Arkillery - Northern Destroyer (2003)

Originally wrote & published on October 15th, 2003

Arkillery is an American black metal solo project from Krom. Arkillery’s sound lies somewhere between thrash and black metal with possibly the worst production job ever. If you think bands like Ildjarn or Graveland had raw productions wait until you hear this. The biggest difference is that these bands used a studio to record their songs. Although a weak one but nonetheless they did. Arkillery on the other hand is much different as the songs are simply just recorded live in Krom’s rehearsal space. Needless to say this results in an extremely raw sound, perhaps the rawest I’ve ever heard.

Now while I have no problem with raw thrashy-black metal one of the things that makes this band sort of hard to fully enjoy is the fact that all the songs are long…very long in fact! Most of the songs clock in at over ten minutes while others are around the seven and eight minute mark. Sure there’s really nothing wrong with long songs, but in this case a large part of the songs are instrumental and for me it’s kind of hard to listen to something like this that’s sourly under-produced and repetative. Some of the other songs hold more of a Viking metal sound to them similar to the epic works of Bathory yet again these songs would have been really great had they been actually recorded in a studio.

The vocals of Krom range from grunt-ish like rasped black metal vocals to clean Viking like vocals. Although I don’t have any lyrics I’m guessing they deal with Viking related material since Krom claims to play Viking metal. There really isn’t any specific song that stands out for me, just certain parts in each song. All the songs have some really great guitar work in them, which proves Krom really knows how to play. The drumming is rather basic though and while I’m not sure I think the drumming may be from a drum machine.

Overall, it’s a bit hard to fully grade this man’s work. On one hand he proves to be a great musician with a lot of good ideas, but on the other we have the ultra raw production, which brutally affects the music. As far as I’m concerned you're either going to love this or you’ll be slowly sedated into a coma-like condition while listening. However if you desire to hear some of the rawest black metal ever then Arkillery is your band.