Nargaroth - Semper Fidelis
March 23 2008 at 08:29:12 PM
Recorded in 2001 and intended to see release that same year,
Semper Fidelis was allegedly Kanwulf’s swan song, his big fuckoff to the scene that ostensibly never embraced him. The Teutonic Knight would forever have resisted the acceptance anyway, all while surpassing his contemporaries with grossly limited resources, but enough feral passion to imbue even his most mediocre releases with a sort on incantatory magic. Kanwulf’s Wagnerian obsessions with valor, battle and omnipotence are fully fleshed here, each song a treble heavy tribute to a time that never even existed—a time of blood-drenched glory, shimmering spoils. The guitars respond in kind with gooseflesh inducing “triumphalism;” the percussion—courtesy of Occulta Mors and L’hiver sound like an amped up Phil Rudd—robotically propulsive, manically linear. “Wherever I will bleed / My faith I always keep / My visions only lead / Me to my art, my own creed.” Bis vincit qui se vincit in victoria…
[Stewart Voegtlin]
.jpg "Interview: Lugubrum")
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