production. And I suppose that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Summon know what they’re good at, and they stick to it. Yet I always tend to find the original 80’s and early 90’s bands to be superior, which tends to be the general consensus.

A few moments stick out here and there, such as the intro, or the really cool whispers on ‘Blackwinds Abyss,’ but other than that I’m pretty much left cold by this thing. Very little emotion, and the atmosphere isn’t truly there either. Summon are just kind of generic.

You know if this is your type of thing. Some people eat, sleep, and breathe the old school. Summon might be for you, but I think most of us would rather go listen to Slayer than drop a few bucks on something inferior.

Bottom Line: Old school black/death/thrash. A decent album, but just not something that everybody will be interested in, nor is it something that will be remembered in a few years.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 7
Atmosphere: 5
Production: 7
Originality: 4
Overall: 5

Rating: 5.6 out of 10