Devotion to Unholy Creed

It never fails: whenever a style of music evolves, grows, expands, changes or takes on new dimensions, there will inevitably be retro artists who long for an earlier era and go out of their way to emulate that era. Burial Hordes, for example, are a Greek black metal band that got started in 2001 but have made a point of emulating early black metal — and they remain firmly committed to that approach on Devotion to Unholy Creed. This album was released in early 2009, but stylistically, Burial Hordes do everything they can to make the disc sound like it could have been recorded in Scandinavia around 1989, 1990, or 1991. Not only does Devotion to Unholy Creed emulate early black metal stylistically, but also, it does so in terms of production. Devotion to Unholy Creed favors a rough, rugged, bare-bones production style; the obvious goal was to capture the garage-like rawness of early black metal, and that goal is accomplished on Occult-obsessed tunes like "Abysmal Goatfeast," "Praise the Bloodcode of Hatred," "Hellborn," and "Infernal Necromancers" (all of which underscore black metal's musical debt to old-school punk). There isn't a trace of symphonic black metal to be found on Devotion to Unholy Creed, which is exactly the way Burial Hordes wanted it. But even though this 36-minute CD accomplishes its stylistic goals — even though Devotion to Unholy Creed really does sound like it could have been recorded 18, 19, or 20 years earlier than it was actually recorded — the material simply isn't very memorable. This is a competent outing, but there are no compelling reasons why one would choose Devotion to Unholy Creed over countless other late-2000s recordings that long for black metal's early years. Devotion to Unholy Creed illustrates Burial Hordes' credentials as black metal purists, but purity alone isn't enough to make them stand out in the ultra-crowded black metal field.