SUMMONING — Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame (review)

SUMMONING — Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame album cover

Album · 2001 · Atmospheric Black Metal

3/5 · 2022-05-31
lukretion

Austrian duo Summoning have carved a unique path within black metal, navigating further and further away from it until they created a whole new genre, halfway between score music and metal. On their fifth full-length album, 2001’s Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame, the band were well into their metamorphosis and by then their sound had consolidated into a distinctive and immediately recognisable style. In this sense, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame may be perceived as “more of the same”, which is to some extent true, albeit there are subtle variations that give the album its own unique identity compared to previous Summoning’s records.

The music revolves around the combination of epic keyboards and tremolo picked guitar riffs, with the former dominating over the latter. The songs are very symphonic with lots of orchestrations, creating a cinematic, film-music vibe that is further accentuated by the use of spoken samples from the radio productions of The Lord of the Rings. These samples, which are one of the innovations on Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame compared to previous albums, are intertwined with classic black metal growls (sung by both band members, Protector and Silenius) and, in the final song “Farewell”, a clean male choir (another novelty). The mood is epic and majestic, a feeling that is reinforced by the incorporation of “marching” style (sampled) drums and percussions. The songs mostly stay in the mid-tempo range and each track is based on a limited number of riffs and motifs, repeated extensively throughout their considerable length. There are suitable shifts in dynamics throughout most songs, as guitars and drums fade out to let the keyboards carry the music for a few bars. This injects some variation into the compositions and creates a satisfying sense of build and release.

Nevertheless, I feel that, for the most part, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame works best as background music rather than for attentive, active listening. There isn’t an awful lot going on in each song and many of the tracks explore similar melodic ideas and moods. This makes it hard to retain attention throughout the 56 minutes of the record. For the same reason, it is also hard to pick favourites among the album’s 8 tracks, although “In Hollow Halls beneath the Fells” does come across as the most well-accomplished piece here.

Overall, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame is a bit of an acquired taste. If you are into the score music / black metal hybrid that Summoning have been cooking up throughout their career, you’ll lap this up eagerly. In fact, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame may as well be one of the best records the band have released up to this point in their career. It is certainly more assured and pleasant than its 1999’s precursor, the grim, guitar-driven Stronghold. As such, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame may also be a suitable point of entry into Summoning’s discography for those readers who are uninitiated to the black art of the Austrian combo. Either way, this is a quality release that I may not be returning to very often, but, when I do, it will continue to provide listening pleasures, I am sure.