Artist: Serpent Gate
Country: Sweden
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Digital Demo
Year: 2025
It is true that the things you grow up with always keep a certain charm, no matter your current age. Things tend to make more impact and help you form your personal frame of reference and overall taste in basically everything in life. That is probably why I can’t get enough of Raw Black Metal from around the 2000’s, these years marked a transitional period in which the music developed from its often very basic and primitive fundamentals to something slightly more sophisticated. Yet, still retaining its harshness, obscure and, more often than not, misanthropic perspective. ‘Serpent Gate’, the debut demo of a Swedish one-man entity with the same name, brings back many memories from those bygone days in which I tried to obtain demo tapes from small underground distros that I could only select based on their “cool names” or interesting titles…
While the use of keyboards might sound a little more in line with contemporary Raw Black Metal, giving the music a slight atmospheric touch, the howling vocals and especially the productional aesthetics definitely revives the underground feeling of some 25 years ago. The mix of ‘Serpent Gate’ emphasizes the guitars and drums, giving the vocals a more background role and, as a whole, feels like a third instrument. This particular balancing act of elements shows this anonymous musician’s sense for memorable riffing and overall song writing is one of true excellence.
I personally love the way the keyboards and vocals almost melt together in an instrumental addition to enhance that late 90’s feeling and complement the strong riffs. The way in which the melodies, both from the keyboards and the riffs, contribute to that feeling of nostalgia, but at the same time fit seamlessly into the contemporary black metal scene, in which one-man projects seem to pop up one after the other, each with an interesting musical adventure of its own.
With the main part of this first demo being sandwiched between a slightly obligatory piece of Dungeon Synth and the music sounding familiar, this might not feel overly original. But if you are in for a ride of feel-good Black Metal: this is definitely one to be considered.
