Bathory

Octagon (Black Mark)
by Chaz Thorndike

Bathory releases a new album and it doesn’t suck! I was losing faith in my man Quorthon. The first few albums were seminal, stellar albums and all that. Then they, well, they started to suck. Celtic Frost had the same problem, but that’s a different story. On Octagon, there’s more rock ‘n’ roll influence than I remember, but Q-Man still knows how to twiddle the knobs and make a simple rock song sound like flushing marbles down the toilet. Repeatedly. Don’t misunderstand – Bathory still has the hyperspeed attack of yore, complete with cheesy lyrics about bleeding, bludgeoning, evil, and madness, it’s just mixed in with Judas-Priest-recorded-in-a-sewer-pipe metal and the mighty Quorthon on vocals.

He sounds almost human on this album. I’m not sure if I like it, but he didn’t ask me. “Century” kinda threw me a curve, too. The chorus reminded me of that annoying INXS song where all the words rhyme and they throw cards around. Either that or “Vogue,” the point of which, I still don’t get. So the words sound the same – does that make a song? Metal bands have been stringing together complicated thesaurus words since the beginning, so why stop now? Other songs sound like Nuclear Assault; others like traditional speedcore, and some just grind. Oh yeah, Q is back. (I’m ignoring the Kiss cover, “Deuce,” at the end. Really, I am.)