Countess
On Wings of Defiance

This is a dutch band called Countess which could have indicated that it was a female fronted gothic metal band with some symphonic undertones, which it is; except for one small thing, it isn’t. It isn’t a band for starters as it is a nowadays a project of one guy, I think it has been like that since the late 90s and it was a band during its early days. Now there is only this Orlok fellow that does everything in the band. “Orlok the Insane, Orlok the Magnificient, Orlok the Obtuse, Orlok the Goddam Fuckin Man is what he is. This orthodox son of a bitch has done it once again crafting metal in the vein of the almighty Bathory and the almighty Manilla Road....only much, much more retarded. This is a compliment....trust me!!” this was a comment I stole from a site that promotes stolen albums so I can clearly quote it without needing to cite the source as they clearly show that intellectual property rights has no meaning to them. So it is a retarded one man band? and that in a positive manner, guess we all see things differently. This is also said to be one of the most eminent dutch black metal bands, I don’t know if eminent is a word I would ever use for extreme metal but each to his own I suppose. They have released twelve albums before this one which will be their thirteenth and it is a defiant one.

I guess that a musical description of this band might be: the one legged crow flies defiantly over a sonic landscape that is raw yet melodic and looks a bit like the rural areas of eastern Europe. Which is very clear what I mean, the vocalist sounds like a one legged crow in his croaking singing style and the music is melodic and raw with a production that sounds like something out of East Berlin in the early eighties. The lyrics is about anti-monotheism and historical stuff and so on, he like horned ones if one is to judge from the discography. And much like Sascha Paeth with his Rhapsody project he is using a drum machine for his music this Orlok guy (according to some sources on the web) which makes a dirty kind of sound in this production. A production that plays for more than one hour and has nine original Countess tracks and two cover tracks one was from Demon and the other Venom. I think a question comes to mind when listening to this album, why not Duchess?

Difficult album to really review this one, I like the raw yet melodic feel of the instrumental stuff but the vocals are bad. I am constantly annoyed by the vocals, especially when I like the musical side of things. Good super distorted guitar sound, good atmosphere and everything but still with these kinds of vocals it isn’t really listener friendly but sure if you can overlook the vocals it is rather good I would say, but I think I would have enjoyed it much more had it been shorter but over an hour is just too long. I think he should have taken one of the swords on the cover art and chopped away some 20-25 minutes from this album then I think I would have placed a higher rating on this album.

So I think that if you something of an underground person who likes cheaper and dirtier productions you might like this, especially if croaking aggressive vocals is what you enjoy. If you are someone who doesn’t like that kind of music and prefer a more modern and professional sound I think you do better looking elsewhere for getting your musical enjoyment. I should say though that the song Night of the Demon is a very good song and worth listening to another time perhaps but the rest of the album is not quite my cup of tea.