review: Dread Sovereign -- swampy old metal featuring Primordial vocalist Nemtheanga

Dread Sovereign

Alchemical Warfare

Metal Blade Records

15 January 2021

"That's Venom's 'Don't Burn the Witch’!'" was the immediate thought upon hearing the opening riff of the seventh song "Devil's Bane." The opening riff is rather similar to the one starting at 00:24 in Venom. Then, the last song "You Don't Move Me" is a Bathory cover, which is to say, it is a Venom cover separated by one degree of Quorthon.

Dread Sovereign features vocalist Nemtheanga who is known for fronting the long-running and critically acclaimed Primordial, a band that was extreme metal until about 2002, and after that they have become known for slower, more melodic, doom-leaning, kind of folky, moody music. Dread Sovereign, on the other hand, is an oppor-tunity to make some politically incorrect metal in which a doomed out guitar tone plays uptempo goes from doom to heavy to extreme, in a big bundle of swampy old metal. This is not Primordial’s "Professor Nemtheanga" doing a dissertation on ancient Irish history as he known for, but more like "some Irish dude named Alan" rocking out at a bar on a Tuesday night living his best life ever and giving all the seven people pre-sent the best time that they could hope for at the local pub in the middle of the week. Dread Sovereign is kind of asking, "Hey, yo, what up, West Virginia?! It’s Tuesday night, my babiessss! Y'all like Venom, Bathory, Sabbath, The Exploited, Motorhead, Crowbar, Candlemass, GBH and all that old stuff? Well, we hope so, ‘cause we about to get up on it!"

You, the person at the bar, are thinking: "Hey, it's Tuesday night, I like Motorhead, and Venom's alright, and who doesn't like Sabbath?! Maybe these guys can entertain me tonight." So, then, your answer goes up, in a metal yell, "Yeahhhhhh!"

The Bathory cover is super low IQ punk metal, politically incorrect, and obscene. It's a good time, unless you are super uptight politically and stuff. Just beware: there is doom in here, so it's not all fast punk metal. Dread Sovereign has a little bit of everything, something for the west end girls, something for the east end boys.

Alchemical Warfare by Dread Sovereign