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Class 6(66)
Bolt Thrower: Realm of chaos - slaves to darkness
22/01/08 || Global Domination
This review was written by ex-staffer/cocksmoker Seker.
Released: 1989
Introduction
The title of this album describes the music contained therein more effectively than any review ever could. When you put this CD into your stereo, you enter a realm where men’s bodies and minds are but clay in the malicious hands of the elder gods of chaos; a realm where grinning demons sift through piles of human organs under the watchful eyes of their bloated, disease-ridden overlord; a realm where soldiers unleash fiery destruction upon their enemies atop towering piles of their comrades’ corpses; a realm of violence, of carnage, of merciless brutality, of… chaos. In battle, there is no law.
Simply put, Bolt Thrower’s second album is a true death/grind masterpiece, melding the cyclonic madness of 80s grindcore with crushing death metal grooves. Along with what Carcass and Napalm Death were doing around the same time, “Realm of Chaos” is pretty much the pinnacle of grindcore. Sure, it peaked early, but with an album like this, you won’t hear me complaining.
Songwriting
10. Crusty, chaotic grind interspersed with monolithic death metal hammer blows. It’s nasty, it’s primitive, and it’s bad-fucking-ass. “In Battle There Is No Law” was pretty much all violent, ramshackle AAAAAAARRGHH shit, and “Warmaster” was extremely groove-oriented (like most of Bolt Thrower’s output), but “Realm of Chaos” acts as a sort of bridge between the two disparate approaches while simultaneously being better than both of the aforementioned albums.
It also helps that three of the best songs ever written ever ever EVER are on this one. First up is the opening track (not counting the intro): “Eternal War”, which opens with a brilliant groove riff that transitions into fast-paced grinding before exploding in a blaze of classic whammy-bar madness. Next up is “Through the Eye of Terror”, which is pretty much just brilliant groove-riff-after-groove-riff with some drunken Slayer-esque madness in the middle and plenty of subterranean low-end madness all around.
The third highlight, and probably the best song on the record, is a song so good that Bolt Thrower continued it over two albums: “World Eater”. It opens with some slow, tank-tread chugging before Karl Willetts busts out with a fantastic “WEEEERLD EEEEAAAAAT-AAAAAHHH”, and then… BAM! Best fucking riff in the history of everything. Ever. If you disagree with me, you suck. The bad part is that they only play it like four times, but the riff after it is nearly as good, and they play the Best Riff in the History of Everything Ever™ quite a few more times over the course of the song. Seriously, that riff encapsulates everything that makes Bolt Thrower great in about four seconds. It’s melodic, it’s catchy, but most of all, it’s heavier than Mike Huckabee crazyglued to the principal from Beavis and Butthead. And I mean Mike Huckabee before he lost over 9,000 pounds or whatever.
Production
9. It’s muddy, it’s gross, it’s low-fi, and it’s perfect for this kind of material. Everything is so downtuned that it sounds like there everything is played by three basses. It’s like wading through a lake of blood while enemy fire rains down on you. The only album I’ve heard that is bassier than this is Demoncy’s “Joined in Darkness”. Hell, this album is bassier than “Black Arts Lead to Everlasting Sins”, and Necromantia only use bass guitars!
Guitars
10. I already told you how great the riffs on the three best songs are, right? Well, the other songs are nearly as good; in fact, there’s not a bad riff on the album. A few of the riffs in “All That Remains” sound a lot like something off of Incantation’s “Onward to Golgotha”, and trust me, that can only be a good thing. Also, the solos in general are pretty hilarious (in the words of one of my friends: “That sounds like a fucking siren!”), but absolutely perfect. Sure, some of the admittedly sloppy stuff might irk the anal-retentive technical freaks out there, but they deserve an aneurism anyways!
Vocals
10. RARGH! Karl Willets has an absolutely perfect death metal voice on every Bolt Thrower album that he sings on; everyone knows that. This album is no exception! Once you get used to his voice, you can actually understand the lyrics most of the time. Also, everything sounds all-natural; there’s no fish-man vocal flangers here. W-w-w-where the slime don’t liiiiiiiiiiiiiive…
Bass
10. Ha ha, spaghetti bass! Seriously, the strings are so floppy due to retardedly excessive downtuning that more often than not, the bass sounds like some sort of sitar drone. A bad ass sitar drone. Also, that brontosaurus stomp in the middle of “Through the Eye of Terror” is my favorite bass riff of all time. It’s just like duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunDUN! It’s kind of hard to convey how awesome it sounds it written form, but trust me, it’s awesome.
Drums
5. Sloppy as hell, but everything manages to groove nonetheless (mostly due to the guitars and the bass). The little fill things at the beginning of “World Eater” are pretty cool, but everything else is pretty laughable. Of course, this album would probably sound like ass if the drums were all fucking metronome-like, but on a purely technical scale, this is fucking terrible. Terrible in awesome 80s way, but still terrible.
Lyrics
7.5. War, war, Warhammer 40,000, and a little more war. The compulsive need to rhyme every fucking line gets a bit annoying at times, but overall, the lyrics are better than average.
Cover art
10. Hell yes! It’s a bunch of bad-ass space marines making their final bad-ass stand against a bunch of bad-ass aliens surrounded by a some bad-ass gore and bad-ass explosions. It’s bad-ass, and it really illustrates the whole “Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness” theme. The re-issue has some not-quite-as-bad-ass-but-still-pretty-bad-ass space marines with flamethrowers, but luckily I have the original. I got it for $7.99 too! You see, some friends and I went to this huge-ass record store in Denver called Twist and Shout before a concert, and they had this awesome used section, and my friend and I got in a fight over who got to buy “Warmaster” and “Realm of Chaos”. Eventually, I took “Realm” and he took “Warmaster”, as you’ve probably figured out already. I also got a copy of Yattering’s “Genocide” for five bucks.
Anyway, this cover kicks ass.
Logo
10. BOLT THROWER. MOTHERFUCKER. This logo kicks ass, and it’s to-the-point without any bullshit, just like the album.
Booklet
10. Normally, Earache booklets suck, but this and the “Slaughter of the Soul” reissue seem to be the exception. The booklet has all sorts of Warhammer-related awesomeness drawn by professional illustrators, like battleaxes and space marines and demons and robots and gore and shit. Not shit like the last Autopsy album; shit as in a more vulgar way of saying “generic stuff”. Only, it’s not generic, it’s awesome! Also, there’s some kind of crabclawed duck thing laying the down that law on an anthropomorphic alligator demon for some reason. Oh, and band photos and stuff. Yup.
Overall and ending rant
10. You know what a bolt thrower is? It’s a giant fucking cross bow designed to blast through enemy fortifications and columns of soldiers. That’s what this album does to pretty much every other album ever released.