Well the post-Nazgul's Eyrie pre-Heilig Vuur albums are pretty hit and miss for a lot of people, especially The Shining Swords Of Hate. This album is some of the most minimalistic stuff I've ever heard, and completely unlike anything else Orlok has done. It ranges from 20+ minute droning tracks to 3 and a half minute attacks of pure blastbeats and hate, with pretty wretched production. This is probably the most polarizing album of the lot. Basically, the only way to get a feeling for the album is to listen to some of the tracks, and luckily Barbarian Wrath has always provided that, namely for this album
Hate From Hell and
Totenkopf (Satan's Soldaten)
As far as the other two Barbarian Wrath era albums, Revenge Of The Horned One Parts I and II, they're very much traditional metal oriented, as exemplified by tracks like
Filth Machine from Part I (which Orlok adopted as his username on the Basar message board) and
Child Of The Millennia from Part II. Both of these albums have their fair share of unusual and at times off-putting moments, however, and Part I is noticeably more consistent than Part II. A lot of people feel that a compilation of the best of both albums would have been appropriate, and I tend to agree.
Nazgul's Eyrie era albums will be harder to track down, though I believe The Basar North America still carries The Return Of The Horned One. This album is very raw, youthful, energetic, sloppy, filthy, disgusting, and completely unorganized. It's pretty damn good. Check out
Fire And Blood and
Ritual Of The 7 Priests.
Ad Maiorem Sathanae Gloriam is definitely Countess' best, for me. It takes the ideas presented on Return... and makes them work perfectly. This album was inspired by a trip that Orlok took to the castle of Elizabeth Bathory. Listen to the songs
The Priest Must Die and
Blood On My Lips for reference.
The Book Of The Heretic, for me, is a pretty hard album to get into, first because the bass is so fucking loud on the album that is drowns out everything else and gets really annoying, and second because some of the songs just don't come off well at all. It's actually a concept album based on a story that Orlok wrote about...something, I forgot, whatever. Listen to
Creation and
A Warlord's Swansong. Some of the tracks have more tolerable bass than others, but on some songs it can really get in the way. It gets better with repeated listens though.
There's also a pre-Nazgul's Eyrie album before Orlok became a contributor called The Gospel Of The Horned One, from which a lot of lyrical inspiration has followed. It's really fucking raw and horribly produced, and the vocals are really loud, and doesn't really sound like and other Countess album. Unfortunately there are no reference mp3s from Barbarian Wrath, but this is generally seen as their worst release by a lot of people anyway, so it's not really a priority. There's also an EP released by the band between the time of Nazgul's Eyrie and the formation of Barbarian Wrath called Hell's Rock And Roll, which is really fucking good, but really fucking hard to find. The only time I've ever seen it on eBay, it sold for $72. Again, no mp3s.
