(Black Metal) Master's Hammer - Ritual [Reissued] - 2001, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Written by Abominatrix on November 2nd, 2003
There are very few albums in my collection to which I would give a perfect rating. This is one of them, and ironically I rarely see anyone refer to it at all. It's certainly not too hard to obtain, so that can't be the answer. Maybe it's only that this band isn't from Scandinavia, had an admittedly very brief blaze of glory before they turned into something very strange and then vanished into the depths of some Czech tavern or something. Either way, this might just change some peoples ideas of what black metal really is all about. In my view, this is very possibly the best black metal album ever, in fact.
Where the fuck to start? The music here is not what someone weened on Marduk or Satyricon or even Bathory might expect. It certainly has some similarities to a few bands, but it's more in the approach to songwriting than an actual sound...namely, putting the Metal before all else. I think a lot of black metal bands tend to forego great riffs and actual metallic power in favour of grim and harsh atmospheres, trancey repetitive anti-melodies or, worst case scenario, endless blastbeats and noodling guitar wankery. Master's Hammer, at least on this album, along with bands like Tormentor, Rotting Christ and Grand Belial's Key, still manage to sound as evil as a nun burning in the fires of Hell, yet also make you want to headbang like a maniac, scream with the ecstatic fervour of damnation and set volume controls to maximum. I always thought that bands like this could easily appeal to traditional metal fans, people who normally wouldn't bother with black metal at all because "the musicians suck", "the production is all shit", or "the music is mindless". I don't agree with any of these tenets; and yet I can see where some of these arguments are coming from. A lot of intelligent people dismiss black metal out of hand because they think that the bands that get the most praise: Marduk, Emperor, Satyricon, Dark Funeral, Abigor, Dimu Borgir...exemplify the genre and thus, when they check out those bands and realize that they have few if any "real metal" components, they tend to slag the whole genre as a load of kids spewing feces into the mouths of ignorant losers. Bands like Master's Hammer and those others I mentioned earlier are unfortunately a scant few these days, though they were more prevalent a mere ten years ago.. However, there are still enough great releases in black metal's past, and a few bands still carrying the torch, enough to hopefully let us reconsider the growing stigma against the genre among those who are stalwarts of "true metal".
Allright, so back to the purpose of this review..Master's Hammer. Starting off the proceedings is a sparse keyboard intro that might scare off a few people...at first I hated this bit and thought it would signify a CD full of the silliest sounding, cheapest Casio knockoff keys imaginable, I'll be honest. However, about thirty seconds after the intro begins the whole band suddenly kicks in...and you're struck by the incredible meatiness of the production. That's right, a black metal album with an absolutely streamlined production...what the hell is going on? Often, I prefer a dirty, raw sound to accompany my metal, but I think for a release like this, where you really want to hear everything that's going on, exactly, it's best to have a crystaline sound. Even the intro managed to grow on me over time, and the way it suddenly and totally unexpectedly drops you into the first real song is amazing. That first song, "Pбd modly", is one of my personal favourites too. It features some powerful chugging riffage, some really cool almost Iron Maiden-ish (read "Phantom of the Opera") melodic guitar interplay and a very minimal use of keyboards. The vocals on this whole album are insane. I spent quite a while trying to figure out how Franta Storm manages to sound so bloody weird throughout MH's black metal career, and I think I have part of the answer...he's inhaling while he's screaming. Of course, I could be totally off the mark, but I think it explains part of why the vocals are so manic and sick sounding, that and the totally incomprehensible (to me) Czech Storm delivers at sometimes rapid-fire speeds. At the end of "Pбd modly" he lets out some absolutely hair-raising howls, too, with reverb added to make them sound like some morbid spectral apparition from beyond. "Kaћdэ z nбs ..
" is a faster, thrashier piece, and there are no trace of keyboards for the next few tracks. One of the things I love most about this album is the fact that each song contains an impressive number of sometimes fairly complex riffs, and the band executes all this with absolute precision. You can hear every note, every cymbal and tom fill (the drum sound is one of the best I've ever heard), and the mix is fairly bassy, although, like many a metal album, the actual bass itself just mirrors the guitar most of the time. The title track is a juggernaut of an instrumental that plows through magnificent riff after riff, then finally slows down with a powerful tympani crash (yes, they use tympanis, though they're very minimal on this particular album), and going into a wailing lead part that's both eerie and compellingly "metal". "Jama Pekkal" is probably the grooviest song on the album, with a chorus I can actually "sing" along to, since it's just the songtitle screamed with great gusto, а la great thrash metal. Then there's what I think might be the absolute standout for me, "Ъtok"...which starts off with a killer bass riff before the rest of the band kicks in, and it's another maniacal ride through the evil corners of a Bohemian occultist's mind (hell, I don't know what they're singing about, but this song is dedicated to anton Lavey). You'll recognize one of the melodies in this song, for it is the much-famed "Funeral Dirge", or rather the first couple of bars of it, written by Chopin I believe. The keyboards make one of their very infrequent reappearances in this song, accenting the funeral dirge and adding a twisted counterpoint to its beautifully morbid excellence. And the ending! More of those inhuman, anguished howls!
yes, this review is extremely masturbatory. For that I appologize, however I find it hard to describe this album in purely objective terms as I normally would try to do. This is as near perfect a work of art as I can think of, and there isn't a single thing I would have had Master's Hammer do differently in its construction. It is a grand statement, a behemoth of metal pride coupled with the negative ethos of black metal and forged into something unique, heavy and ingenious. If you enjoy black metal and haven't heard this yet, what the fuck are you waiting for? If you have avoided most BM until now, because you think the style lacks metal spirit, please, do investigate this...it might just change that assessment. Yes, sadly, master's Hammer would collapse into itself and become something less than great, but all you really need is this album. The second, "THe Jilemnice Occultist", is also a great metal album, but to me it's less perfect, as the band was experimenting with a lot of new ideas and many of them came off a little on the silly sounding side.

EAC extraction logfile from 1. April 2007, 8:33 for CD
Master's Hammer / Ritual
Used drive : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-109 Adapter: 0 ID: 1
Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache
Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Used output format : C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe (User Defined Encoder)
128 kBit/s
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s
Other options :
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Installed external ASPI interface
Track 1
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Track 2
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Track 3
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Track 9
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Track 11
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No errors occured
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