Blood on Ice
| Blood on Ice | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Bathory | ||||
| Released | 27 May 1996 | |||
| Recorded | February 1988-June 1989 (demo tape), June–July 1995 | |||
| Genre | Viking metal, pagan metal | |||
| Length | 53:40 | |||
| Label | Black Mark | |||
| Producer | Quorthon, "Boss" Forsberg | |||
| Bathory chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Chronicles of Chaos | 9/10 |
Blood on Ice is the ninth studio album by Swedish extreme metal band Bathory. It was released on 27 May 1996, through Black Mark Production. It is a concept album.
The master tapes were recorded in 1989, but the album was not immediately released, both because the album was never properly finished, and because founder and song-writer Quorthon was worried that it presented too drastic a departure from the band's previous black metal sound. It was eventually released, after remastering and re-editing on more advanced studio equipment, in 1996, partly through fan pressure resulting from his mentioning of the project in an interview. Quorthon expands on this, as well as more specific matters about the recording of Blood on Ice and many of the other early Bathory albums in his liner notes for this release. The album's plot follows ideas and formats typical of the sagas, but was written by Quorthon himself. The album cover is drawn by Kristian Wåhlin.
The anonymous central character, aged ten when the tale begins, is the sole survivor of a raid made by twenty black-clad horsemen bearing the banner of the 'twin-headed Beast' against his village. All the men are slain, and the women and children carried off to the far North, whilst the central character survives by hiding in a tree. He spends fifteen years alone in the wilderness, where he grows strong and learns the ways of the forest, the memories of the atrocities he has witnessed galvanising him. Then, one day, he meets a one-eyed old man (most probably Odin, although the tale always refers to him merely as 'One-Eyed Old Man') who tells him that he has foreseen his coming for a thousand years, and that he has been chosen as a champion of the Gods to fight their battle in the shadows beyond his world. To this end he will be granted a number of mighty artifacts and abilities, and be trained for a hundred days and nights by the old man. The first of these artifacts is a mighty sword (probably Tyrfing), forged in the dawn of the world, and the second given in a song is a mighty, eight-legged stallion ridden by 'his father's God' (Sleipnir, Odin's steed).
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Wikipedia