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The Sons of the Darkness is the debut album from Poland's Thunderbolt. Originally released in 2001, The Sons of the Darkness manages to sound very raw while also making use of keyboards to augment their songs. The band split in 2007, but left this album, and three subsequent releases, to continue torturing ears for all eternity.

What I hear on The Sons of the Darkness is an extremely lo-fi production and/or mix that make it rather hard to tell if the band is playing guitars and drums or jackhammers and saws-alls. The guitars are so distorted and over-effected that it's almost impossible to hear the chord changes in many of the songs. After a while, they become akin to white noise. The drums are played at a thousand miles an hour for much of the album and the bass drums resemble the sound of machine gun fire created by a foley artist for a B grade war movie. The vocals are a suitable mix of screeches and growls.

The songs sound similar to one another, with a couple of exceptions. "Spit in His Face" and the 12 minute closer, "The Circle of Death," break up the light speed tempos with some slower, riff-oriented parts, making them a bit more distinctive against the monotonous backdrop of the rest of the album. Keyboards and acoustic guitars feature prominently in "The Circle of Death," ending the album on a quiet, somber note.

As a casual Black Metal fan, The Sons of the Darkness did not appeal to me at all. I'm sure fans will accuse me of missing the point, and that's fine, but I've heard Black Metal with far superior sound and better songs. Mileage, as is often the case, will vary greatly.