My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind

VINYL FORMAT. "Smolken returns to Aurora Borealis in the guise of his perhaps better known Dead Raven Choir project. Since the release of Wolfmangler's Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves, Smolken has settled in Poland, and seriously begun to record as much as possible. Where Wolfmangler is slow and ponderous ("compost with a grudge" as Julian Cope stated in The Guardian last year) and could perhaps even be described as an obscure branch of Doom, how shall we classify Dead Raven Choir? An altogether noisier undertaking and unafraid of the heady heights of mid-tempo, Dead Raven Choir has baffled, irked and aroused listeners for a number of years now. An unholy cross of black metal and folk? Organically produced noise and scree? Doubtless many a consumer has been outraged by a lazily tagged Dead Raven Choir release, though with the countless CD-R and micro-label releases, there grows a veritable army of supporters, eager to have their preconceptions smashed and ears damaged once more with every hint of new material. My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind grips the listener immediately and threatens to overwhelm them with its brute force. Clearly there is something to be said for the Eastern Bloc technologies that were so deftly abused, as this is truly a unique sound. Smolken has transcended the avant-garde and moved beyond: ladies and gentlemen, Dead Raven Choir has left the field."