ANCIENT — The Cainian Chronicle (review)

ANCIENT — The Cainian Chronicle album cover Album · 1996 · Melodic Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
Black metal always walks a tightrope between being genuinely scary and just being a bit dorky, and Ancient certainly cross the line into dorky territory. But you can make dorkiness work for you if you embrace it in an endearing fashion - say, by making a concept album based on your favourite tabletop RPG, which is precisely what Ancient did here, basing most of the songs on the album off aspects of the mythology of Vampire: the Masquerade. (They aren't the only metal band to riff off the World of Darkness games either - Werewolf: the Apocalypse inspired Slipknot's early work.)

The band make this an endearing homage rather than a clumsy disaster by avoiding any pretense of being kvlt, embracing a melodic black metal sound which was innovative at the time and is still rather enjoyable now - like Cradle of Filth with less classical pretensions and more LARPing.
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