Droner (2003)
English Breakfast Chapter 1: The Eggs
The debut album of the duo built the foundations of what’s to come. They embody what I like in my metal as newly thirty year old man and I’ll explain why. It’s primitive and made in a vacuum by true connoisseurs of the underground who really don’t care about trends and fashion in the metal world.
Droner could be described as a mix of of doom, first wave black metal, heavy metal and while the crust elements aren’t as present as on other albums, it’s there. Think of Amebix combined with Cathedral and Venom. That’s a pretty fucking good English breakfast, lads. Their riffs are loud, primal but precise in their sloppiness. It’s like being stabbed by a pointy rusty dagger and left to bleed in a cold forest while the wolves gather around you. The vocals are rough and while somewhat in the background, they’re not an afterthought and they can be varied too. “Droner in the Fog” has clean vocals giving a quasi post punk feel mixed with epic metal when combined with the tasty guitars. It’s not epic like Virgin Steele talking about Greek or Roman mythology, it’s instead done in a pure English manner, it’s just men dying in the woods while their wives are cooking a stew they’ll never be able to eat.
Those dudes are good
musicians too, the drumming on “Whispers of God” is creative and
tight and the clean guitars almost bring a progressive folk tinge to
their metal. There’s a few stoner elements too, especially in the
bass playing and in a few particular songs such as “Hillfort
Ghoul”, that’s possibly due to the omnipotence of Electric Wizard
and Cathedral in England but regardless, it fits. Their hometown of
Birmingham is also the birthplace of doom metal so being from Black
Sabbath’s home turf must have some sort of mystical influence.
Throughout the short album, Acwealde and Wartooth were
really capable to explore different tempos from fast, mid-paced to
even slow. That’s a strong debut with all the elements of their
identity already in place even if it’s the only one to feature some
stoner metal parts.
Battle Staffs in the Mushroom Woods (2006)
English Breakfast Chapter 2: The Sausages
Battle Staffs in the Mushroom Woods (best album title of all time?) is the second album of our duo of merry gentlemen carousing through England under the name Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom and it’s a doozy. Compared to their debut (that I really liked), it’s more focused and clearer in its intents. There’s a beefier Celtic feel here and while it’s not exactly folk metal and it’s relatively subtle in its approach, it’s there. It’s irrevocably English in its nature, mixing the rawest and undisciplined side of NWOBHM with proto extreme metal to great effect. Think Motorhead slapping Skyclad because they’re nerds but still integrating a few hints of their sound.
Released the
same year as Darkthrone’s The Cult is Alive, Bretwaldas are
definitely contemporaries of the blackened punkier side of the much
more famous duo but they’re so much more than that. They just
happen to share a liking to old school crust punk. It reminds me of
Toronto’s Demontage in the way they're primal, lo-fi metal with a
lot of heart, inventiveness and authenticity. While the production
values here are better, we’re still far from the saccharine and
overproduced sound of big labels and I’m totally fine with that. It
suits their meat pie sound very well.
They're like if The
Meads of Asphodel were actually too busy drinking in pubs to go to
partake in weird Medieval reenactment. They dream of the past while
drunk at the bar before using the ale soaked broom as a bastard
sword. They might get lost in the nearby forest afterwards or at
least, that’s what I imagine drunk Englishmen do for fun. They eat
fish and chips, drink beer, talk about olde kings and smoke
cigarettes.
Those dudes aren’t parodies and they’re
smarter than you may immediately think. Songs like “Paths of River,
Root and Stone” conjures intricate but blue collar guitar leads
while closer “Blood of Gods and Men” could easily be something
from Bathory’s epic Viking metal albums. This track and the eight
minute “Beneath the Eaves” are basically blackened epic doom and
it’s fantastic.
The varied influences they were able to gather makes this album an intense and rewarding affair for experimented metal fans. They’re more interesting and rich that you’d think and they make Midnight sound like an amateurish one trick pony with only one or two ideas.
Seven Bloody Remparts (2010)
English Breakfast Chapter 3: The Beans
Seven Bloodied Remparts, the third (and last one for now) full length from Bretwaldas is perhaps the widest foray they made into black metal and it’s a bold attack. The diversity found in their discography is one of the most interesting aspects of the band. Even though, to the unfamiliar ear, they could be concluded to be similar albums, their stylistic progression twists and turns quite often but remains rooted in some sort of black metal.
This effort could be described as some sort of epic black/crust, the doom elements aren’t as prominent here as they used to be. They always had a focus on history, archaeology and mythology and that’s what we find here again. Wartooth (bass, vocals) is an archaeologist but he’s able to easily contextualize and simplify topics to make them appropriate for metal music. It’s somewhat influenced by pagan metal here and there but it’s transformed into English ugliness. They’re never as cheesy as fellow English bands Forefather or Wodensthrone as well, they never played folk/pagan metal outright but they definitely used some Viking bits in the guitar riffs. Based on the No Clean Singing interview they did this year, the fact that pagan metal was often associated to national socialism and other far right movements wasn’t something they were keen with, for good reasons.
The atmosphere here is pretty epic and contains some worthy anthems. Songs like “Rise” or “Smite” have some singalong lyrics, something they never really did before. It’s fairly appropriate for the music showcased here. “Smite” reminds me of Ireland’s Primordial with its slightly Celtic guitar melodies and its violent but historical hymn mood. The vocals are gruff, rough and there’s no clean singing here, like the English countryside when it rains, it’s muddy and dirty and that’s often how I like my metal. Even if Bretwaldas are a DIY affair, they’re not amateurs, they know what they do and what to do to achieve their particular sound. One of my favourite aspects of the band is the quality and melodic feel of Acwealde’s guitar parts (see “Grey Wolf” for one of the best examples), it brings another level to their Celtic Frost plus Amebix dual identity.
Listen/support the band on Bandcamp
