Hades, Lord of the Underworld, is an easily angered and very suspicious god. He rules with iron fist in Tartaros, the Land of the Dead. Hades keeps to his dark domains and almost never treads to daylight. Mortals from the surface world call to him with swear curses and hateful cries. Though there weren’t many temples in Greece dedicated to Hades, Naer Mataron appears to have found one that is still alive with black energies to worship their God as it was done in ancient time.

Naer Mataron actually means ‘Hades’ and as seems clear, the lyrical theme’s are mainly about ancient Hellenic mythology. The current line-up of this black metal band from Greece is Morpheas (screams and guitars), Kaiadas (bass), Warhead (drums) and Nordvargr (Satanic noise effects, whatever). Naer Mataron started out in 1994 and ‘till now they’ve produced several demos and five full-lengths, the last of which is this album. Discipline Manifesto is fast black metal with a melodic touch. There are some interesting guest appearances on this album. These are Vicotnik (Ved Buens Ende, Dodheimsgard), Carl-Michael (Ved Buens Ende, Aura Noir) and Apollyon (Aura Noir and Lamented Souls)

The first song, ‘Extreme Unction’, opens with a ‘deserted-factory-lying-in-a-windy-desert-haunted-by-mourning-spirits’ intro (that could be identified as ‘Satanic noise effects’) and unleashes shortly after that into a furious black metal maelstrom. The more melodic guitar riffs that carry the song create a truly hateful atmosphere in the way the mighty Moonblood used to do.

‘Blessing of Sin’ is a more catchy song that tramples in mid-tempo though your speakers. ‘For the New Man’ is an intermezzo with windy sound effects, organ and a story about the fall of civilization that leads to the rise of a new civilization and with that to glorious victory. The fourth song is called ‘Arrival of the Caesar’. It is a more or less standard black metal song with some great riffs that produce a melancholic atmosphere. The song ‘Blast Furnace’ is in variation played at faster and slower speed. After several minutes, clean vocals take over the music. This is a bit disturbing, though not too bad because there are still screaming vocals singing along.

Song six carries on in a low tempo, something reminds me on the slower Judas Iscariot songs (still, very different). At the seventh song ‘The Last Loyal’, the Satanic noise effects appear again, shortly after that making way for some fast and furious black metal, without any really interesting parts. ‘Land of Dreams’, the eight song, is dominated by a frustrated or angry man that speaks to his followers, minions or us, the listeners. This is followed by another speaker who also wants to make something clear. Not really adding to the album and not really interesting. The album concludes with ‘Last Man against Time’, great black metal in the vein of most other songs on ‘Discipline Manifesto’. In my opinion Naer Mataron plays great black metal that is worth listening to!