I only knew this Czech band from their collaboration on last year’s split with Germany’s Vindorn and Sator Marte; the latter is a band that shares Triumph, Genus’s instrumentalist Svar, by the way. Triumph, Genus consists of this multi-instrumentalist, as well as vocalist / lyricist Jaroslav, and this first full length comes on both CD and vinyl (the latter, however, limited to 300 copies only).
Since I am a ‘fan’ of the Czech Black Metal scene, I was really looking forward to listen to Všehorovnost …, and the album surely does not disappoint, despite a lack of originality in many aspects. The vocals, to start with, are very ‘Czech’, or at least from that area (Hungary, Slovakia and Poland included). It’s the kind of gutturally-screaming grunt that characterises many of the bands / projects out there. Consider it a mixture of Big Boss (Root), Attila Csihar (…) and Storm (Master’s Hammer). Musically, the whole comes with a very epic approach; not of the folksy kind, yet rather the victorious / warlike sort of Nordic-influenced battle-hunger. The tempo is mainly fast, but there are a couple of slower parts too, which, of course, is a positive thing. The atmosphere too lacks of innovation, for there undoubtedly is a huge influence from the Second Wave-era (read: first half of the nineties specifically). Yet again, since the performance and song-writing are convincing and decently executed, the lack of being original isn’t but an inferior detail. And finally, it isn’t an album with six tracks that just sound the same. Every piece has a specific identity, including bathorian obscurity, grim Post-Black dissonance or devastating will-to-conquer.
The sound, finally, just fits. It’s raw and rough, unpolished and therefor truly ‘underground’, but neither beneath acceptance, nor as if the album was recorded in some oozy bunker or moist dungeon.