Published: January 11, 2025

Oh, Canada! I love our neighbors to the North! Well, I’m from Michigan so some of Canada actually lies South of me, but I love that country. It’s nice to see they got their postal service up and running again! And survived our asshat soon-to-be President saying he wants to take Canada for his own. What a clown. Since I started reviewing again, I have had a lot of Canadian Metal albums come my way. I mean, like a lot. Almost all of them have been good, as is the case with Kings Rot’s newest full-length album “At The Gates Of Adversarial Darkness”.

While they claim to be Black Metal, which they definitely are, the music on this newest album is very heroic and epic sounding bordering on a sort of Black/Viking Metal to me, and I love that music. Mithoyn, Einherjer and the like. Fast drumming, fast dissonant guitars and a good bass presence lends to an overall feeling of heroism. The band is very into Tolkien and other fantasy and maybe that’s where the heroic atmosphere comes from. All three band members seem like seasoned musicians, and they have crafted an album that has great songwriting and musicianship.

The vocals are almost totally Blackened but there are times when B.W. uses a very guttural Death Metal vocal style that I like. By the way, “B.W”. are my first and middle initials. Maybe we are related? No? Okay, on we go… Like I stated above, the lyrics weave dark tales of Fantasy and Tolkien’s novels. I’ve said it most of my life and I’ll say it now: The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit novels will probably never be topped and most likely the movies never will either. J.R.R. Tolkien is a great source material for Metal.

The production on “At The Gates Of Adversarial Darkness” is top notch, and that seems par for the course for albums released by Hypnotic Dirge.

The artwork is one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while and is taken right out of The Lord Of the Rings. Done in hues of red and black it is a very dark and eerie scene of Mt. Doom. I can stare at that for hours. Great job by Misanthropic Art!

What are you waiting for? The armies of Sauron to come end you once and for all. Grab this album, some armor, a sword, axe or bow and join Kings Rot on their journey through dark and fantastical music! Maybe you will meet Tom Bombadil! If so, ask him why he wasn't in the movies.