Satanic Warmaster: Strength & Honour - Black Metal Album Review

The now classic Strength & Honour is the debut album by the Finnish black metal legends Satanic Warmaster. Well, I say legends, but the more correct spelling would be legend - singular - considering that the band has always been a solo black metal act, and one of the most successful ones at that... if you exclude Phantom and Burzum, of course.

In addition to its undeniable qualities and reputation, this album Strength & Honour has gathered quite a bit of controversy over the years... mainly for the heavy pagan and, huh, "blood and soil" themes, as well as for the fact that it was released on the same record label as Dimmu Borgir's debut For All Tid. For these reasons, many metal "journalists" claim that this album "Strength & Honour" is NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal), and that the very name in itself is a National Socialist "dog whistle". In reality, "Strength & Honour" is an old Latin saying of the SPQR, the famous Roman infantry legions. The literal Latin was something along the lines of "virtus et honor", although it was employed at various points in history by other Roman groups unaffiliated with the SPQR.

So is the music on Strength & Honour any good... is it STRONG, if you forgive the pun? Well it's actually quite excellent, and clearly one of the top masterpieces of Finnish black metal and melodic black metal in general. If you enjoy atmospheric black metal that isn't just mindless shoegaze droning - aka modern "black metal" "music" - you should really try out the Satanic Warmaster debut album. It is quite reminiscent of old Burzum, and some parts even manage to sound like Neraines - a black metal style notoriously difficult to emulate.

With that said, is Strength & Honour necessarily the best Satanic Warlaster album? Maybe, maybe not... Their latest release, Exultation of Cruelty is also quite awesome, although in a much different style. And the middle of their discography definitively also deserves a good look. But really, you can't go wrong with Strength and Honour either. if you like good melodic and atmospheric black metal, go for it!

Tracklist of the album Strength & Honour (2001) by Satanic Warmaster:

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