Looking from where Bal-Sagoth roots lay, you know what you're getting with this release. Throughout their entire career, they've been indulging us with their stories of Greek mythology and creating their own storylines along the way. The band (who's named after a kingdom in an H.P. Lovecraft novel) has brought a plethora of new ideas and sounds to THE CHTHONIC CHRONICLES all while holding dearly onto what stories and ideas brought them to the dance.

The music here is absolutely raging! Often times reminding me of The Principle of Evil Made Flesh-era Cradle of Filth, Thyrfing and Therion, I found myself in heaven. The rawness of early CoF and the native and nomadic traits found in Thyrfing had me head first into this album. Hell, the band even indulges their classical side with a brief harp segments on "Shackled to the Triliton of Kutulu" and "The Hammer of the Emperor". Many of the songs feature an overcast of spoken words and by that narrates the song and sets them up to draw you a picture as to what is going on. The band doesn't believe in beating in your brain from bell to bell. They usually have progressive interludes and breakdowns and still manages to fucking own it all! There are quite a few instrumentals on here, we see a haunting keyboard intro to "The Sixth Adulation of His Chthonic Majesty", "The Fallen Kingdoms of the Abyssal Pain", "The Hammer of the Emperor", "To Storm the Cyclopean Gates of Byzantium" and the spacey "Return to Hatheg-Kla". Now, while these songs do feature either some elegant backing female vocals or as I stated earlier the narration overcast, I still consider them instrumentals as they don't feature any actual singing from vocalist Byron.

Bottom line is this. You will not understand this album or garner the respect for it until you listen. For those of you who have listened to the album, I'm sure you understand but for those who haven't been fortunate enough, you need to do it as soon as humanly possible.