Blood of Kingu – Sun in the House of the Scorpio (2010)

Being a side project from members of Ukrainian underground legends Hate Forest and Drudkh, we expected a very atmospheric and epically raw Black Metal album that would be worthy of Roman Saenko. However, in “Sun in the House of the Scorpio” we get a mixed bag of raw and aggressive Black Metal that is much unlike Hate Forest and Drudkh.

Yes, Blood of Kingu is brutal and aggressive but the atmospheric elements are highly inconsistent. We sometimes get some interesting atmospheric elements in the way of chants on songs like “Incantation of He Who Sleeps” but they are usually drowned by the dullness of the riffing. The rest of the songs also feature nice highlights but they all get killed by the overall dullness behind the music.

We feel that the songwriting for “Sun in the House…” is very weak in comparison to the other Saenko bands, and even the first Blood of Kingu album. There is a nice raw Black metal atmosphere that embraces this release, but it’s also killed off by the lack of any consistency in the album’s elements.

For us, the most interesting thing in this release is the cover of Beherit’s “Gate of Nanna”, a song that came to late in the album (last song). By the time we hear this song every time we listened to the album we are already disconnected from reality and thinking about anything else besides this release. We might warn all fans of Saenko’s music that this release will probably leave you puzzled and even bored after a few songs.

Release: August 10th, 2010

Country: Ukraine