Allegiance - Complete Album Anthology

ALLEGIANCE - Complete Album Anthology (HELTER SKELTER - LP Boxset 2020)

There are still many metal albums, which I am looking forward to see released in the big vinyl format. Swedish Allegiance was very high on that list, until recently, when the dream finally came true. All thanks to Helter Skelter Productions, who unleashed the excellent "Complete Album Anthology" boxset, which contains all three full albums of Allegiance. What a joy and great idea to put all albums in one boxset, instead as three separate editions, as this way you just have it all together and in a great package. I went for a preorder and bought the limited-edition boxset on colour vinyl (yellow / blue, so the Swedish colours), with some nice goodies like stickers, poster and the t-shirt. But most of all, the three albums.  

I like that all albums have their own jackets like separate vinyl releases. The external sleeve in thick and good quality, so there's no worries that the jackets or vinyl can get damaged. What I don't like is that they decided to do the artwork for all albums in black / white only, removing all the original colours. For instance, the cover for "Blodörnsoffer" is so dark that you can barely see any details there. You could find the original artworks in the book added to the boxset, but it's just not the same. Generally, the layout for the jackets could have been better and the original colours of the art for each album should have been unchanged. But that is pretty much my only complain about "Complete Album Anthology", everything else is great. 

All albums sound amazing. There's nothing what would bother me in the way these records sound, as they’re powerful and everything is crisp here. I'm not audiophile, but for me it’s just all as it should. From the musical point of view, Allegiance were one of the best Swedish bands from the 90’s black metal scene. What I like about them is that each album sounds slightly different than the previous and they never repeated themselves, while sticking more or less to the roots of their music. Their debut LP “Hymn till hangagud” is their more old school black metal piece, I suppose, it’s the harshest, yet epic and “viking” enough to distinguish themselves from most of the Swedish scene, which was always much more Satanic than the Norwegian scene at that time. "Blodörnsoffer" is my favourite album, it’s their most vicious and hateful record, the fastest and most uncompromising music, but with enough melody to get more diverse and interesting black metal. Some may say that they sounded a lot like Marduk or Setherial here – it's correct in many ways, but Allegiance had their own style also. But one couldn’t not to notice that Fredrik Andersson was playing a lot of his typical drums arrangements we know from Marduk in Allegiance also. It’s like he was somehow limited to some of them. Even in the interview that you could read in the book for the boxset both Bogge and Pär Thornell are saying that he played a lot of patterns like he used to do also in Marduk, which is a bit weird. There's even a statement that Fredrik was a better drummer before he joined Marduk, as later he started to play the same over and over again, without progressing as a musician. You could hear it on "Blodörnsoffer" also. Finally, the third album “Vrede” is Allegiance’s most epic and melodic record, in many ways it reminds me some of the 90’s Enslaved albums, it’s the same atmosphere and mixture of black metal aggression and harshness with monumental, pagan aura. I have to say that I like this album a lot, even if I didn’t like some of the keyboard arrangements in the beginning. But it’s a strong and highly interesting record. You could definitely say then that Allegiance never had a bad album in their career, all three are awesome – and It's a shame that they didn’t continue and Allegiance was silently putted to rest. 

But Bogge was busy with Marduk and after he left the band, he moved to USA. Thornell was in military for many years, so he didn’t have much time for music... And Andersson – well, he was also in Marduk for few more years, but as you could read in the interview, there was a lot of bad blood between him and Bogge. Bogge wanted to remove him from the band, he even regretted not doing so earlier. This interview is actually very, very interesting – it tells the whole story of the band, from their demo days, to the very last moments. Every album is spoke in details, every line up change... Just everything, which is essential for such boxset and band’s history. I think that the biggest surprise for me was when I read how young Thornell was when he joined Allegiance (only like 15 years old!) and that Bogge still has so much bad to say about Andersson – even though he played with him in two or three bands for nearly a decade. That's weird. Oh, it’s worth to mention that two remaining band members don’t say no to the creation of eventual fourth album! 

All in all, I can only recommend you getting “Complete Album Anthology”. It's an excellent release and a long-awaited vinyl presentation of one of the best Swedish bands. I think that first time I’ve heard about Allegiance was when I read interview with them in Vox Mortis Magazine from 1996 or 97. Many years later it was a pleasure to put my hands on this boxset. Yes, I have CDs also. But “Complete Album Anthology” made me happy like a kid. 

Verdict: 95/100