review by: Roberto Martinelli

If you like Summoning, it’s a guilty pleasure, even if you don’t realize it. Check the facts: All (but one) of the Austrian band’s eight albums is about The Lord of the Rings. The music, especially now that Summoning has completely found their muse (that garnered them their greatest acclaim with Stronghold, two full-length albums ago), is a kind of smashing together of dark ambient with black metal, permeated with a medieval flavor, and with a stereotypical new age music hokiness. The whole lot sounds like it was written either for a really cool and dark third-party Playstation 2 game about Middle Earth, or for a low-budget, closet independent movie’s beginning or ending credits.

In the world of Summoning, the movie is either perpetually building up to something, or pensively contemplating some manner of grandeur, or melancholically waxing nostalgic on some great, heroic, past deed that will never be reproduced... until the next album, that is. The whole lot is accomplished via electric guitars, raspy, thin BM vocals, song-like arrangements, a TON of synthesizers, and a plodding drum machine set to "dark ages" that holds so much of this project’s character that the beat box practically becomes the group’s third, sentient entity.

The verdict? Unregenerate geekiness.

But that’s just how those into Summoning like it. Don’t dissect what it is you’re enjoying, embrace the version of fantasy world unique to this Austrian duo, and all will be well. Remember: objectivity is the enemy.

Summoning is the perfect band to throw on as background music during a period of intense, pleasurable concentration, preferably of the nerdy variety. We now have Minas Morgul and Stronghold inextricably, happily associated with the French comic book series "Prophet." Substitution of that with "Hellboy," "Berzerk," or anything by Tolkien or Lovecraft would also be choice. (Note: we think Dol Guldur’s heavy-handed, tedious dark ambience sucks. We seem to also remember Lugburz, the debut – back when the group was a proper BM band with a human drummer – being pretty lame, too. And don’t even bother with the EP, entitled nightside something or other.)

If you’re a returning fan checking in to see if you’ll like the new record, you will. It’s more of the same from the last couple disks. A bit less theatrical than Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame (much fewer spoken samples used as rhythms), a wider range of drum sounds (like Middle Ages bongos!), and more melodic vocal samples.

But essentially, it’s the same thing. Eight or so takes on the symphonic and plodding at the hands of a keyboard-wielding, Dark Age devotee, comprising a somber but glorious intro, various takes on cavernous, creeping grandeur, and a heavily repetitive final track that features a cyclical spoken or chorally-sung (with tons of effects and manipulations) final sendoff into the hidden land of the Elves.

This last song on Oath Bound is particularly effective, with the anchor vocal melody being introduced with the keyboard at first, and then the big choral hook coming in eight minutes later, lasting until the song fades away at the 12-minute mark.

Also of particular note is the use of some kind of barbarian horn sample in a song that will always make us think of the part in "The Two Towers" movie with the oliphants. The section with the sample by itself is particularly effective. The rest of the album has some nice gems to uncover. Some of it leans slightly on the filler side, but once you get warmed up to Oath Bound, it’s not something that you’ll mind coming back to at all.

The days when Summoning had any trace of metallic, head-bangable parts are long gone. They’ve embraced their formula, which could get stale if they get lazy with it. Then again, you could say that about any band that keeps re-hashing the same imagery, but Summoning is master of its genre, and unique in the musical world. (7.5/10)