Storm of the Light's Bane / Where Dead Angels Lie

Since Dissection are due to reform shortly once Jon Nodtveidt is released from prison, it seems a good time to review this, their second and arguably most significant release. As the rather unwieldy title suggests, this is a reissue of the album, complete with five rare extra tracks from, appropriately, the "Where Dead Angels Lie" EP from 1996. The eight 'core' tracks consist of six proper songs plus an intro and outro. The five extras are a a little piano interlude, a demo version of "Where Dead Angels Lie", a Slayer cover ("Anti-Christ"), a Tormentor cover ("Elisabeth Bathory") and a previously unreleased song called "Son of Mourning".

This album is one of those that is annoyingly hard to classify. Not that it's particularly strange or eclectic - this is 'metal' enough to make Joey DiMaio squeal - rather the difficulty is in the prefix. The production has the icy quality familiar to black metal, and many of the riffs have a definite Norwegian flavour. On the other hand, there is a large swath of traditional metal about it as well, and there is a definite influence of the death metal scene in their native Sweden. Putting these elements together, Dissection craft songs with a real epic quality, and manage to nail that icy, majestic atmosphere so beloved of black metal in a way perhaps only Emperor have done since. Rather than keyboards, this band use gloomy guitar melodies over the riffs to achieve this, which somehow makes me think of a corpse-painted version of Iron Maiden. The songwriting is generally strong; certainly three tracks ("Night's Blood", "Where Dead Angels Lie", "Thorns of Crimson Death") are genuine classics, though "Soulreaper" is rather weak. The unreleased track is pretty poor too, but the covers are good fun. This is an album of real quality, that manages to stand out from the hordes of tired black and death metal releases, and which certainly bodes well for Dissection's forthcoming revival.