Featuring the largest sound to date behind this solitary orchestra, these eight tracks reflect the desire to make Graveland a more easily digestible trademark. By reducing its goals to the consecutive epic, simplifying each song (remaining an average six to ten minutes in length) as repeated halves, _Fire Chariot of Destruction_ unfolds with a strange clarity pursued with violent down-stroke rhythms, so idiosyncratic to each album, with a massive increase in percussion and volume. Unlike the confusion involved in the album's cover art and title scheme (a Viking ship is never a chariot, enflamed or no), the actual music involves no such contradictions. That is the ironic divide. It's easy to dismiss this unbroken throttling from track to track as aesthetic distraction, a way to disguise lack of solid writing. Amplification is but a symptom, the larger problem being a void of dynamics and the lazy reconstitution of the verse-chorus-verse format to pad an entire hour's worth of music.

Indeed, the steps taken here to emphasize drum patterns are generally to be praised. The ferocious war blasts that accompany the opening track "War Wolf" resonate with flare and violent color; and then again, in "River of Tears" with keys thoroughly blending into and enhancing every chord. One has to be willing to accept these changes, in terms of execution and atmosphere, as vivid and evocative of what it attempts to communicate, though at the same time, purely adrenal; in some ways comparable to Immortal's turn into a heavy metal band toward the end of the last decade.

There is material here among the best ever composed by Darken, and somehow, those ideas feel abandoned. This is no more frustrating than in the album's coda, "Motherland" (6:48). Developing with the thematic gallop of double-tracked guitars, chopping through a verse overlaid with twinkling lead and miserable vocals; the prime melody alternates speed in a tense build-up that, rather than climax at, continues through the mystical, prerequisite choral passage onto a cacophonous modification of itself that becomes ultimately obliterated by a vibrant surge of melody catching one off-guard. In a former incarnation of Graveland (as well as in any authentic classical piece), this might be considered the beginning (lasting nearly four minutes); from here on after, the track is basically looped once more to the same conclusion.

Almost despite itself, _Fire Chariot of Destruction_ stands as some of Darken's strongest work since continuing as sole contributor to Graveland's musical idiom. Though for its breadth and sudden release, is lacking in aspects now pursued by outfits like Nokturnal Mortum and Averse Sefira; metering the neo-classical or folk aspects into more holistic narratives. Despite its new tone, the new Graveland appears similar to the last four records in this regard. Possibly somewhere between them is the true masterpiece concealed.