You are bored of Black Metal bands leaving the left hand path? Someone asks you about GORGOROTH and you say you like only their first two, three releases? And if you want to listen to DARKTHRONE you always pick "Transylvanian Hunger" and "Under A Funeral Moon" from your CD / LP – rack? Well, then you should definitely check out HÖLLENTOR! On their debut they present a really raw and primitive Black Metal in the vein of the above mentioned. The album is splitted-up in two parts (back in the vinyl days I would have said side a / side b). First part was recorded in 2005, whereas the second part is the "Christripping" – demo back from 2001, with a different vocalist. Honestly I must admit that the procedure to put an old demo on the debut is not something that I like, especially regarding the total playing-time, so in fact there are just four "new" songs on this album. But this demo is just so pure Black Metal, they did right to re-release it. The sound on "Blessed Are The Strong…" is quite brutal, but in my eyes it underlines the musical approach to perform this archaic kind of Black Metal. And HÖLLENTOR achieve their aim not only by playing fast, also some great mid-tempo and slow songs are performed on this output, as a result there is some kind of diversity. Finally the band emphasizes on hate-filled lyrics, therefore everything on this album is nothing than just pure, raw, brutal and satanic Black Metal. www.hoellentor.de.am.