Bathory – The Return…… (1985)

September 15, 2021

The Return… has the potential I think, to be better than the Bathory S/T. But, it falls at an important hurdle. Part of me can’t really believe that I’m going to raise this point, especially when discussing black metal, but the production on The Return is so bad, I find that a lot of the tracks are not giving us their full potential.

I’m all for bad production, but The Return… is quiet, muddy and lost in a sea of bad aural decisions. That isn’t of course, to say that there aren’t some incredible songs here, but it needs to be said: there can be BAD ‘bad production’, is this is an unfortunate example of it. Nevertheless, this is early Bathory afterall and there are some stand-out tracks here, like “Bestial Lust”, “Possessed” (such a fucking killer song) and “Reap Of Evil”.