«Storm of the Light’s Bane» is the second Dissection album and it came out on 17 November 1995 through Nuclear Blast. The band recorded it in two weeks, from 17 to 30 March 1995, at the Hellspawn and Unisound studios, producing the record themselves. It is the first album with guitarist Johan Norman.
Country: Sweden
Genre: Melodic Black Metal
For fans of: Emperor, Satyricon, Dimmu Borgir
The sound is cold and melodic at once: surging riffs, twin guitars and the vocals of Jon Nödtveidt, switching between a scream and a narration on top of frozen, clean passages.
The record runs 43 minutes over eight tracks: it opens with «At the Fathomless Depths» and goes on with «Night’s Blood», «Unhallowed», «Where Dead Angels Lie», «Retribution – Storm of the Light’s Bane», «Thorns of Crimson Death», «Soulreaper» and «No Dreams Breed in Breathless Sleep».
Nödtveidt was the soul of the band, on the vocals as well as the lyrics, while the production was handled by the group itself. «Where Dead Angels Lie» also appeared as a separate EP, which turned it into one of their best known pieces.
It had been preceded by the 1993 debut «The Somberlain», with which Dissection had already stood out in the Swedish scene. Their sound was built on that record and became cleaner and more melodic.
The artwork is a piece by Kristian «Necrolord» Wåhlin, who had also signed their first album. The band’s course was marked in 1997, when Nödtveidt was imprisoned, and that left this album as their last for eleven years, until «Reinkaos» in 2006.
Many listeners rank it among the most important records of melodic black metal, because it joined the harshness of the genre with clean, almost heavy metal melodies.
See also: Emperor – In the Nightside Eclipse and Burzum – Hvis Lyset Tar Oss.
