Time Signature
We are the angels of death...
Genre: black metal
Military madness and black metal mayhem. Yup, Kommandant are back on the battlefield and you just pray that you won't face the Kommandant in battle.
Stylistically, we are dealing with black metal of the rawer and more aggressive kind, meaning lots of blastbeats, tense harmonies, really harsh vocals, and a general appearance of chaos combined with the repetition of often simple, but evil, tremolo-picked parts. Drawing on atmospheric effects, at times, and what sounds like chanting, Kommandant successfully generate a dimension of dark oppression which is in an interesting sonic contrast with the chaotic black metal that constitutes the core of their music - just check tracks like "Downfall" and "Obsidian Gravitational".
The music is raw and chaotic, but the production is actually quite well defined. It is, of course, not polished, but you can hear what is going on, which I - who am not (yet?) able to appreciate the "underproduction" of much raw black metal - really find an attractive aspect of this album.
As black metal goes, Kommandant's "The Draconian Archetype" is relentless in its onslaught of blastbeats and songs that really structurally seem to reflect the chaos of war and the oppression of dictatorship very well. Fans of the genre definitely should give it a listen.