Bloody Keep - Wampyric Countess...

December 24th, 2024

Hails! For my first album review on this site, I choose one of the best Bloody Keep EP's to date! Not THE best, but it's a precursor to THE best (Rats of Black Death). I loved the production on this album. Abysmal Specter (henceforth known as AS...) has stuck to this raw, lo-fi production on all of his major projects (Curta'n Wall, Old Nick, and Bloody Keep) and if memory serves, began cleaner and more polished production styles since 2021, with a few exceptions, and Wampyric Countess is one of them!

I don't want these reviews to be too long, I want to get my point across without rambling forever like most reviewers do. Sigils and Symbols has a great melody to it, much like all of AS' works, it's very memorable. The lyrics fit perfectly with the cadence of the guitars! Wampyric Countess following that track, is even better in my opinion. The "broken squeaky toy synth" as a bandcamp reviewer called it is PERFECT. I love things like that. It's silly sounding but also very fitting for raw black metal that doesn't take itself too seriously yet keeps it really raw and 'kvlt'. That synth alone makes this song for me, it gives me feelings of childlike sillyness with a tinge of melancholy, but still sounds 'fun' in a way.... masterpiece of a track.

The Death of the Sun is a long interlude between songs. I mean it's a real track, but to me it's an interlude. And just because it is, doesn't mean you should sleep on it! It really comes back in during the 2nd half of the song. Magnificent build up to the masterpiece that is Wampyric Depression. This song encapsultes the whole EP and is a work of art, you can feel the aches and pains of vampyric isolation and the gloomyness of one's own Mind-Prison, layers of brick walls spiraling up to the tower that keeps your soul....

The verse builds and builds, with the chorus reminding us of the sun so bright that keeps us confined within our bloody keep, and the bridge with it's organs builds us up for the final chorus send off.... where the drums are the skankiest, the organs take us high and low, followed by what I consider to be the zenith of AS' artistic expression, a most vicious trickery... that little pause!!!!! that tiny little pause in the song is everything to me and grips me every single time I hear this song, with my hands beating along with the drums.... the wait for the pause, and a flick of my finger to initiate the comeback.. marvelous. I so deeply love what I call 'audible trickery' such as this where tiny little details here and there fool the listener. We think the song is going to go in X or Y direction and then it throws you for a loop, but doesn't completly venture off the rails, and insteads REWARDS you for being tricked like that.

It's things like that that really cement my love for this little yet powerful EP. And it doesn't stop there.... we can't view a body of someone's work in a vaccum; another body of work can indeed complement or 'season' another. Rats of Black Death would go on to feature a re-recorded, more polished version of this song, and it's even better. But! It cannot exist by itself!!! This lofi demo, 'prequel' song only serves to accentuate or complement it's successor.... and most of all.... throws yet another curve ball at you! I'll write more on that curve ball in my review for Rats of Black Death when I eventually get to it.....

For now... this vampire needs his wampyric sleep.....