Review by Ben for Summoning - Dol Guldur (1997)

Summoning take us on another epic journey and succeed against all the odds.

Summoning proved with their Minas Morgul album that fantasy themed symphonic black metal could really work without coming off as overly pretentious and cheesy. Yet as much as I love Minas Morgul, there’s no doubt that the production needed a little bit of work to catch up to the grand ambition that these Austrians have. Enter Dol Guldur. Thematically, nothing much changed between releases, with the lyrics and inspiration taken almost entirely from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The name Dol Guldur itself is lifted directly from Middle Earth, being the hilltop where Sauron and the Nazgul built their Stronghold in Mirkwood. It should be clear at this point whether this is going to be the type of black metal you enjoy. You’ll either be grimacing in disgust because no “true” black metal would toy with fictional stories about Hobbits and magic, or you’ll be raising your goblet in celebration that this brave fellowship set out on such a majestic journey, despite the odds being firmly stacked against them.

Musically, the band pushed the guitars even further into the background, to give the epic symphonic aspect as much room to breathe as possible. Whereas tremolo picked riffs had just as much focus as the simple yet effective keyboards on Minas Morgul, a lot of this album is spent with no guitars at all, their eventual addition only to give extra depth once the tunes have dug their claws in. It’s only on opening track Nightshade Forests that the guitars take centre stage, which is why that track reminds me of Minas Morgul more than the rest. The production is much cleaner all round, which suits the slight shift in emphasis, but I’m still not sure the band had figured out the best drum sound to use at this stage. While the computerized percussion sounds less synthetic than on the predecessor, they’re still a long way from being convincing and just a bit cheap. But somehow it doesn’t matter in the slightest! The themes of Summoning are not based within the realm of men, so it makes sense that the instruments shouldn’t be restricted to those limitations either.

Dol Guldur is an album I listen to not only for its immense relaxation qualities, but also while reading authors like Robert Jordan and George Martin, not to mention Tolkien himself. If Peter Jackson was a metalhead, he may well have given Protector and Silenius a phone call during the development of his monumental trilogy, as it’s hard to imagine music better suited to the epic scale of the subject matter. It’s slow and repetitive to say the least, but by about the third or fourth listen, you just can’t help but close your eyes and be swept away by the whole experience. The raspy black metal vocals may not always be decipherable, but each composition tells a story as effectively as any novel. If the album has a flaw, it’s that a couple of tracks (Unto a Long Glory in particular) are not quite memorable enough to justify their long running times, but Nightshade Forests, Elfstone, Khazad Dúm and closer Over Old Hills (which is a reworking of Trapped and Scared by Protector’s electronic entity Ice Ages) are simply wonderful examples of Summoning working their magic. Incredibly, it’s not a case of “one album to rule them all”, as their best is yet to come.