In my early years Summoning was a highly mysterious band. I was never able to hear their music in the 90's, all I ever heard were whispers about how good it was and how unique it was. That all changed one day when I found Napster and downloaded one song from the mystifying duo: Marching Homeward.
To say that I had never heard anything like this before is a bit off the mark. I had heard early video game soundtracks, and I had heard black metal before. What I had not heard was how well they were combined in this one song, and with the high fantasy theme to boot. I instantly fell in love with the song and played it endlessly for about a week.
I finally found an international distributor that could import CD's from Europe and put an order in for Minas Morgul and Dol Guldur and a few weeks later they arrived. It was a glorious day. I spent weeks listening to the two albums almost exclusively, much to the chagrin of my university roommates.
Summoning play a mixture of what what we now call dungeon synth and black metal. Back when this was recorded, this was just keyboard driven black metal. The pace is often slow, much like a march and the sections of a song repeat over and over and over, almost to a hypnotic effect (not in the same way as Burzum, but more like an army marching off to war or a team of vikings rowing a ship).
While future releases from the band would tone down the guitar, here it is front and center of nearly every song (the instrumentals are keyboard driven). They are nearly exclusively tremolo picked and there are only two to three riffs per song (with 7+ minute songs).
The keyboards are interlaced between the guitar riffs, only sometimes taking over. The mixture of the two main instruments is what makes this album so compelling. It's delightfully simple and never outstays its welcome. This album was the true birth of Summoning and their glorious discography.
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