Artist: Graveland
Country: Poland
Label: No Colours Records
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2003

Months and months ago there were already circulating some MP3’s of this new Graveland album in the scene (legally put on websites by the way!). And the (in one word: awesome) artwork was already published about half a year ago. So, people knew what they could expect from Mr. Darken, and yet… They won’t be disappointed at all.

No real changes occur on this new epic masterpiece. The trend of the previous albums has been pulled through to “The Fire of Awakening”. That means actually nothing more than the traditional Graveland album, just like we heard with the previous few albums. Yet, this album can’t excite me that much as “Creed Of Iron” (or “Prawo Stali” if you prefer the Polish version) or “Raiders Of Revenge / Raise Your Sword” did – when we speak of Graveland in its new style. The huge fanbase of the band know what they can expect with this new – still awesome and breathtaking – epos. Five great battle hymns in over 45 minutes will take you (again) on a trip into history. This is Graveland as it should be.

And to whom it may concern: Graveland is a Polish one-man band, by Rob Darken, that gets its influence from old cultures like the Celts and Germanic. A solid mixture of Celtic rhythms and raw blackish guitar riffs and great raw vocals. Although Graveland is also influenced by Norwegian acts like Darkthrone, early Emperor and Burzum, it has an own style that can be recognised out of thousands of other bands. Lyrically Darken mostly writes (and sings) about the past times in history and anti-Christian topics. And especially about how to get rid of the Judeo-Christian power through Jew-slandering, this led him to be labelled Nazi.