I remember how, back when this, Finnish Satanic Warmaster’s debut was released, the reactions in Finland among friends and on message boards were almost unequivocally positive and enthusiastic. In retrospect, there was a feeling as of standing at the precipice of something new. And in so many ways, this turned out to be true.

The main man of Satanic Warmaster, going by the name of Satanic Tyrant Werwolf on this album, had already earned his chops in a number of previous bands. The most notable of these was beyond a doubt Horna, a band from Lappeenranta, Finland, who had already released a number of albums and smaller releases on foreign labels and were among the most known Finnish acts at home and abroad. So I suppose people weren’t surprised when Satanic Warmaster’s debut album was good, but it still generated a lot of even surprised buzz.

In one of the many unlikely and unpredictable twists in the annals of black metal history, over the years Satanic Warmaster would go on to influence first how Finnish black metal sounded, and later on spread this influence abroad to the point where followers and copyists of the Finnish sound have at times been one of the most prominent strands within black metal. Certainly Satanic Warmaster’s role in ushering Finnish black metal from the shadows to the limelight is far from negligible.

The Finnish sound I speak of is, as you might know, characterized by a combination of unbridled rawness and sinister, often melancholic melodicism. As far as Satanic Warmaster are concerned, Strength & Honour as a whole puts far more emphasis on rawness, but there is a surprising melodicity just beneath the surface.

A lot of the rawness comes from the sound. The soundscape is dominated by the heavy-handedly played drums. Frequently, the guitars are almost washed away among the lower-end murk of the kick and snare, the sizzling wash of the hi-hats and the vicious, strangled shriek of the vocals. The bass is scarcely audible, expect on the odd occasion here and there. When it comes to Strength & Honour’s sound, you can’t speak of balance; it teeters and totters on the edge of chaos, but manages to keep from falling. Sometimes by an inch.

But beneath that, there’s a lot of melody in the riffs, which may go unnoticed at first. Take for example the slower middle part of Wolves Of Blood And Iron. Raw and uncompromising, yes, but also quite melodic – and melancholic. It was from seeds like this that the “Finnish sound” would sprout.

In retrospect, by the turn of the millennium black metal was in a way stuck in Norway’s shadow. By that time, the prime of the Norwegian scene was well and truly past, and essentially all acts had either broken up, evolved to something else, or just lost it. In any case, new releases from Norway were wont to be of sub par quality, and yet it seemed to still be the thing that loomed heavy over everything else, and defined the entire genre.

And, again in retrospect, I think what excited people in Finland about Strength & Honour was how it cast off the yoke of that shadow. Obviously, it was of the same lineage as the second wave classics; already the manifesto in the booklet of this album establishes Satanic Warmaster’s pride in the traditions of black metal; but even so, the album forges an identity of its own. Both in spirit and in music – perhaps more in the aforementioned – Satanic Warmaster’s debut germinates a Finnish identity to black metal, where a lot of bands up until then had mostly followed in the Norwegians’ footsteps.

Whatever the case, Strength & Honour was hailed as a significant release upon its release, and quickly established Satanic Warmaster as one of the leaders of Finnish black metal in the new millennium. This is a position the band has retained in the quarter of a century since then – to the point where the 2022 album Aamongandr reached the top 10 of the Finnish charts without the act compromising their own sound or approach.

Pictured in the top picture is the second CD edition from 2003, which I own. The first edition of 1000 copies from 2001 had sold out by then; and by 2004, this second edition of 1000 copies had already sold out. This says something of the appeal and demand for this album already at the time of release; and the fact that new editions have been released constantly since then testifies about the classic status this album has received since then.

And entirely justifiedly. Strength & Honour truly is one of those albums, which helped steer the genre in new directions. A milestone in Finnish black metal – and why not black metal in general.

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In From The Vaults we take a dive into the record collection at Only Death Is Real HQ and write about about items of iconic stature or personal significance; rarities and oddities from the archives; obscure gems that deserve more attention; classics of yore deserving of a moment in the limelight; and so on.