Band Names Not Brand Names

Ah, Nords with a penchant for Vampirism. Probably one of the best underground black metal bands no one has ever heard of. Taking their name from the southern portion of Romania of which the famous Vlad Tepes (The Impaler, third lord to be known as Count Dracul) was a prince. Black metal and vampires, this sounds pretty standard and boring right? Think again! Formed in 1992 as a one man band by Lars Stavdal, with an ideal to go against the ideals of black metal and write pagan-centric black metal. In 1995, Eystein Garberg joined as the band’s only guitarist and drum machine programmer before Wallachia got a drummer (three of them to be exact). Anyway, I need to talk about the band and not its history. This release comes by way of Dark Horizon Records as a resurrection of the release on now defunct Velvet Music International. Catalogued as DHR024, it also includes the four tracks of Demo 1996 as a bonus.

From Behind the Light is the band’s only full length effort in its short history. Originally consisting of eight tracks of average length, nothing stands out about this release from the outside except perhaps the Wallachian ruins on the cover and back. Once you crack open the plastic and pop it in your player, I think you’ll find the CD to be excellent. Each track is similar to the next but can still hold its own during a single play. The focus of the music is symphonic black metal with a good bit of folk influence and deep death growls. At the time of release, true symphonic black metal was still a young genre and this is definitely a pioneer release of it with a lot of atmosphere and keyboard-driven interludes in the tracks. I cannot attest to the lyrical content of the songs since almost all of them are sung in Norwegian, but four of the 12 tracks on this release are titled in English and “Manifesting the Beast” is actually sung in English. This track deals with the desecration and consecration of Norse religion by Christianity and its “ideals of democracy” and “purist blasphemy”. “Manifesting the Beast” is a mid tempo song with some excellent bass work and vocals by Lars Stavdal. Although all of the vocals on the 12 tracks are electronically altered, that does not take away from their merit in black metal.

My favorite track out of the twelve is the demo version of “Fullmåne Over Fagaras”, loosely translated as “Full moon over Fagaras (the town)”. As a side note, Fagaras Fortress has two wings built by men of the Bathory family and Countess Bathory lived here in the fiefdom of Count Dracul III/Vlad Tepes III. This track weighs in at a menacing 10:38. Opening with keyboard provided atmospherics, an acoustic guitar and a flute, the track soon explodes into midtempo drumming and bass work and the track ends almost exactly the same way. With a track of this length, Wallachia proved that symphonic black metal, and black metal in general, didn’t need blastbeats and blistering tempos to produce excellent work. The drumming is provided by way of a drum machine and by today’s standards is not out of place in smaller bands. It’s not often that you’ll come across a black metal band that is midtempo and isn’t intermixing doom into their music, and for this I respect Wallachia’s efforts in the then young genre. The Slavic titled “Arges Riul Doamnei” is a slow atmospheric track introduced by organs and what seems to be a ritualistic chant (although it’s not). My only complaint with this track is that the cymbals are clipped on each hit which is a problem with older drum machines. It’s very folky but holds true to the Norse roots of the band.

Track five, “The Last of My Kind”, is another track that opens with a chant and folky atmosphere and is very smiliar to “Arges Riul Domanei” for nearly three minutes. It then bursts into an instrumental with spooky organ keys, choir singers and some good riffs. Again, by today’s standards, this is pretty much expected of a symphonic band of any metal genre but was still a pretty ground breaking experience when the song was written. Follwed by “Knus Den Hellige Ånd”, this song continues on with the previous track’s folk feel with a very standard black metal solo of only three cords being played (if you’ve listened to any amount of black metal, you know what I’m talking about). If I were to take away the music and listen to only the vocals of this entire release, I would think that this was a death metal band given the growled lyrics that seem to flow coherently with the atypical style of Wallachia.

I’ve only had this CD for a little more than a week and it’s already become my favorite CD out of my last shipment from Dark Horizon. Lord Typhus managed to find a gem in this album and hopefully he can find the material to Wallachia’s self-titled EP and release it. Unfortunately, from what little information I’m able to find about these guys, the band is split up with this being their sole full length. As magnificient as this album is, I can’t help but to want more from it only because I know there’s never going to be a follow up to it. I highly recommend this album for anyone looking to delve into the roots of today’s pagan metal scene or anyone looking for more progressive black metal.