Long in the works split between these two Bay Area outfits, both practitioners of their own particular strains of post black metal, that post in full effect here, especially on Deafheaven's side of the split, on which this duo tackle Mogwai's "Punk Rock / Cody", the opening tracks from Mogwai's Come On Die Young record, and for the first few minutes, they do it pretty straight, a lilting cyclical guitar melody, a strange sample, barely there percussion, and then it gets even MORE post, with melancholic piano, haunting and lovely, but fear not, it doesn't take long for the song explode into blissed out heaviness, the guitars epic and soaring, the drums a dense powerful pound, the vocals, a blackened shriek, the first hint of blackness, but coupled with the soaring melodies, it has an entirely different effect, majestic and melodic, the song building and building, until the final few minutes where the vocals drop out, and another guitar swoops in and plays the melody, before fading out to a softly psychedelic drift, those harsh vokills continuing on in the background, over the spare skeletal guitars, before a final blast, and we do mean blast, as in full on blast beat, and frenzied riffing, the song transformed into a gorgeously blown out super melodic blast of blackened bliss pop heaviness. It won't do anything to assuage the true grim hordes who are constantly crying 'false metal' but fuck it, for the rest of us, this RULES.
Bosse-De-Nage counter with their own sprawling epic, starting off with martial snare, a low slung bassline, clean guitar shimmer, their Slintiness in full effect, the sound made even more lush and lovely by the addition of strings, which also gives the sound an almost folky vibe, spoken word vocals surface, the guitars begin to buzz a bit more, the sound suddenly splintery into a dizzying squall of mathy chaos, a wild drum driven churn, that gives way to a epic sprawl of blasting blackness, the drums WAY up in the mix, continuing to pepper the sound with mathy complexity, the guitars surprisingly melodic, the sound super blown out and in-the-red, a gnarled melodic black metal math rock hybrid, that might be the best thing we've heard from BDN yet, the second half of the song is laced with soaring swells of prismatic psychedelic guitars, a soaring post rock coda, that gives way to a final stretch of furious mathy blackness.
SUPER LIMITED!!!
We've long been fans of the mysterious Death Cheetah, aka local visual artist / musician Kevin Taylor, we've carried a super limited cd-r and a compilation tape, both long out of print, he also did the artwork for the AmocomA cd on Andee's tUMULt label, but beyond that we've heard little from Taylor lately. Until this showed up one day, a super striking screen printed black and white envelope, inside of which was a thick, SQUARE lathe cut record, apparently carved directly into sheets of plexiglass. The sleeve is adorned with artwork by local artist Andrew Schoultz, and the pressing is limited to just FIFTY copies.
None of the DC's past releases really prepared us for this new jam, which finds DC laying down some sort of twisted electro-black-metal, churning blackened riffage, furious drumming, but the whole thing underpinned by a blooping synth, that while reminiscent of Burzum, here transforms the song into something else entirely, especially when the guitars fade out, leaving just the blooping melody and the blasting drums, and occasionally the guitars get all blown out and stonery adding some weird almost Kyuss-y melody to the mix, but for the most part the sound shifts back and forth between the churning synth flecked buzz, and more dense drum heavy blackness. And then there's the vocals, super effected, a raspy demonic howl, draped over an almost Queens Of The Stoneage guitar melody, all the while the synth percolates in the background.
And since it's a lathe cut, the sound is transformed as well, the built in static and hiss, the extreme surface noise, makes this sound somehow like it's some rare early nineties Norwegian demo tape from the freakiest fucked up long defunct black metal horde you've never heard of, and beyond that, it fundamentally changes the sound, woozy and warped and warbly, which only adds to its genius. It's hard to explain how great and weird and cool this is, other than to tell you we've listened to it maybe 20 times JUST TODAY. And we don't see that changing anytime soon.
And as mentioned above, it's LIMITED TO JUST 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in hand screened sleeves, we have 15 copies, but those might not last long...
Full length number two from this Norwegian duo who traffic in, as their name suggests, some seriously fierce old school eighties style thrash. Think Kreator, Sodom, Bathory and the like, their sound a blitzkrieg of frenzied riffing, shredding leads and blasting beats, the sound super distorted and blown out, the vocals a raspy growl with a penchant for Slayer style almost falsetto screams at the end of lines, sometimes just a weird voice cracking squeak, other times a full on maniacal shriek. Some of our favorite moments though are where they slow it down and get downright doomy, like the opening of "Emperor Of Sin", complete with tolling bell, or on the distorted organ and chugging dirge intro to "Lead Us Into Hell", but in both cases, it's not long before they explode into another blast of galloping thrash.
Obviously stuff like this doesn't need a huge review, or in depth analysis. Do you favor denim vests, preferably with patches and spikes? How about bullet belts? Do you like your metal raw and violent, furious and frantic? Blasting beats and hyperspeed riffing? Do you dig classic speed/thrash/black metal? Yes to any of those and odds are Deathhammer will be your jam...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've become a little obsessed recently with Ukrainian one man band Moloch. A quick look at Encyclopaedia Metallum reveals about 30 or 40 releases, 5 or 6 of them BOX SETS! Unfortunately most of them limited to 50, or 40, some even less than 10. So we've been on the hunt for at least one record we could get enough of to review on the list. We have our sites set on a cd full length, which we should be able to have in stock soon, but while we've been searching this little black gem showed up, and thus, will most likely serve as your introduction to the mighty Moloch.
Of his 30 or 40 releases, only a handful are black metal, the rest are split between dark ambient, and noise. So the black metal records end up being infused with both ambient drones and black noise.
But before we get to Moloch, we have Deathrow to contend with, a one man band from Italy, that one man also being a member of Frostmoon Eclipse, Ad Hominem, Kult, Nocternity and a whole bunch of others. For this split, Deathrow offer up some gorgeously lush black ambience, thick roiling clouds of buzzing synth, shimmering organs, pulsing low end rumbles, all woven into slow moving creepscapes, almost like Goblin at 16rpm.
Moloch too chooses a path of blacker ambience, and offers up some grim necro rituals recalling the strange abstract blackened mood music of Abruptum, but far from being harsh, this is a dark and haunting journey through some fog shrouded underworld, all deep sonorous tones, mysterious creaks and thumps, dense swells of distorted low end, streaks of minor key melody, everything blurred and indistinct, distant anguished howls, tinkling marimba like chimes, warm washes of crumbling chordal whir, animal grunts and growls, reverb drenched detuned piano, all super cinematic and soundtracky, conjuring images of boarded up old houses, of black swamps, strange shapes drawn by moonlight filtering through the trees, of abandoned streets, dank cellars, of caves lit by flickering firelight, of nighttime, of darkness, of loss, misery, pain, loneliness, and hell.
WAY recommended. And if all goes well we'll be able to track down that Moloch full length, and you can discover his even blacker side for yourself.
Most aQ customers don't need to know anything other than the fact that there's a new Deathspell Omega to send them scrambling for the buy button (or running down to the shop, if they're local folks). One of those rare bands, whose reputation rightfully precedes them. Every record a stunning sonic masterpiece, and seemingly with every record the band continue to not only hone their unique sound, but to push themselves further and further away from black metal, at least the strictures and tropes that seem to keep so many bands from making truly innovative music. And DSO is most definitely innovative, maybe THEE most innovative black metal band out there, and Drought finds them pushing their sound even further out, while not at all abandoning the gnarled blackness that has defined their sound up until now.
The opening track might be the boldest thing they've done, a spare bit of haunting atmospheric doom creep, with lots of space, chords ringing out, notes decaying gradually, sounding like Low crossed with Skepticism or a heavier blackened Barn Owl, the track a sprawl of minor key twang and distant black buzz, that builds to a loping post rocky chug and churn, that had us thinking DSO might have abandoned the black buzz entirely, but that the second songs erupts in a frenzy of pounding blackness, rife with melody, but impossibly noisy and gnarled, the drums insanely complex, the arrangement dizzying, DSO one of those few bands that have even the most musically savvy scratching their hands wondering not only how the hell do they play this, but how do they come up with it in the first place. Heavy, and heady, melodic, proggy, intricate, intense, somehow catchy to boot, the band deftly flitting from melodic lope to impossibly dense black blast and back again.
The Slint influence is still heavy here, but the band don't dial back the heaviness for those post rockier parts, which gives this new ep a twisted ferocity, that barely lets up, instead of switching to clean guitar and spare arrangement, they douse those post/math moments in black buzz, and transform them into something else entirely.
There are some super melodic moments for sure, the final track especially manages to turn a post rock style groove into a dense black sprawl of distortion drenched heaviness, with strange tripped out stretches of just drums and chanted monklike vocals, but bookended by heavy parts that are SO heavy, and yet so hauntingly melodic. In just a little over twenty minutes, DSO manage to accomplish more than most bands do in a lifetime, creating something at once so perfectly embodying the spirit of true back metal, but at the same time forging their own ultra distinctive sonic path, one that continues to lead them further and further afield, into sonic realms where most other bands fear to tread.
FINALLY! The long awaited brand new release from mysterious French post-black metal horde Deathspell Omega. There are very few bands that instill the sort of worship and awe that these guys do, but it's well deserved. Deathspell Omega have tread a solitary path, twisting the sounds of black metal into decidedly unlikely shapes, culminating in their last record, the classic Kenose, almost more of a post rock record with bits of black metal mixed in.�
We had no idea what to expect from this new record, to be honest, we had a slight feeling, that they might abandon metal all together, or at least push even farther into avant rock territory, more sparse and moody meandering postrockscapes, and less full on blackness, but as we should have expected, DSO ended up doing the last thing we expected, and made a sort of slight return to their sound of old.�
Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is WAY more aggressive, relentless and pummeling. Those post rock elements are still very much evident, but the meat of these songs is a dizzying chaotic squall of black blasts, tangled obtuse guitars, minor key melodies, hateful howls and a super 'live' sounding BIG production, making everything sound even more intense and brutal.�
The record opens and closes with strange soundscapes of tinkling piano, regal horns, martial percussion, what sounds like some sort of medieval court music, big booming drums, muter trumpets, huge masses of choral chants, almost like an ultra blackened Arvo Part score, or maybe even a strangely melodic piece by Hermann Nitsch.
But then the band launch into some of the most furious, most chaotic material we've heard from them in ages. A churning pit of dizzyingly technical blackness, the guitars are everywhere, buzzing, grinding, the vocals growled and ultra low, but it's the drums that truly destroy. Unlike most black metal records, the drums don't just flip flop between blasts and midtempo jams, they are spastic and wild, fills all over the place, the drums stumbling and scrambling over every spare inch of space, like a continuous drum solo, but every beat, every flurry of kick drums, is somehow perfectly tangled up with some bit of guitar or some convoluted arrangement. The riffs are slippery and swoop wildly within the different parts, the drums pelting them from all sides with a never ending hailstorm of blown out battery. It's the sort of metal that has you gasping for breath between songs. In the store it sometimes sounds like a blur, but with headphones, it's much easier to hear everything that is going on below the surface. Ultra complex, hyper mathy, but strangely hooky too. Little trills of high end guitar pepper the blurry buzz, each song broken into about a hundred different parts.�
Most of the tracks have some sort of stripped down bridge, where the metal pulls back to reveal a lonely loping interlude, all clean minor key guitar and simple propulsive drumming, usually wrapped in all manner of sinister black ambience. A post rock meander through some dark forest or across some barren alien landscape before being swallowed up by DSO's massive wall of black sound.�
A few tracks definitely remind us of Kenose, the distinctly nineties sounding math rock intro to "A Chore For The Lost" could just as easily be the Dazzling Killmen, with it's guitar harmonics, angular riffage and crushing beats, or the sort of dissonant slowcore opening to "The Repellent Scars Of Abandon And Election", but both of those are just that, merely intros, that soon transform into spiky black beasts, crushing and burning and trampling everything in their path.�
The sound of�Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is so chaotic and so schizophrenic, it almost seems like it would just be way too much for the typical black metalhead, it's certainly grim and black and buzzy, but it's also dense and fucked up and obtuse and really really weird.... But if you're anything like us, which we think you are, then that all pretty much perfectly describes what could very well end up black metal record of the year.
The two most recent Deathspell Omega records, Kenose and Si Monvmentvm Reqvires Circvmspice, immediately became all time AQ favorites, due in no small part to their strange hybrid of classic thrashy black metal, and strange serpentine post rock. Grim enough to satisfy all the true black metal warriors out there, but weird and avant enough to please fans of strange music, metalhead or not. But as with most groups with a strange progressive sonic bent, that sound didn't just happen overnight, they had to grow into it, feeling their way as they went and DSO is no exception. While now they are this ultra mysterious avant garde black metal outift, they started out as an ultra grim, thrashy black metal band, as is evidenced on Infernal Battles, a disc that collects two of DSO's demos (2000 / 2003). This was released a while ago but quickly went out of print and has only been repressed recently so we've finally gotten enough to list!
So while this isn't as far out or weirdly progressive as the more recent releases, in no way does that mean this isn't essential stuff. And even that far back, there were hints as to what the future held for DSO sonically. Overall, this is simple and true and grim thrashy buzzing black metal, furious blast beats and droning riffs, howled vocals, but even in this more traditional classic BM framework, DSO manage to imbue each song with subtly strange melodies and unlikely riffing, surprisingly complex and catchy arrangements, all fitted snugly in that classic BM structure, subverting subtly from within. This one is definitely not for the dabblers who dug later DSO records but for whom the BM angle was more of a novelty -- this is harsh, heavy, grim, brutal stuff, fans of Darkthrone, old Immortal, Mayhem and the like will be in utter hell (which they like), and will gladly wallow in the bleak blackness of Infernal Battles for sure.
Inquisitors Of Satan was the second album from Deathspell Omega, originally released in 2002 and intended to be vinyl only until a slew of spotty bootleg cds convinced the band to release a cd version. Much like Infernal Battles, IoS finds Deathspell still firmly ensconced in a more traditional grim and true black metal sound, channelling the spirit of Darkthrone and Immortal and Mayhem, but twisting that classic BM sound into their own subtly strange shapes.
A cursory listen reveals all the sonic hallmarks you might expect from any classic black metal record: buzzing blurry riffs, furious blast beats, haunting minor key melodies, gutteral growled demonic vocals, but as on Infernal Battles, DSO seem to be growing tired of just blasting away, and inject all sorts of subtleties that slowly reveal themselves upon repeated listens, riffs are twisted and convoluted, melodies are totally unlikely but in being so, manage to also be completely and extraordinarily catchy. Granted this is still at it's core, pure and evil and furiously brutal black metal, but this definitely hinted even more at the mysterious blackened beast DSO would one day become.
Metal heads around these parts have been completely obsessed with Deathspell Omega. And rightfully so. The first black metal band in a long while to totally reinvent black metal and make it their own. In a way that managed to turn lots of non-metal folks to the dark side while somehow remaining true and grim enough to keep the hardcore black metal elite satisfied. We mentioned in our review of the last DSO, that the best way to find out about the best bands, is to check out what the other best bands are listening to, and at the time, everyone from Leviathan to Nachtmystium to Crebain to Draugar were singing their praises. So when the word of a new DSO surfaced, we had the SF black metal horde showing up at the store all the time like kids at Christmastime, chomping at the bit for the new DSO. "Is it here yet?! Is It Here Yet?! IS IT HERE YET?" Well, it is finally here, and damn if it isn't even weirder and more intense and fucking amazing than we could have hoped for. Three tracks clocking in at about 36 minutes, of some of the most unique, idiosyncratic outsider black metal you'll ever hear. The first track starts off with four minutes of meandering and spacious post rock, a lilting melancholic soundscape, of finger picked guitars, big simple drumming, creepy whispered vocals, and snippets of ghostly disembodied voices, before the whole thing builds into a super angular minor key black metal burst of buzzing distorted riffing, arpeggiated melodies and blast beats that all sort of morphs into a very Ved Buens Ende sounding loping midtempo metallic groove, seasick and hypnotic sounding. The entire record is peppered with alien sounding melodies, stretches of ambient flutter, some otherworldly slow motion doom, strange industrial clatter and woozy head nodding arrangements, all aligned around and amidst more traditional blasts of black metal. So cool and so weird. This is indeed black metal through and through, but at the same time it's almost more of a weird avant rock record, incorporating lots of BM elements, making it that much more original and that much more timeless. Packaged in a gorgeous digipak with a huge booklet of BEAUTIFUL creepy artwork very reminiscent of Hans Bellmer, along with all sorts of texts, Biblical, apocryphal and otherwise.
It's only been a year since we last heard from Deathspell Omega, but it feels like forever. Their last record, Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum, still ranks as one of our favorite black metal records ever. A truly original blast of gnarled avant black metal, as true and grim and buzzy and black as any black metal we've heard, but rife with strange chords, and distinctly non-metal phrasings, convoluted arrangements, an incredible raw black metal record, all tangled up with something much more fractured and experimental. The record before that, Kenose, was even more far out, transforming their black buzz into something approaching a blackened Slint, a strange twisted metallic post rock.
This disc however takes us was back to the beginning of this century, and compiles a handful of super rare splits and compilation tracks, from the disc they shared with Mutiilation, their split with Moonblood, and the Black Crushing Sorcery compilations. The sound here, based on the dates, and the fact that these tracks predate new vocalist Mikka Aspa from Clandestine Blaze and Fleshpress joining the band, are sonically much more in line with their earlier records Infernal Battles and especially Inquisitors of Satan. The first two tracks from the Mutiilation split find the band right at the cusp, clinging to their grim raw roots, but allowing their music to sprawl, the chords get more and more dissonant, the arrangements more complex, the overall sound thicker and more lush, but still rough and black. The three tracks from the Moonblood split go back to 2000 and thus sound much more raw and straight ahead, total early nineties Norwegian BM worship, a definite Darkthrone vibe for sure, but is suits them, the soaring buzz, the blasting beats, all wound up into long epics, peppered with woozy midtempo breakdowns, the riffs slippery and atonal, the overall sound a super smoldering lo-fi blackness. The final track from the Black Crushing Sorcery is more of the same, another solid chunk of classic nineties sounding black metal, insectoid guitar buzz, furious blast beats, even a weird punky Darkthrone breakdown partway through.
Essential and classic, another glimpse into the past, revealing more of the black roots that would eventually take hold and produce the fearsome black beast that is Deathspell today.
As we wait patiently for a new Deathspell Omega, we have not one, but two archival releases to hold us over, one, reviewed elsewhere on this list, is a collection of splits and compilation tracks, and this one, well, this is the one DSO the troo fanatics have been waiting for.
The music on the other disc, Manifestations 2000-2001, is all previously released, and while most folks probably never got their hands on the way too limited originals, those recordings have definitely been floating around. But the music on this disc, Manifestations 2002, is all previously unreleased, and unless you're seriously well connected, this is essentially a brand new Deathspell album. These tracks were originally recorded for two different releases, several for a split lp with Cantus Bestiae, which never materialized, and the rest, were intended to be DSO's contribution to the Crushing The Holy Trinity comp. For whatever reason, these tracks never made it, and the band recorded a single 22 minute epic to take their place. But thankfully, these tracks were preserved, and are finally seeing the light of day, or rather, the black of night.
And regardless of where these tracks were headed for, they play pretty solidly as a proper DSO album. Filthy and furious, frenzied and relentless, a flurry on insectoid buzz lightning speed blast beats, harsh bile drenched vokills, but it is Deathspell, and this is about the time their sound began to change, so amidst all this buzz and blast, are strange loping midtempo sprawls, slippery woozy angular riffs, notes colliding and shimmering in fields of weird almost-grooves, melodies and harmonies twist and transform, their sound simultaneously demonic and weirdly pretty, but buried under avalanches of black fury, pounding almost punky breakdowns slip smoothly into impossible fast blurs, brief moments of near poppiness surface amidst roiling seas of choppy black grind, but it's still 2002, so instead of defining their sound, those elements become just another part of the heaving monstrous whole, and infuse even the most straight ahead black blasts with the sort of twisted avant vibe that would eventually become the core of DSO's new direction.
What can we write about France's mysterious Deathspell Omega that we haven't already? Pretty much the gold standard of forward thinking avant black metal, every record better than the last, more twisted, more complex, and weirdly enough less obviously black metal.
Paracletus is the final part of the group's epic trilogy, which began with Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, and continued with Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum; like those records, Paracletus is an epic sonic undertaking, present in smaller doses are the requisite black metal buzzing and blasting, but even more than the first two records, which were already reaching beyond the tired tropes of traditional black metal, Paracletus barely seems black metal at all. It's definitely heavy, and seriously intense, complex, but even the blasting blackness is infused with mysterious melody, and impossible textures. Listening to this, we not only find ourselves wondering how people can make music like this, but how they can even conceive of it?
The opening sub two minute 'intro' is all gnarled melodies, twisted atonal mathiness, convoluted and avant and abstract and somehow totally catchy, the blackest part is the vocals, still delivered in a gruff demonic bellow, but other than that, the sound is in a realm all its own. And when you expect the record proper to kick in, the band do explode in a frenzy of blasting fury, but the riffs sound weirdly clean, and are peppered with all sorts of little bits of filigree and little sonic curlicues, not to mention more of those super tangled and gnarled Greg Ginn-ish guitar parts that band is known for, the song a twisted sonic puzzle, a million parts seamlessly woven into an impossibly cohesive whole which is indeed heavy, and black, but has so much cool weird shit going on, strange melodic breakdowns, laid over frantic blast beats, haunting ascending and descending melodies, atonal and angular, and it never lets up, how a band can play this fast, and this intricate, and definitely boggles the mind. And the whole record is like that, the sound both heavy and harsh, but simultaneously clean and melodic, it seems impossible, and sounds weird to describe, but there is something definitely unique going on here, the tone, the arrangements, the SOUND, it's not brittle or buzzy or grim or kvlt or any of that, it's LUSH, and expansive and epic and majestic, but still fierce and dark and intense, there's bass all over the place too, definitely an anomaly for black metal, adding some serious heft, not to mention melodic counterpoint, clean vocals, intense spoken word, doomy stretches that sound more like Codeine than Mutiilation. Not to totally downplay how heavy and TRUE this is, there is no doubt that this is black metal, it's just so above and beyond everything else, so unique and unlike all the other groups out there. We LOVE black metal, but 99 percent of the time we'd fail a blind name that tune or even name that band sort of comparison, cuz so much BM sounds so similar, but we could pick out DSP in a matter of seconds.
For their sound, but also for all the strange stuff they mix into their BM, like the lurching low slung breakdown on "Phosphene", with it's buzzy gothy fuzzbass, and tortured wails, not to mention the woozy main riff and the strange scrapes and slides, or the glimmering prettiness that is "Epiklesis II", which sounds almost like Mogwai or something, growing more and more epic, it even sounds like there are horns or an orchestra, so totally epic and unexpected, or howabout the insane mathiness of "Devouring Famine", along with the twisted dizzying breakdowns and the warped sounding guitars, or finally the whole of "Apokatastasis Panton", which is an incredible slab of black pop, the drums super complex, the arrangement sprawling and serpentine, but the guitars, soaring and melodic, again building and building to a sort of psychedelic blackened Godspeed style climax.
So incredible, the sort of thing that doesn't just feel like the culmination of the record, but of all three records, of the trilogy as a whole, an explosive and emotional and ultimately cathartic release, the sort of thing you don't get from much music, let alone black metal. Easily our new favorite black metal record, and without a doubt, black metal record of the year. TOTALLY ESSENTIAL.
The only way to find out about the best bands, has always been to check out who the other best bands are listening to. So when the black metal elite (including our own West Coast wing, Leviathan, Crebain, Draugar, etc) are all singing the praises of a band, then you know you need to check them out. Such is the case with mysterious black metal horde Deathspell Omega. With a handful of impossible to find releases in the past, Si Monvmentvm Reqvires Circvmspice is the first DO record with any sort of wide distribution. It's about time too. Deathspell Omega occupy an unholy sonic space somewhere between Burzum, Mutiilation, Leviathan and Xasthur. Droning mostly midtempo black metal (with occasional blast beats), infused with strange arpeggiated minor key guitars, melancholy riffing, super hypnotic ultra memorable songwriting, compex song structures, grim affected vocals, and all sorts of hauntingly beautiful ambient interludes / intros, with martial percussion, litugical chants and subtle drones, very dark and intensely affecting. Sonically, DO sound a bit like older Enslaved, or early Emperor, but with a strong penchant for unlikely melodies (that subtly surface even in the harshest of musical moments) and hypnotic trance like repetition. One of our favorite new black metal records.
Finally, after waiting and waiting, a brand new Deathspell Omega record. Or track. OK, record. Same difference really. One single sprawling massive 22 minute epic with more parts and compositional complexities than most bands can cram into a record three times as long. And it's the perfect blend of DSO's two disparate sides, their grim and gnarled, frosty, thrashing buzzy black side, and their more obtuse, mathy melodic post rock side. In the past, it seemed like the band would lean heavily in one direction or the other depending on the record, Kenose with it's total slavish and apparently unintentional Slint worship, and then FAS, which seemed to ditch those post rock proclivities in favor of something much more old school.
So it was pretty much a toss up where the band would take their sound, and weirdly enough, this is almost exactly what we were hoping for. A perfect hybrid of the two, with no clear delineation, each side, those battling influences, blurring and bleeding into one another, confusionally bafflingly brilliant, bursts of furious grinding black buzz lead directly into warped stretches of spidery clean guitars and lurching impossible rhythms, soft hushed whispered interludes obliterated by thick roiling black riffery, only to slowly melt before our eyes, twisting and almost detuning, the guitar parts very Polvo-esque, strange tunings, almost skeletal sounding, until the band offer up some impossibly dense complicated BM fury, stop start arrangements, INCREDIBLE drumming, the guitars totally unhinged, but still weirdly catchy. Songs this long are always difficult to pull off, for the best of bands, either parts get recycled, the band repeats itself, or it gets tiresome and then it's a matter of waiting for the song to end. But nothing like that here. So many parts, all thematically and musically linked, but all totally unique, the guitars especially, seem to come to life, like some black weed, while the drums inhumanly stay locked in perfectly. The track shifts from intense frenzy, to woozy groove, to lumbering doom, to jagged mathy stutter, and back again, there even seems to be some horns happening, reminding us of later period Gore.
Even as a musician, it baffles the mind, how anyone is capable of conceiving music this dense and complex and subtly melodic, let along performing it. This just might seal the deal, as if it wasn't sealed already, Deathspell Omega just might be the most progressive, most avant, and fuck it most mind blowing black metal band on the planet right now. Period.
DSO's twenty two minute track is actually from a split, released in conjunction with a new record from countrymen S.V.E.S.T., reviewed elsewhere on this list, and equally as essential, and vinyl folks, you are in luck, both the DSO material and the S.V.E.S.T. songs, while released as separate cds, are available together on a single lp!
The long awaited split from two of our all time favorite black metal outfits, Deathspell Omega and S.V.E.S.T.! Weirdly enough, each band's half of the vinyl split was also released on a separate cd, so if you're a digital kind of person, you're gonna have to buy both cds, and believe us it's well worth it, just read on. But if vinyl is your thing, then you're in luck, cuz both halves, all the material from both cds, is contained on this here lp.
Up first, Deathspell Omega:
Finally, after waiting and waiting, a brand new Deathspell Omega record. Or track. OK, record. Same difference really. One single sprawling massive 22 minute epic with more parts and compositional complexities than most bands can cram into a record three times as long. And it's the perfect blend of DSO's two disparate sides, their grim and gnarled, frosty, thrashing buzzy black side, and their more obtuse, mathy melodic post rock side. In the past, it seemed like the band would lean heavily in one direction or the other depending on the record, Kenose with it's total slavish and apparently unintentional Slint worship, and then FAS, which seemed to ditch those post rock proclivities in favor of something much more old school.
So it was pretty much a toss up where the band would take their sound, and weirdly enough, this is almost exactly what we were hoping for. A perfect hybrid of the two, with no clear delineation, each side, those battling influences, blurring and bleeding into one another, confusionally bafflingly brilliant, bursts of furious grinding black buzz lead directly into warped stretches of spidery clean guitars and lurching impossible rhythms, soft hushed whispered interludes obliterated by thick roiling black riffery, only to slowly melt before our eyes, twisting and almost detuning, the guitar parts very Polvo-esque, strange tunings, almost skeletal sounding, until the band offer up some impossibly dense complicated BM fury, stop start arrangements, INCREDIBLE drumming, the guitars totally unhinged, but still weirdly catchy. Songs this long are always difficult to pull off, for the best of bands, either parts get recycled, the band repeats itself, or it gets tiresome and then it's a matter of waiting for the song to end. But nothing like that here. So many parts, all thematically and musically linked, but all totally unique, the guitars especially, seem to come to life, like some black weed, while the drums inhumanly stay locked in perfectly. The track shifts from intense frenzy, to woozy groove, to lumbering doom, to jagged mathy stutter, and back again, there even seems to be some horns happening, reminding us of later period Gore.
Even as a musician, it baffles the mind, how anyone is capable of conceiving music this dense and complex and subtly melodic, let along performing it. This just might seal the deal, as if it wasn't sealed already, Deathspell Omega just might be the most progressive, most avant, and fuck it most mind blowing black metal band on the planet right now. Period.
And then S.V.E.S.T.:
The return of an old favorite, French duo S.V.E.S.T., who strangely enough haven't released a proper record since 2003 (2005's Coagula compiled older demos), but within 30 seconds, we were totally reminded exactly why we loved these guys so much. And they're a perfect foil for Deathspell, their sound equally fractured and convoluted and fucked up, but where DSO go for something darker and moodier and more melodic, S.V.E.S.T. go in the other direction completely, spitting out frenzied swaths of blurred buzz and wild squalls of intense tangled blackness. These three tracks, are so awesome, we almost, and we're well aware of the sacrilege involved here, but we just might like them as much as, if not even more than the Deathspell half of the split.
Their sound is hard to describe. The first track opens with a dizzying swirl of squiggly guitars, woozy riffs, wild splattery drumming, that seems already like it's bordering on total meltdown, yet that's just the intro, and the band launch into a frenzied assault even more fucked up and dense, but pepper it with cool little melodies and parts that almost sound Viking, albeit buried beneath a roiling black blowout. The guitar does these cool little descending trills, the song lurches and stutters, the drums are relentless, mind blowingly fast and heavy and intricate, until partway through, the sound shifts, and there's a bit of doomy crawl, before leaping right back into the fray. Throughout, there are bursts of total drumming chaos, extra guitars howling and adding yet more layers of buzz. It's so thick and heavy and dense, it takes close listening to pick out all the amazing stuff going on beneath the buzzy black surface.
The second track continues on in much the same vein, with the guitars even more twisted and gnarled, the drums still relentlessly mathy and intricate, slipping from total chaotic black noise, to stumbling groove, to cool pounding dirge, the drums leaping out from the mix, the guitars thick and raw, but soaring majestically at the same time. The sound manages to be epic and classic and technical while also murky and lo-fi, the sounds all blurring together, a heaving mass of constantly shifting blown out blackness, still rife with all manner of tangled little melodies, and sweeping epic ambience.
The closer is short and sweet, the weirdest and creepiest of the bunch, beginning with a staccato machine gun burst of drums and riffage, before slipping into a swirling high end guitardrone, all woozy and overlapping, disembodied riffs and smeared melodies, dizzying and mesmerizing, growing more and more intense, the drums barely there, just those high end guitars glowing hotter and hotter, until finally, the drums kick in, and the track resolves in a totally twisted soaring post rock black metal what the fuck epic outro, that fades out WAY too soon. Holy shit. These guys need to deliver a full length ASAP. and we definitely don't want to wait another 6 years.
LIMITED OF COURSE. And it would be hard not to think, even only nine days into the new year, that this wasn't gonna be the best black metal record of '09. We'll see...
High On Fire On The Cover (looking maybe just a little uncomfortable, posing draped in snakes on account of their new album, Snakes For The Divine... why'd it have to be snakes... shoulda said snacks!).
Also this ish: Ludicra, The Wounded Kings, Teitanblood, Bastard Noise, Daughters, Priestess, Abscess, Ihsahn, Landmine Marathon, Finntroll (vs. Troll), Dark Tranquillity (being inducted into the Hall Of Fame for The Gallery), Nachtmystium (studio report), and more, including of course all the usual news, tons o' reviews, and funny columns, John Darnielle's South Pole Dispatch being particularly amusing this time 'round.
More good readin' for all you metal fans. This issue has Exodus on the cover, but also 1349, Cathedral, Darkthrone, The Ruins Of Beverast, Fenriz, The Ocean, Pentagram (with their 1985 album Relentless being inducted into the Decibel "Hall of Fame"), a studio report from Torche, a feature on one-man death metal bands, and plenty more, including all the witty usual reviews (78 of 'em) and columns.
One of the scary dudes from Watain poses for this month's cover, complete with dripping blood, foaming dry ice goblet, skulls, candles, facepaint, and one weird contact lens. A good cover subject for sure! Inside, also: Cannibal Corpse, Nachtmystium, Melvins, Enslaved, Enforcer, Karma To Burn, Rosetta, Across Tundras, Yakuza, and plenty more. Including, Type O Negative's Bloody Kisses album entering into the Decibel Hall Of Fame. Pete Steele, R.I.P.
On the cover this issue of our fave US metal glossy, Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth, previewing their upcoming new album Heritage, which we're looking forward to hearing. Then there's also the likes of Seidr, Disma, Argus, Decapitated, Toxic Holocaust, King Fowley of Deceased (mostly not enjoying the music they're playing him in the "Call & Response" feature), Skeletonwitch (a studio report), and more... Rorschach's Protestant enters the Decibel Hall of Fame (yeah!!), and A.C.'s notorious Seth Putnam gets eulogized (RIP Seth). Plus the usual plethora of reviews, news, and funny stuff.
Mastodon is on the cover, talking up their new opus The Hunter. Also this ish: Dimmu Borgir, Yob, Today Is The Day, The Gates Of Slumber, Origin, Testament, 40 Watt Sun, Anthrax, a special report on "Neofolk", and plenty more. This month's Hall Of Fame album induction: Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche!!! And the usual ton of reviews, including (why didn't we think of this) one where they review Barn Owl, Weird Owl, and Weird Al Yankovic all together at once! Good stuff.
This issue's got Paradise Lost on the cover ("metal's most underrated band"). Also inside: Torche, High On Fire, Unsane, Suffocation, Prong, UFOmammut, Occultation, Royal Thunder, Nachtmystium, and for their monthly album hall of fame honors, the story behind the making of Pantera's seminal Vulgar Display Of Power... Along with the usual reviews, news, ads, snark, etc.
More metal reading material here! Every month we enjoy Decibel's coverage of the latest metal releases, tours, etc. Plus their columns, reviews, etc. are often quite amusing. This time, Phil Anselmo of Down glares from the cover. Inside: C.O.C., Incantation, The Sword, Exhumed, My Dying Bride, Sarcafago (in the Hall of Fame feature), and more. Including, the magazine's picks for the top 40 best albums of 2012, always a fun read and surefire argument starter.
Uh, yeah that's Chuck Billy from veteran Bay Area thrashers Testament on the cover, in a headdress. Haven't heard their new album yet but our customer Monte says its good.
Also in this issue of America's best/smartest/funniest glossy metal mag: Ghost, Gojira, The Darkness (!!!), Evoken, Wolf, Candlemass, Marty Friedman (y'know, ex-Megadeth), Grand Magus, Samothrace, and Isis enters the 'Decibel Hall Of Fame' for their Oceanic album...plus of course more!
We still don't understand why more Mountain Goats fans don't buy this magazine from us, just for John Darnielle's back page column... maybe you all subscribe???
Not sure how many of you remember the group Code, and their record Nouveau Gloaming, from maybe 3 or 4 years ago. A dizzying blend of blasting Norwegian style blackness a la Satyricon (circa Nemesis Divina) and Interpol, or at least some modern post Joy Division gothiness, and no small amount of Swans like doomic crush as well, oh and a bit of Khold like groove. That record destroyed us (and before you order it, we're not entirely sure it's even still available sad to say). We had been wondering though, quite recently in fact, what happened to Code, only to discover... a new Code record in June (!) and this little project right here: Decrepit Spectre. Featuring Code vocalist Kvohst, who also sings for Dodheimsgard, which should give you a clue as to what sort of blackened crooning to expect from Decrepit Spectre. The rest of the band is rounded out by some serious black metal muscle as well. Members of Ved Buens Ende, Manes and Seth among others.
We're happy to report that Decrepit Spectre basically sounds like Code mk. II, which is a very good thing indeed. A killer mix of frenzied blasting blackness, and moody brooding doom-ed gothiness. At its heaviest, sounding quite a bit like classic Satyricon, but maybe more than Code, DS is rife with those awesomely dramatic vocals, that definitely makes Coal Black Hearses sound like a black metal Interpol record, which as far as we're concerned is pretty much something we always fantasized about, or would have if it even seemed like a possibility. The arrangements are mathy and dense and complex, the riffs buzz and snarl, but there's also plenty of winding twisted guitar melodies, haunting harmonies, and the cool thing here is that even the loping gothy parts, are often underpinned by furious double kick drumming, and conversely, the flurries of vintage black buzz, are often wound around deep moaning sorrowful vocals. A strange combination, but one that still works, and still totally hits the spot for us. We were a bit bummed out by the later Dodheimsgard records, not sure what it was exactly, but THIS is exactly how we hoped those DHG discs would sound, super tech, post black metal, melodic and gloomy, mysterious and dramatic, but at the same time heavy as fuck, crushing and thrashing and pounding, with plenty of creeped out interludes, washed out woozy blackness, harsh hellish vox, insane relentless drumming and the occasional stretch of abstract psychedelic weirdness.
A bit of a bummer this is only 16 minutes long (just 3 tracks), but it definitely has us chomping at the bit for a full length. For now, we'll keep on doing what we're doing, playing this over and over and over, while we wait for the full length (and that upcoming Code full length as well!)...
Released on UK label Paradigms, who seemingly can do no wrong. A limited edition, but unclear just how limited.
Only got three of these, found a little stash in the closet, pretty sure we won't be able to get more so grab one of these quick if you're into twisted Ukrainian black metal. And really how could you not be. The Ukraine has a small but killer scene that's given us bands like Drudkh, Nokturnal Mortum, Astrofaes, Hate Forest, Khors, Shadows Ground and Blood Of Kingu. And weirdly enough, Definition Sane features the drummer of BoK, but their sound is a whole different beast. This comp collects the group's two demos, the sound murky and moody, buzzy and black, melding depressive and ambient elements with more classic buzz and blast, and there's a definite technical death metal element too (they even cover Deicide!), but at its core, it's a fantastically twisted blackness, not sure whether it's the composition or the recording, but the sound is warped and warbly, with the sound constantly shifting into weirdly atonal and angular parts that make the sound more ugly and damaged and 'difficult' than most black metal. It also gives the sound a sort of 'avant' vibe, which when coupled with the overall grim sound, makes for something pretty ruling.
Again, we only have three of these, and once they're gone, that's it...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest chunk of grim blacknoise from Ohio duo Demonologists, comes in the form of this super limited split cd-r, with the mysterious Deathstench. We first heard from Demonologists on a cassette from Waves Of Decay, and we described that record as sounding like ten different black metal records all being played at once and then remixed by a Japanoise DJ. Which should tell you all you need to know, brutal, harsh, intense, black buzz brutality. On their half of this split, Demonologists start off each track with some black ambient drift or some creepy cinematic dronemusic, only to eventually explode into full on blacknoise, an avalanche of speaker shredding, ear piercing Merzbow/Masonna style fury, only in this case, buried in there somewhere are buzzing riffs and shrieked vokills, and if you can brave the first few minutes, the songs tend to open up, peeling back some of the noise, revealing all the murky weirdness inside and underneath, whether that's wild squalls of fractured effects, surprising shards of jagged melody, or just stretches of black metal buzz. Headphones seem the way to go, this is the sort of all out aural assault that in a room with regular speakers, just sounds like a vacuum cleaner symphony, but strap on those cans, and you're plunged into a blacknoise abyss, a skull caving collision between Incapacitants and Wrath Of The Weak, a whirling black buzz dervish of unparalleled proportions. Metalheads tread carefully, one must have iron ears as well as a black soul to truly survive this sonic onslaught!
Deathstench start their side off with a creepy sample and some sick, gurgling low end buzz, a churning black expanse of downtuned heaviness and murky oozing creep, the sound super distorted and on the verge of crumbling to pieces, textural and heavily layered, black and black but surprisingly listenable. Which is how these guys roll, balancing the relentless blown out pummel of Demonologists, Deathstench are a bit more subtle with their bleak, grim, abject soundscaping, creating looped landscapes of industrial whir, and buzzy black drones, of machine like rhythms buried in the sonic murk and mire, wreathed in haunting drifting melodies, and swirling black ambience, finally finishing things off with a 15+ minute horrorscape, beginning with some hushed ultra minimal shimmer, but quickly blossoming into something much more evocative and sinister, distant demonic vokills, disembodied voices, churning black low end, lots of spaced out drift, super cinematic and downright scary.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! With full color glossy artwork!
Power metal dudes and dudettes! We can't call ourselves a "metal specialty" store without listing this. Well actually we're not a "metal specialty" store but that's what it said in the New York Times article about "intelligent metal" a few weeks ago, quoting Andee talking about some of the bands the Times thought were so smart. Not among them, Demons and Wizards, though if you really like metal you should dig this as much or more than SUNNO))) and Pelican and so forth. It's the second album from the dream team of Blind Guardian vocalist Hansi Kursch and Iced Earth guitarist John Schaffer. Well ok we're not big Iced Earth fans here (the early stuff was good, though). But Blind Guardian get all kinds of AQ props. And one of the main reasons is 'cause of Hansi's vocals. He's not just some cookie cutter smoothly crooning power metal vocalist. He's got personality, some roughness, an edge. He's also way better than anyone who's ever sung for Iced Earth (well, Ripper's got a good voice, but Hansi's way more original!).
Anyway, Demons & Wizards are pretty great and fans of either 'parent' band won't be disappointed.
It's been AGES since we last heard from this black metal horde (all the way back in 2009), and at the time, we were pretty obsessed. Definitely a supergroup, featuring members of Shining, Diabolicum, Naer Matron, 1349, Pantheon I, Gehenna, Aeternus AND Doheimsgard, Den Saakaldte (named for a Ved Buens Ende song!) crafted a twisted avant garde depressive blackness, the sort of thing that would have sounded right at home on the Moonfog label back in the day, shades of Thorns throughout for sure, that first record a twisted mix of classic Norwegian black buzz and all manner of fucked up ambience, fractured electronics, WTF production and strange instrumentation (trumpet! accordion!). On Kapittel II: Faen I Helvete, the sound remains twisted and dramatic, although the sound is a bit more of a classic, churning epic blackness, until the vocals come in, they're a bombastic caterwauled croon, that transforms the otherwise grim buzz into something way more over the top, but compared to that first record, this is some almost traditional sounding black metal. Midway through one track, there's a stunning stretch of epic harmonized guitars, tense and intense, until the song swoops back in all melancholic and melodic, it's pretty bad ass! And even one of our other favorite tracks, the sound immediately erupts in a roiling black churn, furious fast picked guitars, progged out octopoidal drumming, bursts of frenzied blasting, it's a few tracks in, that things get truly avant, the sound a bit like a strange hybrid of a melodic modern metal dirge, and some sort of Victorian sea shanty, but instead of sounding weird, these guys simply transform it into something equally black, moody and malevolent, and sure there are some soaring clean vocals, that add yet another dimension, but it manages to stay just this side of weirdness, and instead, ends up crushingly majestic and dramatic, and so it goes for the rest of the record, a dense black sprawl of tangled black buzz, of furious metallic heaviness, of epic blackened majesty, not nearly as doomy or depressive as the first, and way less trumpet (as in, none), but the group seems to have sacrificed some of their twisted experimental streak for a sound much more concise, and more directly beholden to the classic Norwegian blackness that came before...
A list of the members of this new group should be enough to have most black metallers diving for the add-to-cart button: Kvarforth of Shining and Diabolicum, Skyellg from Naer Mataron and Paradigma, Seldemann from 1349 and Pantheon I, S. Winter from Gehenna and Aeternus and finally Jormundgand from Dodheimsgard. Odds are you probably have records by most, if not all of those bands in your collection, and while the sounds of those various groups are pretty varied, it will probably not prepare you for the sound of Den Saakaldte (which some might recognize as a Ved Buens Ende song title!).
Self described as "depressive black metal music with a modern avantgardist touch", the record begins with a long stretch of haunting choral voices, processed FX, soaring strings, swirling synths, deep rumbling drones, cabaret piano, shortwave interference, bits of hiss and glitch. It's an intro, sure, but only inasmuch as it's at the beginning of a black metal record, there are plenty of avant free-rock groups who would kill to come up with a track this cool and weird. But it is a black metal record, and it is after all an intro, so when the first song kicks in all heavy downtuned guitar, we're ready, but what we're not ready for is the trumpet, yep TRUMPET, the guitar trumpet drum mix is pretty cool, but soon gives way to something much more black, a churning blackened chugfest, heavy as fuck, with super deep howled processed vocals, killer drumming, amazing guitar playing, and super catchy main riff, the song twisting and turning and returning to the intro with an Eastern sounding guitar melody replacing the trumpet, before exploding back into that unmistakable Norwegian buzz, before slipping into some woozy doom, before lurching to a stop, leaving just a muted crackly clean guitar, and moaning almost choral vocals, before one final flurry of black buzz and a creepy drifty outro.
The rest of the record follows suit, channeling the spirit of the Norwegian legends: Gorgoroth, Ulver, Arcturus, Burzum, but with a definite dramatic vibe, and plenty of avant flourishes, whether they be weird acoustic guitar / accordion interludes, or strangled maniacal almost operatic vocals, or whole songs of dubbed out rhythms and processed piano, skittery electronic beats and disembodied horn sections.
The record finishes off with the nearly 12 minute lone "Jag Ar Den Fallna", featuring a guitar part that is total Thorns, but again, laced with minor key trumpet flourishes, as well as spidery guitar melodies, a groovy doomy depressive dirge, that explodes into a blast of black fury before crumbling into a sort of stumbling depressive Joy Division-y lurch, the track slipping effortlessly back and forth, from moaning minor key lumber, to blasting shrieking blackness, and back again, eventually the two disparate elements becoming one, the song turning into some blackened My Dying Bride, all epic classic doom, before that Thorns-like riff returns to finish things off, leading directly into the sub-minute long coda, a super creepy collage of little girl voices and atonal synths, wrapped in a gauzy otherworldly swirl of dense delay and reverb.
It might sound cliched to say, but they really don't make records that sound so much like this anymore, that nineties Norwegian sound, heavy and dark and catchy and majestic and mysterious and brutal and black, these are the sounds that lured us over to the dark side, and it's easy to see why, and strangely enough it still sounds as good today as it did 15 years ago. WAY recommended.
This is the self titled debut from Texas black metal horde Depths, which starts off more like a noise tape, a thick swath of billowing blackness, crumbling, grinding blacknoise, pulsing and swirling rhythmically, a pretty fierce intro, which leads directly into some cavernous blackened riffing, ultra lo-fi, sounding as if it was recorded at the bottom of a black pit, the guitars a muddy swirl, the drums a layer of hiss over the top, the vocals a reverb drenched bellow, the sounds so blurred and indistinct, the black metal buzz is more like a swirling sea of roiling buzz and blurred white noise. Eventually, the band slow things down, and the song seems to coalesce, into a loping almost post rock, but those vocals, a harsh hellish bellow that must melt faces live, but here keeps the proceedings from veering too far from the black path, the group displaying a surprisingly keen melodic sense, in the slower parts, while everything is utterly obliterated when the group explode into blasting blackness. This is definitely KVLT, sounding like some lost nineties rehearsal tape, which is not a bad thing at all, but is definitely more for the true grim hordes. Would definitely dig hearing what these guys could come up with in a real studio, assuming this isn't exactly what they were shooting for in the first place - raw, primitive lo-fi blackness.
Pakt is a harrowing, abject experiment in doom-ed blackness, the debut from this Norwegian duo, who weave a suffocating expanse of dense layered blackness, a dizzying hybrid of blacknoize, dark hypnotic dronemusic, and funereal doom. But even as a strange hybridized bit of sonic experimentalism, Pakt still stands out as one of the coolest, weirdest records we've heard.
The opening track lays it all out, the dark chaotic crunch, the pulsing throbbing blackness, the strange, seemingly out of place melodicism, from the first few minutes, a strange sound like an approaching train, distant reverbed vocals, a slow build to a sort of post industrial black drift, the chug of the 'train', overtaken by another layer of buzz, that sounds more like a helicopter than any sort of instrument, then in comes some achingly mournful minimal minor key melodies, while that helicopter sound, becomes an almost riff-like pulse, and coalesces into thick syrupy SUNN-y sludge, before slipping right back into that pulsing chug, this time accompanied by crooned clean, high vocals, almost like a pop song set amidst all the roiling blackness, a strange mix for sure, but it works, creating a sort of dour black industrial pop.
The rest of the record is equally as striking, spreading out swaths of coruscating feedback, over deep tectonic rumbles, letting the sounds build into undulating sheets of doomgaze, before becoming a proper slabs of glacial doom, tamping down thick buzzing riffage into hushed, blurred downtuned shimmer, laced with field recordings, disembodied processed voices, buried melodies, creaking machinelike percussion, simple strummed acoustic guitars, butted up against massive squalls of blackpsych guitarnoise, 16 rpm riffage gradually slowing down and easing into brooding Godspeed style slow build post rock, or exploding into brief flares of Nadja like doomdronedirge, but seemingly always settling back into something darker and hauntingly tranquil. Awesome stuff. Most definitely for fans of Nadja, SUNNO))), Troum, Skullflower, To Blacken The Pages, Robedoor, Bong, Have A Nice Life, Fear Falls Burning, Marzuraan, Snowblood and other purveyors of avant blackness, brooding post metal, and all things slow, low, heavy and blackened.
Features super striking red and black Justin Bartlett artwork...
By now all readers of the aQ list understand our obsession with fucked black metal. Demented, damaged, bizarre and brilliant. We can't get enough. From Benighted Leams to Rehtaf Ruo to Furze to Necrofrost to Striborg. Now, bow before the mighty black metal warriors of Detsorgsekalf.We discovered them quite by accident. Andee saw their video online (check it out here: http://www.eyeblister.com/inframe_main_1.html) and was so immediately smitten that he emailed them and first offered to play drums for them (they were drummerless, see the video), and barring that, offered to release a record for them. So with a forthcoming release on tUMULt in the works, we managed to get a handful of copies of their first self released cd-r, and if anything it more than lives up to the promise of the video.
Once you see the band and the video, you might get the impression that there's some sort of humor going on, maybe it's some sort of joke, but be aware this is as troo and grim as it gets. So serious in fact, that the band has already received numerous death threats from other disgruntled black metalheads, the contents of which will provide the conept and story for the upcoming full length. Lead vocalist Balfobar Nosugref is a massive behemoth of a man, clad in spiked armor and smeared in corpsepaint as he spews all sorts of necro wisdom in a demonic screech WAY up in the mix. Then there's the ultrahot Morksjal The Necrowench, who wields a bloodied black axe like a woman posessed. The whole band is a motley crew of blackened misfits form the bowels of the earth, sprung forth to spread musical disease and pestilence. The sound is a Burzumy buzz, with blasting drum machine beats and no bass! Just buzzing guitar after buzzing guitar, a swirling droney blast of black frost. Balfabar's vocals are absurd and insane, spotuing all manner of satanic drivel as well as rants about his girlfriend and other evil thoughts. There are some strange falsetto vocals, some random funk bass, strange samples, all mixed in amdist the evil buzz. Sometimes things get almost a bit too goofy, reminding us a little bit of a necro Steven Schultz (who we obviously love), but the band is at their best when they are in full on black buzz mode, then they can hold their own with any of the above mentioned black metal bands. The demented elite for sure.
They may be true and grim and evil, a black metal fist crushing all false metal, but Detsorgsekalf (their name being "frosted flakes" backwards but with a "g" instead of an "f" we just figured out, maybe) manage, in the process of being evil and true, to take the wind out of the sails of all those black metal blowhards that take themselves too seriously. Not that this isn't serious, because it is. Really.
Just check the bonus tracks "Keyboard Solo" and their holiday chestnut "Black Xmas." Or the video. And enjoy the Troo Grim Warriors Ov The Necrokkult while you anxiously await the new full length: A.B.B.A. -- Apocaalyptic Blasphemed Battle Anthems!!
Eight-song effort from this Misfits-inspired Marduk sideproject. In fact, half the tracks are Misfits covers!
Some records walk through the doors of aQuarius with a gravitas about them, some sort of heavy indefinable weight that's apparent before we even hit play for our first listen. Oceanclots, the umpteenth release from Dhampyr but only the second one we've stocked, is one such album. Written and recorded by the minimally monickered H.L. after the tragic death of his girlfriend (with the help of some collaborators, including vocal contributions from Jacob Thomas of local blown-out hypno-black metallers Dunnock), Oceanclots serves as a harrowing, cathartic, beautiful, singular tribute to her - a swirling, mesmerizing watercolor flurry of hazy blissful psychedelic black metal. Everything about the album is immersive, not least of which the in-the-red wall of sound production, almost indiscernible at first, inaccessible, and then as your ears adjust suddenly alive with lush shimmering detail, like your eyes adapting to the darkness of a jungle. Everything blends together and then seems to come apart. The distant ghostly spoken vocals and the anguished piercing screams. The cloudy melodies like half-memories drifting in and out, impossible to determine even what instrument they might belong to. The crumbling static of white-noise guitar enveloping everything (apparently all of which, due simply to H.L. not having any other way to record, are acoustic, but altered later on to sound like a blistering avalanche of gravelly static - just another piece of evidence that this is an album born of raw emotional necessity.) The truly blissful quiet passages, draped in alien echoes, haunting reverb, and glittering ambience. But beyond the music, as wonderfully and brutally psychedelic as it is, there are so many other details that complete the surreal portrait of this album. The ocean theme, a perfect compliment to the sounds you'll hear, which are like your eardrums bursting and the blissful drift of floating atop the ocean waves all rolled into one. The gorgeously labyrinthine song titles like "Mine Isabella Of Frosts & Poppypins" or "A Kodak Of Guncotton Shipwrecks". The surrealistic and heart breaking free form prose that adorns the booklet. And the final track, the beautiful dreamlike "Sea-Eclogue For Genevieve", seemingly an abstract drift of melodic reverb complimented by pulsing bass & plodding percussion, but which is in fact composed entirely using manipulated recordings of H.L.'s late girlfriend's voice, molded and twisted into an unending landscape of woozy hypnotizing beauty. The perfect end to such an exhaustingly harrowing yet euphorically cathartic album. An essential listen.
Not sure how we had gone this long without hearing this weirdo Rhode Island black metal / metalgaze / depressive ambient horde, especially considering that a quick check on the Metal Archives site reveals that these guys (this guy?) have released SIX full lengths, and about 20 or 30 demos and splits and eps. But this latest, Withdrawals & Candy Heavens, didn't take long to convince us that we have been seriously missing out. Based on the title alone, you might envision this as something that easily could have ended up on Khrysanthoney or Starlight Temple Society, and you'd be right. Dhampyr's sounds as much blissed out shoegaze jangle, and trancey blackened buzz pop as black metal, the anguished, tortured vokill mewlings, the main tether tying the sound to actual black metal. Otherwise, the sound soars and shimmers, dreamily stumbling through sundappled post rock, and spidery minor key clean guitar buzzscapes, the opener, a sprawling near 18 minute epic, is all you really need, heady and hypnotic, droning and dirgey, trance-y and hypnotic, darkly poppy, and moodily melancholy, the first ten minutes, pure post-black metal bliss out, and then the song collapses into a sonic black hole of gnarled, tangled buzz, all blurred and smeared into a hazy psychedelic ambience, buried samples add a strange garbled alien vibe to the proceedings, all the while, the guitars unfurl achingly melodic peals, buried beneath the strange sampled softnoise dronescape, emerging on the other side, a lumbering dirge, replete with deep dramatic vox, and more wails, and a black buzz fade out finale. The rest of the tracks are much shorter, but no less dramatic or twisted, the second track, delivers a raga-like blast of fast picked soaring guitar riffs, the sans drums or vocals, almost sound like some strange avant garde experimental guitarnoise, and when the rest of the instruments swoop in, it only gets weirder, with some strange fractured rhythms, distorted drumming, and more of those wild whooping vocals, the sound blown out and on the verge of crumbling. The last two tracks split their time between, murky lo-fi drones, noisy post rock mathiness, tranced out black-psych mesmer, the final track impossibly melodic, sounding like it could be some lost demo from some obscure math/post rock outfit from North Carolina in the nineties, albeit a bit more blackened, and with some wild double bass drum blasting.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! Only FIFTY COPIES!!! We have a bunch, but they won't last long, and once they're gone, that's probably IT!
You know how much we love Finnish music, forest folk, drifty drones, motorik hypnorock, but there's something in particular about Finnish black metal... something so utterly distinct, something so, well Finnish. It's hard to describe, but Finnish metal bands seem to have a certain vibe that permeates their sound, whether they be super buzzing and black, or primitive and stumbling, or somewhere in between.
Beherit, Ajattara, Sargeist, Satanic Warmaster, Finntroll, Horna, Behexen, Barathrum, Clandestine Blaze, Baptism, if you're familiar at all with most of those bands you probably see what we mean. It's something sonic but not obvious. A nod to the old school, but without sounding totally dated or retro. Finnish BM is grim and buzzing and brutal and black and totally Finnish.
One of the longest running Finnish BM hordes would probably have to be Diaboli, and The Antichrist, their 6th album since 1996, has everything we've come to love about them, and Finnish black metal in general. Lots of buzz, and simple riffing, the tempo is not midtempo, but also not a furious blast, it's fast for sure, but the tempo is tempered by the melodies, the arpeggiated chords spread out over each track like some melancholy shroud. The vocals are appropriately growled, the whole sound drenched in blackness and buzz, but it's that 'Finnish thing', whatever it is, that makes them stand out.
The first track is a classic blast of old school black metal, relentless blast beats, cyclical hypnotic riffing, epic majestic melody, the whole thing wrapped in delay and reverb, a dense black cloud, the track a galloping monster, but with some hidden bits of emotion and melody lurking underneath. Mysteriously pretty but disturbingly black. And maybe that's the thing we can't put our finger on. The strange melancholy melodiousness of track 5 "Emptiness" also hints at some strange heart of gold. albeit wrapped in a tattered black musical cloak. The guitars are muted and sound almost post rock, while the drums blast along solidly beneath. Each new guitar line introduces another unlikely and surprisingly melodic element. But let's not overstate the melodic aspect, and the 'prettiness' here, even though it is present, and is a vital part of the sound, ultimately, you gotta love the buzz, the brutal blasting blackness of old school black metal. Fans of Finns like Horna, Beherit, Clandestine Blaze will definitely dig this...
So this is the new Diabolical Masquerade album and it actually IS an "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" (not one of those 'soundtrack to an imaginary film' things) for a film about a man who somehow cheats death, and his mind is seperated from his body and he is forced to try and free his mind from the 'not alive' netherworld and rejoin it to his body. Sounds pretty cool. Doubt
We love weirdo black ambience almost as much as we love weirdo metal. So when a member of one of our favorite damaged fucked up black metal bands, strikes out on his own and spits out a completely cracked ambient drone record, that veers wildy from fierce and freaked drug drenched delirium to gorgeous blown out bliss, we hardly need to tell you that we are ALL OVER IT.�
This particular slab of cracked sonic chaos comes courtesy of Nattramn, vocalist for Swedish doomic suicidal black metallers Silencer, most notable perhaps for Nattramn's outrageously over the top falsetto shrieks. Here, the vocals aren't so much the focal point, although there are plenty, and while they may not be as hysterical and harsh, they are just as bizarre. In fact this whole record is pretty strange, and if you're a fan of labelmates Stalaggh, this could easily function as Stalaggh's dreamier dronier, equally demented cousin.�
The disc begins with a big smear of SUNN-y downtuned guitar crawl and�some dizzying warped carnivalesque warble before morphing into a simple plodding throb. Gradually, that throb transforms into an Autechre meets Amon Tobin skitter, albeit much filthier and more industrial sounding. Scuzzy and crusty and grinding, all beneath a cloud of buzzed out crumbling synths, and hoarse raspy vocalizing. The next track is almost the polar opposite, a�dreamy, wispy ambient drift, minor key melodies and strange�blown out whirls of frosty whir and strange, spacious, almost majestic sounding drones. Later�moaning mysterious chantlike vocals are woven into a warm murmury backdrop, with muted percussion, while over the top a distorted voice intones all manner of strange prophecy. Not soon after the record shifts gear again and becomes a eerie�neo classical slab of militaristic folk industrial, all epic and grandiose, almost like the sound from some old newsreel footage, but much more haunting and damaged sounding, a looped march, beneath thick swells of sound and that voice again, howling out invective, the various notes and chordal shimmer becoming more and more dissonant, eventually fading into a�grinding low end drone buzz, that hovers beneath the terrified sounds of a weeping child, and a dungeon's worth of mournful wails and creepy clatter, all wrapped in thick reverb, making it feel like wandering through some ancient keep, wreathed in fog.
As we reach the halfway point, the sound shifts again, this time an inadvertent homage to the glistening glimmer of Tim�Hecker and Philip Jeck, those beautiful sounds quickly sucked into a black void, a swirling morass of dark sound and low tones, and that voice again, reverbed and distorted, the whole thing sounding like a low end Whitehouse spun lazily at 8rpm, when all of a sudden, proceedings are shockingly disrupted by a super distorted techno pulse, some sort of ultra aggro industrial pound, with shouted sloganeering and more buzzing synths,�before reverting to a super distorted, glitchy, crumbly low end glacial rumble, a synth drenched SUNNO))) style crawl with bits of vocal fragments and buzzing streaks of groan and grind, until the whole thing becomes a dense roiling cloud of black ambience.
And it's still not over. Gorgeous washed out clouds of�gorgeous gauzy atmospheric shimmer drift in, all sepia toned and dreamlike, a long expanse of lazy blurred soft focus bliss, left to sort of float weightless before being overtaken by a�confusional collage of overlapping vocal snippets and out of tune, distorted piano, eventually building into a dense squall of swirling spinning sounds.
The finally, the�epic final track, more black ambience, rife with mysterious sound samples, more disembodied vocals, distant rumbles, weird electronic FX, the whole thing building to a massive damaged doom drone, with epic sheets of keening feedback and thick washes of distorted guitar and churning industrial whir, while over the top, the most demented, damaged, drug addled vocalizing yet, like an inmate in an insane asylum ranting and raving incoherently, the sort of vocals that most certainly wouldn't be at all out of place on one of the Stalaggh records.
A seriously damaged and ultra fucked up sonic trip, as beautiful as it is baffling. In other words, AWESOME.�
We've been going pretty nuts for French occult rock rhythmatists Aluk Todolo, their most recent record, appropriately titled Occult Rock, we made Record Of The Week, and could barely keep in stock. Hell, we made all THREE Aluk Todolo albums our Record Of The Week. But before there was AT, there was Diamatregon, a furious black metal beast featuring essentially the very same lineup, their second and third records released on Andee's tUMULt label, their sound, at least early on, a blown out raw satanic blackness, the drenched the usual buzz and blast it crumbling distortion and speaker shredding noise, but seeming to mature into something much more experimental and polished, which makes the eventual formation of Aluk Todolo less surprising. We're not entirely sure if Diamatregon is still a going concern, what with the members doing time in lots of other bands including Aluk Todolo and psych rock outfit Gunslingers, which is further suggested by this 'new' single, which is not in fact new at all, but recorded back in 2006, but it definitely reminds us of why we loved Diamatregon so much in the first place.
The A side starts of with a creepy soundtracky piano intro, but it's not a sample, it's part of the song proper, the piano continuing on into the first part of the song proper, even after the super distorted guitar comes in, the combination is truly haunting, we would have been happy for a whole side of this weird piano driven blackness, but soon, the sound explodes into some classic black buzz, with some seriously super sick vox, over frenzied insectoid guitars, the vibe raw and old school for sure.
The B side explodes out of the gate with a barrage of blasting beats and tangled anguished vokills, which gives way to some classic midtempo metal chug, before peeling away and leaving a long stretch of sinister black ambience, all detuned guitars, random drum hits, woozy FX, swirling sinister shimmer, darkly psychedelic and seriously creepy, eventually the band come back in proper and finish off with a blast of fierce metallic blackness. So killer! Has us hoping these guys are still a band, and hankering for a new full length!!
Diamatregon are a French black metal band who specialise in violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal. Fast and furious with the occasional midtempo breakdown and a once-in-a-while doomy dirge. But they also happen to have an amazing way with melodies, as 1000 mile an hour blasts can get pretty tedious, pretty quickly. So even though the songs sometimes sound like a black metal band being hurled down a stairway (a good thing, mind you) the songs stick in your head more than you would think possible. And the occasional midtempos, full of fuzzed out guitars and simple relentless drumming, definitely bring to mind the mighty Burzum. A thick, hyperspeed and hellish brew of harsh, inhuman howls, amp melting, overdriven guitars, thrashing drums with a lo-fi, but remarkably heavy production. They even cover the Misfits' Death Comes Ripping, turning it into a 90 second blast of sinister, speaker shredding, head banging, church burning high end brutality.
Blasphemy For Satan is eight metal thrashing mad tracks clocking in at 45 minutes.
Twenty of those minutes just happen to make up the crushing final track, an extended doom epic, equal parts, moody post rock, Sabbathy dirge, and all out noise assault, complete with bizarre samples, found sounds, and super complex arrangements, and as reminiscent of old AMREP bands as it is Norwegian black metal.
Diamatregon actually sent their cd to Andee/tUMULt because they were huge fans of the label as well as Circle and Acid Mothers Temple and lots of decidedly non metal music, and were really wanting to release their record on a not-specifically-metal label, which seems to work well with tUMUlt's good-music-is-good-music mantra and their mission to expose non-metalheads to metal, and metalheads to non-metal!
But whether you're a metalhead or not, Diamatregon spew forth some amazingly heavy, undeniably catchy, and totally intense blackened sounds.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited 7" from France's Diamatregon who you may remember from their devastatingly brilliant Blasphemy For Satan record released on tUMULt last year. So while we're waiting for the next full length to drop, we have this 5 track 7" ep. The first track is a howling blasting black metal epic titled "I Drank The Blood Of The Black Snake", a totally different version of the song they recorded for Andee and Heather's wedding! Awwwww. Two more originals and two awesome covers (Carnivore and Darkthrone) fill out this slab of utter blackness. Limited to 500 copies of which we were only able to get a handful.
It's hard to believe it's been almost SEVEN years since we've heard from French black metal horde Diamatregon. Their last record, Blasphemy For Satan, was an absolute beast, fucked up and frenzied, furious and insanely noisy and chaotic. Released on Andee's tUMULt label (as is this one, although the vinyl is on Paragon), Blasphemy still puts to shame most other black metal, past or present. And somehow, Crossroad, as impossible as it may seem, is poised to one up Blasphemy in almost every way.
In the preceding years, a few things in the Diamatregon camp have changed. Thankfully, the band are still the furious frenzied blackened juggernaut they always were, a band whose sound we once described as "violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal", and that definitely still applies. But Diamatregon's rhythm section has been moonlighting in both the alchemical post rock outfit Aluk Todolo, as well as in wild psychedelic combo the Gunslingers, and that has definitely influenced their sound. Not to mention that Crossroad is in fact a sort of black metal homage to the blues, the title referring to the legendary crossroads where many a musician struck a deal with the devil. And we can only assume these guys have bought into some similar sort of bargain, as Crossroad is mind blowing, still black metal at its core, full of buzzing insectoid riffing, pounding blasting beats, and raspy demonic vokills, but the arrangements are epic and convoluted and so complex, the various riffs and beats often seeming to melt into each other creating long droned out buzzscapes, the textures too are weirdly murky and washed out, tons of reverb and delay, seemingly lo-fi on the surface, but that low fidelity is just another tool in the band's extensive sonic arsenal. And then there's the blues aspect, this is after all a tribute to the blues, and close examination does in fact reveal some surprising bits of bluesiness, deftly woven into the corrosive black fabric of Diamatregon's freaked out grim buzz. A casual listen will reveal no blues at all, but strap on some headphones and let that swirling blackness swallow you whole, and suddenly the songs open up, revealing layer after layer, and within all of that buzz and rrroooar there lurks subtle blues structures.
But that's not all, the songs constantly shift gears sometimes, the guitars drop out completely, leaving just a garagey bass heavy groove, other times the guitars soar and sing, chiming and ringing out, eventually collapsing into yet another black hole of sound. Here and there the band slow things down, and get a bit depressive and Burzumy, loping and melancholic, woozy and warbly, but even within a fairly well defined sound, Diamatregon fuck it up and make it all their own, infusing warm whirring major key melodies, adding all sorts of drones and layers, the vocals a deep ominous rumble, before slipping into some post rocky clean guitar, beneath some twisted Orc-ish vox, and a jam that is total loping post rock, mathy, and minimal, a bit blackened, but it's not difficult to hear and feel the link between Diamatregon and Aluk Todolo.
The title track is the record's centerpiece, beginning with some crumbing lo-fi guitar, soon lurching into a lumbering bit of chaotic blackness, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals strange and strangled sounding, the guitars thick and corrosive, the sound of the whole song seeming to warp and warble, until everything drops out minus the guitars which are left to drone and rumble and reverberate, creating thick sheets of chordal buzz, so gorgeously minimal and hypnotic, eventually joined by soaring slow motion leads draped over the top, before exploding into another stretch of chaotic pounding blackness.
The final track, "He Was Not A Believer", is probably the heaviest and harshest of the bunch, a pounding relentless blackened onslaught, but even here the band infuse all sorts of melody and texture, and again, let the song break down into an abject doomic crawl, all grunted anguished voices, monstrous drum plod, warped guitar, droney moodiness, eventually getting almost Sabbathy, before slipping back into an even more frenetic black blast, and finally finishing off with a long stretch of blackened distorted crumble and ooze, that seems to slip slowly away.
Blasphemy For Satan was so extreme, so overdriven, so insanely distorted blown out, that there was really nowhere to go, but deeper, darker, weirder, and yeah, maybe bluesier. Crossroad has so much going on, it definitely plays out like grim blasting black metal, but it's so much more, a sprawling expansive experimental landscape of abstract blackness and deconstructed rock tropes, a constantly shifting soundworld of convoluted heaviness, of layered drones and crumbling abstract otherworldy ambience, at once heavy and brutal and grim, but also rhythmic and melodic, a twisted, outsider, idiosyncratic slab of fucked up and brilliant black metal, that manage to stay true and kvlt while seeming to disregard any and all sonic restrictions placed on the genre. So fucking amazing.
It seems a bit weird to review this double disc demo compilation from French black metal freaks Diapsiquir before we've reviewed their record proper. All the cvlty metalheads we know loved that record, Virus STN, and it came out way back in 2005, but somehow it just never made it onto the aQ list. So we'll try to make up for that oversight by raving about this here comp, which collects the band's first two demos from 1999 and 2001, both even freakier and more raw and more fucked up than the full lengths that followed.
And this stuff is indeed bizarre, it's hard to know even where to start. They definitely sound French, a sort of frenzied buzz, mixed with hints of industrial, soaring Nordic style melodies, but all tangled up in a totally chaotic lo-fi churning chugging doom laced black blast. Sabbathy riffs are pulled apart, while the vocals grunt and howl, the drums stumble and pound, blast once in a while, the vibe is definitely punky and d-beat here and there, but the whole thing is infused with a haunted doominess, and when the band launches into hyperspeed it sounds more bizarre and fractured than fast and furious. Riffs loop, rhythms stutter, totally ridiculous keyboards surface every now and again, adding a bit of a circusy vibe, but everything is always drenched in buzz and harsh satanic atmosphere. Never goofy, just confusing and brilliantly twisted. Diapsiquir almost sounds like a less technically adept, WAY more drug addled Blut Aus Nord, blending creeped out ambience, industrial crunch, with buzzing blackness, but as with most stuff like this, it's as much about the mood and the vibe and the feel and the atmosphere as it is about the music, and the feel here is simultaneously grim and harsh and hateful, but also woozy and warped and unhinged. The band employ an insane arsenal of sound effects which thy liberally sprinkle amongst the churning riffage, the soaring buzzscapes and the crushing doomic pound, plenty of fractured keyboards, fucked up samples, the 2001 demo strangely enough is the more brittle and lo-fi and fucked sounding.
The older demo from a couple years earlier is much more traditional sounding, definitely heavier, the sound super thick and corrosive, the drums pounding, and some awesomely demented vokills. There are some weird keyboards, and the song structures are definitely complex and convoluted, a definitely Deathspell vibe for sure, but overall, the sound is heavier and blastier and blacker, and ends up being a good foil for the utterly depraved sonic sickness on the first disc...
We were never able to get enough of these to list, the 2005 full length from French avant industrial black metal weirdoes Diapsiquir, which is a bummer, cuz this is some of the most twisted, fucked up heaviness you'll ever hear. We did go on at great length about the Hospital double disc comp, which collected the band's first few demos, but this, holy shit, a head spinning, gut wrenching, skull cracking chunk of whacked and wrecked whatthefuck black metal damage. Be warned, we only have 3 or 4 of these, and we're not sure we can get more, but this way, at least a few loyal aQ-ers, who dig this sort of sonic sickness, can get their grubby mitts on one of these.
After a brief intro, of almost cheesy synth and skittery drum machine, which gradually grows more and more manic and frantic, the band explode into lurching, blasting, gnarled almost circusy blackness, the sound constantly changing direction, female vocals howling, pounding beats and frenzied dizzying riffage, with what sounds like kazoo solos, or someone singing through a kazoo, some seriously doomic chug, howled tortured vox, loads of effects, the song swinging wildly from sound to sound, mood to mood, a wickedly schizophrenic grinding black freakout. And that's just the first song. The record continues to get weirder and weirder, introducing bits of opera, wheezing organs, RAPPING(?), found sounds and sound effects, folk music, and whatever other weirdness these guys can think up, tangling all that stuff into their already WAY fucked up alien nightmare sound. A drug addled soundtrack for the listener as he gradually descends into madness.
WAY recommended. Had we been able to get more, we'd probably have highlighted this, or heck, some of us might have even pushed for Record Of The Week status, but as it is, weirdo music freaks have 3 or 4 chances to nab one of these, be quick, or be listening to something WAY less bizarre...
Two strange releases on this week's list from local black metal label Acephale Winter Productions, the other is a twisted tape of blackened industrial ambience from a UK outfit called Synsophony, and this one, which somehow might be even weirder, a collection of Joy Division covers from an Israeli black metaller called Die Entweihung, who manages to transform these classic tunes into something slightly blacker, but only slightly, just check out his version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", which minus the raspy vokills, and the programmed drum machine rhythms, is not that far removed from the original, in fact, the chorus is even clean vocal crooned, but the bridge does get a metallic makeover, and there are little flurries of robotic double kick drum, so ultimately it's a pretty faithful rendition, with some blackened filigree, which is fine with us. And that said some of the other covers do get a bit more far out, the metallic component cranked on some, the synths getting a bit krautrocky on others, and one or two get almost punky, sped up and frenzied, the synths all swirly and way up in the mix. "Warsaw" is furious and blackly grim, so is "They Walked In Line", those tracks balanced by some of the others, since clean vocals are far more prevalent than the howled demonic rasp, so it's sort of split right down the middle, the perfect balance between faithful renditions, and warped weirdo reworkings, both of which we ended up digging a bunch.
