Review by Nathan on January 8, 2024.

Have you ever been listening to Arghoslent and thought to yourself "damn, these guys have some pretty sick riffs but the not-so-subtle racism kind of makes me uncomfortable?" Well have I got the band for you! The only thing that makes you immediately uncomfortable about House Of Atreus is how much they actually do sound like Arghoslent, so much that you get suspicious and start to look for references to slave flogging in the lyrics (that's normal, right?). Fear not, though. The lyrics here appear to be much more straightforward interpretations of Greek myths and war and whatnot, and there doesn't appear to be a lot of irrational anger being thrown around on The Spear And The Ichor That Follows. Incorrigible Bigotry shares a lot in common with this album right of the bat, though, and that can't be ignored, especially not in a review. The vocalist has the same sort of tone and while not quite as ranty as Arghoslent's old vocalist, still has an unhinged, rambling quality to him that comes out every now and then. Where this most closely parallels those dirty backwater racists from Virginia, though, is in the riffs and how they're delivered.

Holy shit, The Spear And The Ichor That Follows has some fucking sweet riffs. Not just one riff per song, not just that one at the beginning or end, ALL of the riffs present on this album are solid at their worst and straight bangerz at best. The reason these guys have a very high consistency in riff quality? That can be traced back to the fact that they're pretty liberal in which subgenres of heavy metal they borrow from to create riffs. Arghoslent got by for a very similar reason--since the initial foundation of death metal is supplemented with a thrashy energy and some ear-pleasing 80's classic metal leads, these guys can just craft riff slideshows that flow seamlessly. You could call this melodic death metal, but this doesn't sound anything like modern melodeath--it's more in line with the original formula of "death metal + Iron Maiden influence" that created melodeath over anything. The songs never sound incomplete or incoherent even if they just throw a bunch of riffs together and call it a song. Most of the time, all that really matters is that the riffs next to each other sound smooth enough and the rest of the song will write itself, because every riff is just dope as shit. I can't even put my finger on what makes them so good, even with the consideration of the masterful crossbreeding of heavy metal subgenres. They just have this quality of being quite detailed and catchy (with HEAPS of random little solos and lots of prominent melody) yet they still have a definable groove and you still get that feeling in your gut when you hear something metal as fuck.

There's perhaps one little difference that sets House of Atreus apart from their racist dopplegangers: the black metal influence. Arghoslent had a black metal tinge to their sound in faint traces, no doubt, but it seemed more like an unintentional influence than anything--for example, something like "The Purging Fires of War" sounds like it could have fit on a primarily black metal album, but its sound like they arrived at the riffs for that song by playing around with traditional metal stuff as opposed to trimming it straight from black metal. House of Atreus, on the other hand, have no qualms with making some of their riffs sound like straight-up triumphant black metal, and the final track ("The River Black") is a wonderful curveball closer that puts the black metal influence on full display. That song would be noteworthy for that reason alone, but it also utilizes a much more slow-building and (for lack of a better term) "epic" feel with its songwriting. Instead of writing a bunch of sick riffs, they only have a few in that song, but they hammer them into your brain real good. They created a galloping, melodic black metal track that doesn't lose any of the intensity the rest of the music had, and "The River Black" is hands-down my favorite track on the album as such. When these guys sit down and actually try and write a focused song instead of just jamming tracks full of riffs, the results are even better. House of Atreus, simply put, know what Arghoslent is doing better than Arghoslent themselves do.

That's probably the most hilarious thing about The Spear And The Ichor That Follows, though. This album ran the huge risk of being labeled a shameless rip-off of Arghoslent, but since they do everything Arghoslent did even better and with less racism they effectively just made Arghoslent's music obsolete. Why should you bother getting Incorrigible Bigotry when you can get the same thing from a group of guys with more black metal in their riffs and more meat in the production? It's fucking great. Before, this style of melodeathy thrash was kind of hard to enjoy despite its originality because it got lumped in with racist ideologies, but now there's no excuse not to like it. This is one of the top 10 albums of 2015 right here, and a fine example of the student surpassing the teacher with absolute ease.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Carl on January 1, 2024.

In 1996, the pusboil that was black metal had definitely broken open, and the metal world was flooded with releases particularly from Scandinavia, but the smell of black putrefaction was starting to come from other countries as well. This dark miasma was primarily wafting from the western part of Europe, but in the eastern part of the continent there was trouble brewing as well. Poland was a pretty prolific purveyor of black metal, but the wave of grim bile had also reached the country of Serbia, which gave us Introitus, and their first (and only) full length.

On a purely musical level, this has no surprises on offer at all, because this is going to sound familiar to anyone who has heard more than three 90's black metal albums. The sound brought forth by these men bears noticeable traces of the early releases by acts such as Marduk, Dark Funeral, Enthroned and Abigor, to name a few. Relying for a good part on the by then well-established trope of tremelo picked chainsaw guitar riffing underpinned by sharp blast beat driven percussion in the fast parts, and alternating these with more atmospheric midtempo sections that remind me of Immortal's "Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism" debut album. It was a tried and tested approach to black metal, even back then, but Introitus manage to add some touches of their own to the mix, for instance in the vocals. Here, the usual croaking black metal scream approach is used for most part, but these are alternated with low growls at times, adding a slight death metal edge to the usual Scandinavian black metal style on offer, but a special mention for the excellent guitar work is in order too. The riffing is a bit more intricate than usual, with subtle hints of Swedish death metal melody woven through it, and there is made copious use of clean guitar as well. Examples of this are the middle part in album opener "Towards the Enchanting Dark", and the intermezzo's "Resurgent" and "Damnation's Throne", actually reminding me of late 80's/early 90's Metallica, actually. Because the music is further devoid of keyboards and female vocals, it seems that these clean guitars are the only atmospheric touches allowed into the black metal of Introitus.

I can imagine that black metal producers were not such a frequent occurence in Serbia in the mid 90's, so it will not come as a surprise that the soundmix on this album is on the unbalanced side, although it could have been a whole of a lot worse. Both the guitars and vocals are up front in the mix, and both sound great, actually. The problem is that the drums are for a good deal buried beneath them, making it hard to make out what is being played, causing some of the songs to sound unfocused because one can't really hear what's going on apart from the guitar. Another thing I found odd, was the static crackling that momentarily surfaces on occasion. At first I thought it was my speakers, but upon examining, it was on the cd itself. All in all, these flaws aren't such a big problem in the end, you can't have black metal sounding too perfect, right?

Introitus are indeed pioneers, and thus deserve to be recognized as such, because theirs is not a name uttered frequently enough. Despite the flaws in the production, this is a fairly good black metal release, even if it's a bit too melodic for my personal taste. When they go full bang, they seethe with malice, and when the foot is taken off the accelerator, the band knows how to build a fitting atmosphere. Add to this the excellent guitar work, and this is a very decent dose of underground 90's black metal. Too bad that it gets kinda undercut by a less than perfect balanced soundmix.

This is one of those buried releases from the 90's black metal scene that seems to be forgotten, and kind of undeserved, really. It may not have been an earth-shattering offering in the style, but there were far crappier acts walking around at that particular time. Keeping in mind their isolated position of being a black metal band from Serbia, the flaws present on their sole full album are easily forgiven in my book, and it would be a shame to totally disregard this album.

If you long back to those 90's black metal days, this should serve you well, and it's definitely worth checking out if you're into any of the bands mentioned above. It would be a shame if this one would fall between the cracks of time.

Rating: 7 out of 10