Band:	Agruss
Album:	Morok
Style:	Atmospheric black metal, Death metal
Release date:	April 2012

01. Damnation
02. Morok
03. Punishment For All
04. Fire, The Savior From Plague
05. Ashes Of The Future
06. When The Angels Fall
07. Under The Snow I
08. Under The Snow II
09. Under The Snow III

One look at this whole set-up and it's easy to see we're in for a pretty typical black metal listen. The logo, the artwork, even the name gives you a pretty good idea what you're in for. You know what? It is pretty damn typical.

The only question is, for being such a typical album, how the hell does Morok manage to achieve such shit-blasting power?

Razor sharp guitars, blast beats, shrieks, growls, fairly lo-fi production, atmospheric intros and interludes. Yeah, this all sounds pretty familiar, right? Well, all the components are very familiar, but everything is cranked as hard as it can go. It's one thing to say a band is going to blow your speakers, Agruss on the other hand legitimately sound like they're doing damage to either your speakers, or their recording equipment. Aside from the few sparse atmospheric bits, it sounds like every inch of space is being occupied by sound here. The low end is covered with a thick, blundering death metal sound, while the high pitched black metal shrieks & eerie leads come in over the top. It's not merely just a thick, frantic wall of sound either, the song writing here is actually really memorable. There is a few moments of black metal blandness put through extremely cool production, but more often it's all about tangible riffs and moving, spooky passages.

...Yet, it still is pretty damned gritty. It's not sloppy, amateurish lo-fi type work. It sounds like the band really had a grasp of what they were doing behind the mixing boards as well. Things aren't raw merely for the sake of being raw. It's raw when it needs to be, yet has an appropriate amount of clarity to bring certain riffs to the forefront.

Black metal without avant-garde jibber-jabber, yet still fucking rules? What are you waiting around for? Listen to Morok, or go to hell.

...By the way, fuck Manowar. "When we're in town, speakers explode" Bullshit. Speakers preemptively commit suicide every time the name Agruss is even mentioned.