A quick glance at the Moloch page on Metal Archives (your online source for all metal minutiae) reveals maybe THEE craziest discography of any metal band we can think of. This Ukrainian one man black metal horde has SO many albums and eps and demos boxsets (!) and splits, and oh SO many splits, teaming up with artists like Wedard, I Shalt Become, Nunslaughter, Krieg, Sabbat, Tomhet, Evil, Persistence In Mourning, Uruk-Hai, Deathrow, Moonknight and about a million other bands we've never heard or heard of. You'd think all these releases might dilute the potency of Moloch's sonic black energy, but pretty much every record we've heard we've dug, in fact our very own Andee went through a phase of trying to order ever single Moloch release there was, before finally giving up.
And this new one is yet another good one, mixing howled, anguished, depressive black metal buzz, with lumbering doominess and bleak melancholy ambience. The guitar tone is MASSIVE, all blown out, crumbling sheets of thick, ultra distorted thrum, the vocals a tortured hellish shriek, all wound around minor key melodies and surprisingly lush textures. The sound falls somewhere between Burzum and Striborg, but with some Expo 70 style cosmic drift swirled into the mix!
Illusionen Eines Verlorenen Lebens is the latest from ridiculously prolific Ukrainian one man black metal horde Moloch, one of THREE new full lengths in 2011, so far! Thankfully, everything we've heard from Moloch has been pretty incredible, and perhaps in this case also thankfully, of the SEVENTY ONE releases since 2004, we've only managed to get a tiny handful, so it's still exciting to get our hands on anything new from Moloch, whose sound is a dark, depressive mix of haunting dark ambience, and murky buzz drenched blackness, definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of Xasthur, I Shalt Become, Burzum, Striborg, Nortt, Velvet Cacoon, which we would imagine is probably a whole bunch of you.
And if you've yet to discover Moloch, this is as good a place to start as any. Beginning with a mournful ambient drift, all swoonsome strings, haunting piano and softly layered chordal thrum, very cinematic and quite beautiful, which leads directly into the first half of "Ein Dusterer Winter Kommt", the swirling synths carrying over from the last track, here drifting over big drums, with strange spoken vox, and a slowly intensifying black buzz, the song never truly exploding, instead, pounding along hypnotically, with the vocals becoming more and anguished. It's the second part of the song where the buzz is let loose, the song still a meandering creep, but wreathed in some seriously thick crumbling superdistorted buzz, which is the MO for the next few tracks, the songs lumbering and lurching, through clouds of corrosive buzz and strange vocals, on "Weg Von Dieser Welt Voller Traurigkeit", the riffing grows distinctly blacker, frantic picking, soaring majestic melodies, but still wrapped around Moloch's depressive doomy plod, with some of the most hysterical vocals on the record so far.
Two brief ambient interludes, all synths and strings and whirring shimmering droney drift, lead into the 22 minute closer "Abgrund Meines Wesens", which one might expect to be a crushing buzz drenched finale, but instead is something much more subtle, a sprawling synthscape in multiple movements, like some lost soundtrack for some old art film, lush chordal swells beneath streaks of muted melody, deep sonorous thrum and hushed washed out shimmer, there is a stretch, where the ambience is augmented by a thick layer of buzz, but beyond adding some heft, it doesn't blacken the sound so much as make it more intense. The sort of soundscapery that can easily whisk you off to some other world, some alternate universe. Gorgeous stuff. Definitely heavier on the atmospheric drift than on black buzz, but overall, a pretty fantastic slab of ambient blackness...
A few lists back, we mistakenly reviewed THIS Moloch tape, instead of the one we actually had in stock (Depressive Black Metal Plague), even though this one had not officially been released. We'll review THAT one next time, but for now, Verwustung is in fact finally out! If you were one of the few folks who ordered the other one, based on the wrong review, but still dug it, you're probably gonna want this one too. For everyone else, here's the RIGHT review for this, the latest from this Ukrainian one man black metal / black ambient project, and while we knew he had tons of releases, it's still hard to believe this is in fact his TWELVTH full length, out of almost NINETY (!!!) releases since 2004 (!!!!). Number twelve, Verwustung, is one of the harshest and heaviest things we've heard from Moloch, grim and brutal, anguished and minor key, the sound raw and fierce, the guitars buzzsaw black, pounding drumming, and some seriously intense vokills, equal parts guttural demonic growl and hysterical shriek, the vibe still darkly depressive, but unlike past records, that depressiveness is on display here mostly in mood and vibe, with the music itself furious and frenzied, relentless and intense, with the sound only occasionally slipping into doomy miserablism, and here and there, exploding into full on noise drenched chaos, that sounds surprisingly psychedelic. But really, Verwustung is just, raw, pure, true, grim Ukrainian black metal, the very essence of cult one man BM, the sound infused mysterious black energy, which is reflected in the opening and closing tracks as well, displaying the other side of Moloch's sound, both haunting, droning, moody and minimal sprawls of black ambient drift...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! Probably the last we'll ever see...
Shambling from the darkness of Saint Petersburg's deepest wooded overgrowth into the even darker darkness of Saint Petersburg's dankest dampest cave (we presume), comes Mondsaal! An entirely new prospect to us, this bizarre disc of murky, woozy Russian cosmic hatefulness arrived seemingly out of nowhere, but we're finding ourselves pretty damn smitten by its lurching weirdness. The esteemed Encyclopaedia Metallum describes Mondsaal as "dark/black metal", and we have to say "dark metal" is a pretty great way to describe these weirdos. Aesthetically it's sort of black metal. There's Burzum-esque midpaced plodding, there's otherworldly synthesizer strings draped over almost everything, but there's also a thick murkiness to their sound that feels more reminiscent of Swedish crypt-dwelling death metal or the warm bloodletting anesthesia of funeral doom bands like Skepticism or Until Death Overtakes Me. Even the mid-range vocal growls lean more towards the death than the black, and the blast beats (on the rare occasion that they do decide to show up) are eerily slow and shambolic. It's a sound that's strange, sorrowful, damaged, ugly, but weirdly warm & enveloping all at the same time. The constant droning of soft synth pads and the squonking of dissonant horns (yes, that's right, there's horns) stand in stark contrast to the naked writhing ugliness of everything else that's happening, and the result is pretty psychedelic & spacey (in a bit of a similar way to the Dunnock/Intergalactic Holocaust split we reviewed on the last list!). The whole affair closes out with a hazy ritualistic rainy desertscape ambient piece, leaving the impression that you've just passed through some living slow motion morphine nightmare. It's a pretty entrancing experience - either hideously beautiful or beautifully hideous, we're not sure yet, but either way: very very recommended.
THE URNS RETURN. We never get tired of that. And we never get tired of Monument Of Urns, whose impossibly beautiful and crushingly suffocatingly heavy slow motion doom seems to effortlessly outpace all their doom-ed brethren. Four releases, each one a single track. A single 3"cd-r, meticulously designed and packaged. Each of those four tracks, massive and expansive, slooooooooooooow and so grimly gorgeous. Even at twenty minutes a pop, we can't ever get enough. The Urns' black doomscapes need to spread and sprawl, for hours, days, weeks. A sonic black plague slowly but systematically infecting the whole world.
For those new to the world of Monument Of Urns, their sound is massive, ultra thick guitars, pummeling drums, howled harsh vocals, glacial tempos, incredible dynamics, complex arrangements, and here on Absence, the band have definitely hit a peak. Not as slow as past releases, this one is a monster. With super dynamic stop start segments, squealing streaks of harmonized feedback, guitars that buzz and crumble. The sound here is as much Eyehategod as Khanate. With a healthy dose of Harvey Milk. In fact, lots of this does definitely sound like a blackened Harvey Milk. The lurching mathy stumble, the churning downtuned chug, always with those feedback filled pauses. And somehow, Urns manage to make this caustic doomed brutality catchy. We even just caught Antaeus humming along with the main riff! We've been bugging the Urns to release a full length, or to let Andee re-release all the 3"s on tUMULt cd. But they are perfectly happy to work at their own pace, to create the elaborate packaging one at a time and by hand. To forge this black art, in some mysterious pit, unleashing each noxious missive, only when they deem we are worthy. So for now, we'll have to be happy with the occasional 20 minute helping of glorious black sludge. And wait patiently for the next one.
As always, the packaging is amazing. An oversized cardstock sleeve, with an outer vellum sleeve, the overlapping designs meshing perfectly, the inside gatefold all elaborate fractals, the cd affixed to a nub on one of the inside panels. So nice.
RETURN OF THE URNS!! Quite possibly our favorite one man black doom outfit is back, with installment FIVE, in his ever expanding canon of droning downtuned blackness, and as always, it's gorgeously and lovingly hand packaged, a black folded cardstock sleeve, printed in thick red ink on the front and back, a strange black on black skeleton mandala on the inside.
The big change this time around is that Monument Of Urns has outgrown the 3"cd, this latest track, clocks in at a whopping 29 minutes, which seemingly forced a shift to a proper 5" cd-r. But beyond that, all is well, and grim, and bleak, and harrowingly dooooomy in the world of Urns. When we first put this in the computer, the song info came up "When The Wind Stopped Blowing - A Read To Your Child audiobook!" And while "When The Wind Stopped Blowing" does make a perfectly doomy title for a record, for this record even, evoking some sort of blackened wasteland, a burnt expanse of deadness and pestilence, these sounds are definitely a bit too intense for all but the grimmest of child folk.
A churning, roiling mass of near static black riffage, crumbling and distorted, oozing and filthy, a SUNNO))) baked crawl, that seems to grow more and more dense and caustic and black, as the track progresses. It's not until over 10 minutes in that the drums finally kick in, a BPM of say maybe 3 or 4, a seriously lugubrious tarpit creep, way beyond funereal, this is doom that is dead and buried and dug up again, caked with blood and mud and human flesh, a lumbering sick sonic behemoth, ultra doom, many many o'd dooooom, crushing and punishing and pummeling, total black hole, hollow earth, end of humanity doom, eventually ditching the drums and forward momentum, as the shuddering black grime oozes back into whatever black void birthed it. So goddamn good. Why Urns isn't up there with Moss and Corrupted and SUNNO))) and Monarch and the rest of the grim slowpoke royalty we'll never understand, needless to say, if you dig the very very slow, and ultra ultra low, and can't get enough oooooozing blackness and soul crushing dooooooom, then prostrate yourself before the Monument Of Urns, and let the buzz and rumble wash over you in thick filthy black torrents...
THE RETURN OF THE URNS!! THE THIRD URNS!!
We've been waiting patiently, almost a year now, for the next installment in Monument Of Urns' creeping crawling, and slowly coalescing masterpiece. A timeless epic, so massive, it can only be presented 20 minutes at a time. Each chapter a massive single track, each a piece of some unimaginable grand design. Each immaculately designed and presented. Each somehow impossibly heavier than the last. First there was The Ancient Method. Then there was The Destroyer Of All. And now, there is Cruelty.
Another all too brief missive from the mysterious dark lord who guards the Monument Of Urns.
Cruelty is another soul smiting slab of ultra sludge, a plodding doom metal behemoth, trudging endlessly forward, knee deep in murk and mire, wreathed in clouds of black buzz, a monstrously monolithic dirge, laying waste to any and all who kneel before it. In addition to the demonic growls, there seems to be some sort of strange monk like chanting, giving Cruelty a sort of demonically liturgical feel. The riff and pounding rhythmic pummel repeat like some sort of hellish mantra, over and over for nearly fifteen minutes, before the riffs devolve into a swirling black morass, over which harsh vocals struggle to be heard, the cries of a tortured soul, soon huge black hole pulses of downtuned crush drop from the sky, threatening to rent our puny planet asunder. The beast arises and continues its relentless rampage, until finally, all that is left is the chanting of those mysterious monks, praying that the beast will never return...
Essential doom for the Skepticism, Moss, Bunkur, Esoteric, Khanate, Corrupted, Earth and SUNNO))) sets... And like the other two installments, gorgeously packaged in a fold over sleeve, printed with woodcut images and strange calligraphic text, the 3" cd-r affixed to the inside.
All must worship before the Monument Of Urns.
Or perish.
We first heard Australian one man black metal band Moon, on a three way split with Nekros Manteia and long time aQ fave Nekrasov. At the time, we described Moon's sound as merging black metal atmosphere with more contemplative noise elements, resulting in a creepy, unsettling droned out chunk of twisted experimental blackness.
Caduceus Chalice seems to be the fully realized vision of what was only hinted at on that one track, a sprawling songsuite equal parts murky blown out riffage, and blurred blackened ambience, a spectral black soundworld, the guitars, woozy and lugubrious, sounding at times like they're being played in slow motion, the stretches of atmospheric ambience, only a step away from Philip Jeck or the Caretaker, that same sort of of washed out, faded feel, and Moon does deliver the blackness, the riffing is blurred and smeared into whirling streaks of sounds, layers of softly undulating black gauze, wrapped around surprisingly poppy guitar melodies, and the drumming, muted and buried until it's just a heartbeat like pulse, the only TRULY black metal element is the vocals, but even those are hazy and seemingly wordless, wreathed in effects, that lets them seemingly melt into the sounds around them.
A lot of Caduceus Chalice almost sounds like the record was recorded at 45, and then pressed to disc at 33, everything exuding a sort of haunted drag, as if the sounds were trying to extricate themselves from some black sonic tarpit.
There are moments where that murky atmosphere is shrugged off, for the most part, and Moon can engage in some proper buzz and blast, but even them, there's a gauzy patina over everything, muting the sounds and dulling the sharp edges, which only makes everything seem that much more mysterious and ominous. Minus the vocals, this almost sounds like some sort of experimental shoegaze blackdrone record, drifting and hovering, lumbering and loping as much if not more then buzzing and blasting. "Caduceus" might be our favorite of the bunch, a mournful midtempo lament, that were it not for the vokills, would be the prettiest saddest doom pop song ever, but with the vox added, just sounds that much more anguished and abject.
The record finishes off with the 19 minute "Chalice", a lumbering balladic dirge, the drums simple and Swans-like, the guitars whirling amorphous chordal clouds, processed vocals adding a haunting choral quality, reminding us a bit of Skepticism, but again, sweetly melancholic and darkly melodic, no vocals either, so this could totally pass for some blackened dronepop ballad, even though it's actually a washed out ghostlike slo-mo black metal lament.
Fans of Xasthur and Moloch and other purveyors of mournful, ambient, buzz drenched blackness would do well to explore Moon's mysterious soundworld...
It doesn't get more kvlt than this. Two of the grimmest black metal bands California has to offer. One from SF, one from LA, each rumored to include members of some other more well known black metal bands, the sound of both bands, raw and primitive, stripped down, furious and buzzy, simple and pounding.
The true measure of a black metal band these days is their MySpace presence. The truly grim and kvlt, still somehow manage to whip up a Myspace page, even though that's probably the last kvlt activity imaginable. We like to imagine bands in the forest, or in a cave recording, or covered in blood and corpsepaint wandering through the snowy mountains, not hunched over a laptop writing html. But still a quick look at both bands' MySpace pages reveal that Moon Dark are truly the most hateful and grim band in the land, read as they defend their shitty logo, and their stupid band name, while still managing to accuse all other bands of being false metal and lame poseurs and call for the death of all Christians. While we discover that Harassor are pretty badass looking, fronted by a HUGE bearded bald dude, with corpsepaint and a big upside down cross on his forehead that stretches all the way up to his bare pate. Excellent.
Sonically, both bands tread similar ground. Pounding buzz drenched stripped down black metal. Think Akitsa, Ildjarn, Bone Awl and the like. Moon Dark is the more lo-fi of the two, a furious super distorted rehearsal space sound, the vocals a hysterical shriek over chugging midtempo riffage and barely audible drums (assuming there are drums at all). Occasionally, the riff slips into a bizarre almost circusy sing-song melody which is fucked up but actually awesome, before slipping back into grim buzz mode.
The Harassor side is not so lo-fi but still plenty grim and buzzy, total d-beat style heaviness, Akitsa, Malveillance, pounding drums, SUPER buzzed out guitars, killer gurgly demonic vox, and even some strange scrappy guitar parts which are super cool. Creepy and almost Misfits-y at times, but buzzy and black enough to hold their own with Moon Dark.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each numbered in human blood. Black and white printed sleeves, and pressed on white vinyl!
Record number two from LA black metal one man band Moonknight, aka James Brown III, one third of LABM trio Harassor (whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and like Toplov before it, Ligeia is another blast of blown out black buzz and pounding metallic grimnity, opening with a blast of old school buzz and pound, punkish and droned out, the track gradually gains momentum, the vocals drawn out into raspy drones that mirror the fuzzy insectoid buzz beneath, all interwoven into a mesmerizingly undulating sprawl of hypno-buzz blackness, which leads directly into the crackle drenched lo-fi blur of the second track, atmospheric and almost Tim Hecker-like before the song proper kicks in, cranking up the buzz, the drums buried beneath, reminding us of another buzz overloaded black metal band we dig Wrath Of The Weak, the sound crumbling and in the red, again blurring into an almost near drone.
And so it goes, for the most part. There are still some awesome surprises, like the tripped out effects heavy super atmospheric psychedelia of "Thyrsgrieden", which deftly weds some blackbuzz guitar, vokill rasp and midtempo blasting to the otherwise tripped out space rock drift. There's also some serious dirge-y chug on "Dim Corridor", and the record finishes off with the epic atmospheric "The Translucent Path", a chiming, ominous cinematic creep, that sounds like it could be Umberto or some other Goblin / Carpenter worshipping faux soundtracker. Awesome!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the covers letter pressed on super thick textured cardstock.
We've had a few of these lurking on our shelves for a while, but (like so much other stuff, metal and otherwise) hadn't yet had a chance to give it the website review, until now... Moontower are a cult black metal duo from Poland that formed in the final year of the last millenium, and Praise The Apocalypse is their first full-length release dating from 2003. Being Polish, they're very Graveland influenced, though fortunately they've discarded any National Socialist associations in favor of a purely apolitical, anti-Christian stance.
This disc consists of seven thump n' grind rockers from the bowels of Hell, swathed in hellish buzzing fuzz-muzz, with rasping wretching vocals and monomaniacal programmed drums. The production is...distressed. The vocals in particular threaten to overload the rest of the already fully-fuzzed, distorted musick. We just LOVE this style of elite bathroom recorded burzumic mayhem. Well, it says this stuff was recorded in the "Stronghold of SETH", but while it's possible that stronghold is not a bathroom, it's also definitely no expensive studio. Such a studio would not survive this! Still sounds great though. And bewarned, chances are these few copies we have are the only ones we're gonna ever get...
Deluxe cd reissue of Morbid Angel's classic second helping of death metal mastery, their "B" album (coming between "Altars Of Madness" and "Covenant"). With Pete "Commando" Sandoval's blasting drum artillery, Dave Vincent's aggro growl, and Trey Azagthoth's unhinged squiggly guitar leads, these Floridians made death metal for Satan that was bloodier and blacker than anything outta Norway before or since. Their whole catalog is crucial death metal but "Blessed Are The Sick" holds a special place in our hearts. Here their sick, Slayer to the power of Slayer speed collided with classically-inspired keyboard ambience and doomy dirges, taking death metal to a significant high point of both ridiculous excess and truly affecting evil atmosphere.
The original thanks lists in the cd booklet really says it all. Trey Azagthoth says, in part: "I hail to you Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is to you I dedicate all my works of past present and future. May they outshine the shadowing voices of this other factor of psychic we share existance with. You are the greatest composer of us all. Hail to you O Ancient Ones, Absu Mummu Tiamat, Kutulu, Pazuzu, Humwawa, Xaztur, Hubbur, Kingu, Baxaxaxa Baxaxaxa, The Arylia of Mummu Tiamat, The churning seas of Nar Mattaru, Yog Sothoth, and the ever bubbly bubblies of Shub Niggurath..."
Basically, if you're even a dabbler in "extreme metal" you need to have this disc in your collection, and better late that never, especially as it now comes packaged in a cardboard slipcase, with a Quicktime video for the title track (done all MTV-style) included on the disc, liner notes from Trey, and lotsa photos.
MPEG Download: "Fall From Grace" [/audio/morbidangelfall.mp3]
Yay, more quality black metal from those connoisseurs of corpse-painted cultishness at the Southern Lord label! We and they are usually in excited agreement about the good stuff, as underground BM goes, and Polish (living in Norway) duo Mord are no exception. Fierce, brutal, and deathly, this one's for those who like the fast faster and more fasterer style of bands like Marduk, Gorgoroth and 1349. They're in such a hurry that they've dispensed with song titles, the tracks here are just labeled "Opus I" through "Opus IX" (skipping "Opus VIII" for some reason we don't know). And pretty much each one of these speedy paroxysms of christ-hating grimnity is adorned with a slightly WTF? guitar lick, pay-attention tempo change or electronic fx embellishment that will occasionally have you interrupting your headbanging frenzy to stare at your stereo and go "cool!".
Also, something we mentioned a couple years back when Southern Lord put out a Mord 7": their drummer is named Necrolucas. We love that. The hypothetical AQ house black metal band will feature Necroandee, or maybe Necrocup, in tribute.
Necrolucas and the band he plays drums in, Mord, are back!! Dude not only boasts one of our favorite black metal monikers but his band smokes as well. If you've heard Mord's debut disc Christendom Perished, released on Southern Lord a few years ago, you know what to expect from these none-more-necro Norwegian speed demons. Fast, faster, and fasterer! Furious too. With occasional headbanging breakdowns to catch a breath. Necrosodomic Abyss is a thrill ride propelled by Necrolucas's blasting blizzard of drumbeats, but Mord founder guitarist/vocalist Nordra is crucial too, unleashing an abundance of remarkably rockin' riffs (remarkable for something this grim and raw, that is) as well as a suitably guttural growl. (The band here is rounded out by session bassist named Necrosodom, by the way.) To reference a couple other Aquarius faves, imagine if you will a cross between 1349 and Khold. This disc's eight tracks are simply titled "Opus I" through "Opus VIII" and are of course different from the identically titled Opuses (Opi) found on their previous album. Doesn't that get confusing for Mord when they make a set list? Maybe they don't play live anyway, many black metal bands don't... which would be a shame in this case, if a sweaty crowd never ever moshed to Mord! Listening at home, maybe you'll get some moshing in too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Brief blast of chillingly grim black metal brutality from Mord, who just happen to be members of black metal horde Zorn, and again, we have to wonder why people are compelled to start a new band that sounds EXACTLY like their other band. But no complaints when both bands spew gorgeously grim and bleak, buzzing and blazing black metal. VERY LIMITED, on red vinyl. Interesting aside: one of the band members name is Necrolucas. Makes you think. Necroandee? Necroelliott? Necrocup? Kinda like that.
We had never really heard Morker before. Our first experience with them was on a split lp with Draugsang which was too limited and too expensive for us to get enough to list (we actually do have a couple copies in stock, just ask), but we liked what we heard so we decided to get a handful of the new full length, number two from these Swedes it's pretty excellent.
We spend a lot of time focusing our energies on things that are damaged and demented and fucked up and bizarre and not always entirely musical, but once in a while it hits the spot, especially metalwise to get a blast of something heavy and brutal and black but still melodic and catchy, and thus we have Hostmakter, a gorgeous collection of melodic black metal, which reminds us alternately of old Dimmu Borgir, Dissection and Dark Tranquility, all bands we most definitely love, and who traffic in a style of black metal that seems to have fallen out of favor, or maybe we've just been too preoccupied with the seedy filthy underbelly of black metal to notice. Whatever the reason, this disc is hitting the spot for sure, each track is epic and hooky and melodic, the vocals still raw and raspy, the guitars still buzzing and frenzied, but those black elements are wrapped around something much more musical, melodies soar, guitars tangle up in Maiden-ish harmonies, there's definitely a power metal element too, the songs are peppered with interludes and breakdowns, arpeggiated clean guitars, doleful piano, all providing brief respite from Morker's epic majestic black bombast.
Definitely recommended.
Holy shit, does this sound like a made-in-hell aQ dreamdate or what? The first filthy sonic offspring of a mutated meeting of the minds, between Mories the mastermind behind longtime aQ faves Gnaw Their Tongues and Aderlating, and the mystery man behind one man Aussie black metal/blacknoize juggernaut Nekrasov, known simply as Bob. Both men specialize in a sick breed of sonic depravity, the soaring orchestral cinematic black doom noise of GTT, the grim harsh buzz of Aderlating, and the noise infused blackness of Nekrasov, but none of that prepared us for the opening track, a haunting near symphonic sprawl of swoonsome strings, laid over a bed of spare percussion, and softly swirling black ambience, a darkly demonic chamber music, that sounds a bit like a satanic Rachel's, or a way more sinister noise drenched Necks, a hushed blackened shuffle, that is gradually subsumed by thick, caustic swaths of crumbling distortion, heaving low end moans and rumbles, the whole thing splintering into a glorious billowing cloud of hellish harsh noise and grim psychedelic blackness.
Which is our baptism by black sonic fire, into the warped and harrowing soundworld that is Mors Sonat, nothing so lovely as that opening track, and if anything, the record is like a musical black pit, yawning before you, and with every track, you get farther and farther from the edge, where eventually, fingers bloody and torn, all hopes of clawing your way out have been abandoned, leaving the only hope to continue down, further into the blackness.
Thick swirls of hellish voices, buried beneath cascades of black industrial crumble, dense low end rumbles and howls, and splinters into a grinding swirls of blackened shards, long sprawling stretches of slowly decaying power electronics give way to sheets of blacknoise, which in turn give way to dense noisy drones, and soundscapes of abject grey thrum, and terrifying cinematic mystery.
There are moments of lightness, subjectively speaking, when compared to most of the records deep black, but those moments are suffused with their own terror, dense and intense, laced with ghostly voices, buried melodies, a strange uneasy oasis surrounded on all sounds by black walls of unstable sound, that can collapse at any moment, and usually do, transforming these small moments of tranquility, into full bore black holes of sonic chaos. Near the end of the record, there's a gorgeous bit of funereal creep, all pounded piano, and grinding blurred staticky ambience, spread out into a haunting expanse of sonic malevolence, lovely but blackly lovely, a final respite, the long slow trudge toward the inexorable end, in the case of Mors Sonat, the final track, an all engulfing blast of hateful, harrowing, feedback drenched white noise terror.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ultra grim and frosty, gloriously plodding midtempo black metal from Finland, dirgey and completely hypnotic. featuring at least one member of the mighty Horna. This is ultra simple, dense and buzzing, with riffs that are more like static streaks of black buzz, the drums a caveman thud. Most of the tracks here break or come close to breaking the 15 minute mark, and most have no more than two parts, sometimes just one, usually a simple buzz, sometimes a haunting minor key melody, but always drenched in distortion, and always completely mesmerizing and dronelike. These sound like songs that have been playing forever, and will continue to play forever, and we've just stumbled across them, observing them briefly before moving on, leaving Mortualia to buzz and drone into the ether. But it's not just the riffing and the hypnotic plod, the vocals are utterly insane. Not Bethlehem insane, or even Silencer insane, they are much more feral and mewling, the closest we've come to capturing the sound of Mortualia is Burzum meets Oxbow!! An anguished, tortured shriek, equal parts demon, wild animal, and possessed child, draped over an endlessly blown out blackened droning riffscape. So good.
If there's one thing musicians, and heck, even fans of music hate, it's a dabbler. Someone well established in one arena who decides to dabble in some other sound or scene, often 'slumming', experimenting with a sound or style that they would never integrate into their actual sound. And no one hates dabblers more than metalheads, who came up with a new name for those dabblers, POSERS.
But without a little dabbling, music would remain stagnant, genres would go on forever unchanged, or more likely would die out because everything would have been done. The key is two fold, to dabble, or experiment respectfully, and to then incorporate those borrowed sounds into something new, and original, that while heavily indebted to the new sounds, is also firmly rooted in the original sound. It would make no sense for some punk band to just switch gears and come out with a country record (although it has happened), one would question that band's integrity for sure, how serious could they have been about punk if they could just chuck it for something else without a thought? It makes more sense for that band to infuse their punk with some twang, or add some slide guitar to the thrashing howl, and already, even just describing, it sounds way more interesting.
Needless to say, we were WAY skeptical when we heard that there was a Mount Eerie 'black metal' record in the works. We were never that into Mount Eerie, or the Microphones, it took the recent collaboration with Julie Dorion to win us over, and that record remains one of our favorites. But we had been reading about Mount Eerie mainman Phil Elverum discovering Xasthur and getting the black metal bug. Which is fine, that's sort of what this store is all about after all, but there's a difference between just digging black metal, and suddenly adding black metal to your dark bedroom folk. In theory it sounds like an intriguing combination, but we remained skeptical...
Which proved to be unnecessary, cuz wow, this is a strange and beautiful beast of a record. Right from the start, the title track explodes in a squall of thick corrosive buzz, where does a folky learn to kick up a sound like that? And since BM is not his first musical language, the result is truly unique and strange, there are some lurching strange arrangements, and then of course the black metal is peeled back to reveal some soulful crooning, and the hybrid is just as cool as we hoped it might be, a mournful sad boy Sebadoh like croon, buried amidst heaving walls of crumbling buzz, that explode into furious clouds of caustic crunch, only to recede once again, revealing those sad boy vocals again, and some strange plodding drums alongside a moaning minor key main melody, and the cool thing is, Elverum's distinct melodic style, immediately recognizable since we listened to Lost Wisdom so much, is perfectly fused with the buzzy blasts and blackened atmosphere. Really really cool. And that's only the first track.
As mentioned above, the key to successful dabbling is not abandoning your original sound, since theoretically, the music you make, you make because that's the sound you hear in your head, and your heart, and Elverum continues to craft gorgeous brooding dark folk, the second track, is a wheezing organ driven drone, with hushed angelic vocals, and a haunting deeeeep drone outro, which leads right into a gorgeous reverb drenched bit of mist shrouded drift, all spidery guitars, and warm whirring distant keyboards, and more crooned vocals, all subtly sinister and harrowing, but quite beautiful.
Fear not, that opener was not just a one shot. "The Hidden Stone" is another super distorted blast of blackened heaviness, and again, the magic here is that the buzz and fuzz is wrapped around distinctly UN-black metal melodies and song structures, the result sounds like a blackened Mount Eerie, lilting and sorrowful, but simultaneously distorted and blown out. And the record continues to strike the perfect balance between drifting, droney melodiousness and blackened buzzy crush, the best moments being when the two are fused, which thankfully is most of the time.
"The Mouth Of Sky" unleashes some incredibly cool, over saturated hyper distorted guitars and what sounds like processed cymbals, weaving them into a loping dark melody, the result is a super heavy, noise drenched, metallic shoegaze-y psychedelic blow out, the sort of track we wish was about 10 times longer. "(Something)" clocks in at a little over two minutes, and is obviously an experiment, but is one of our favorite tracks, a super strange, heavily panned, crunchy, distorted rhythmic, looped dronescape which gives way to a soft, shimmery, glistening dreamscape. "Lost Wisdom Pt. 2" is another killer blast of black folk buzz, about as frenzied as any of the blackness here gets, but divided into a strange lumbering tempo, which gives the whole song a sort of seasick vibe, lurching and lumbering and so EPIC, before all the distortion is stripped away, leaving just hushed vocals, a warm distant buzz, and some muted distortion, and the immediately recognizable melody from the original "Lost Wisdom", and finally the record finishes off with a long sprawling slow motion drone-folk drift, the bed of which is all warm organ and softly strummed acoustic guitar, interrupted only briefly before a slow motion explosion of super processed cymbal shimmer, leads into a gorgeous, outro of dark dreamy Neil Young-ness, finishing off like a Mount Eerie record should, haunting, resonant, mournful and melancholy.
Not sure what else to say. It should speak volumes that we were so skeptical and so cynical, and were actually not even all that interested in hearing this, and now here we are proclaiming it our Record Of The Week. We stand before you humbled, but happy, with ears full of this strange confusional sound. Which makes sense really, as lots of our favorite metal these days is some sort of hybrid, some strange mix, or twisted take, and while we will always love the primitive blasting raw buzz of true black metal, we'll never get tired of people pushing that sound, one of our FAVORITE sounds, in new, exciting and unlikely directions. And we definitely can't think of anything less likely than indie folk and black metal...
Incredible packaging, the cd a fold out full color oversized accordion style matte finish booklet, with frosty forest images on one side, lyrics and liner notes on the other, the band name and album title in reflective gold metallic ink. The lp similarly deluxe but a fancy gatfold jacket instead.
Once again, further evidence that the Finnish underground is populated by more than freak forest gnomes and droney hypno psych-rockers...
There is a whole black underworld, a land of evil underground forests swathed in clouds of buzzing riffs, beneath the snowy peaks, and wide expanses of undisturbed woodland, there is a mysterious black cavern, peopled by corpsepainted metal warriors, spikes and leather everywhere, the trees are black with soot, and the sky is lit by firelight, where blurry blasts of black metal wreath this lost world in a hazy hellish glow.
Amidst these black warriors, lurk this particular horde, the tongue twistingly monickered Muinainen Ruhtinas, who spew a gloriously murky and midtempo, raw and primitive black metal. Raw, Finnish, black metal, that should be enough for most of you, Beherit, Uncreation's Dawn, Clandestine Blaze, Pest, that glorious raw buzzing sound, but Muinainen Ruhtinas infuse that raw buzz, with a strange forlorn melodic melancholy. As sad sounding and despondent as it is buzzing and black, minor key and mournful, strangely haunting with deep chantlike vocals buried in the mix, and a warm fuzzy moodiness that seems to wrap every bit of black buzz in thick dreamlike murk.
LIMITED TO 666 COPIES!!!!
Believe it or not, it's been a while since we've been this excited about a black metal band, but this French horde sound like they could have been cooked up in a lab just for aQ. Heavy and fuzzed out, psychedelic and weird as fuck, melodic and sorrowful, abstract and all over the map, within the first minute you'll know exactly what we mean, starting out with this strange little snippet of exotica, that sounds a bit like that cursed idol theme from the Brady Bunch Hawaii movie, the intro becomes this warped soundtrack, all fluttery flutes and strange glitches, we would have been perfectly happy to have a whole record of that, but instead, Murmuure launch into some sort of twisted abstract avant black metal, that is pretty difficult to describe. The sound is echoey and blown out, the riffs aren't traditionally buzzy and black, they're more gnarled and warped and woozy, layered into heaving swells of blackened sound, and shot through with streaks of twisted melody, the drums totally chaotic, slipping from totally free, to stumbling dirge, the vocals are buried and barely there, there also seems to be all sorts of synth stuff happening, wheezing swatch of washed out chordal whir, as well as crunchy buzzing low end thrum. After a brief melodic interlude, the tape seems to crumble into a woozy circusy dronescape, all stuttering looped sounds, melancholy melodies, lots of hiss and crackle, and then those drums come in again, super loud, and weirdly produced, adding some structure to the whirling black cloud of twisted sound. Like some demented synth driven lo-fi black metal take on Godspeed but run through a whole bank of malfunctioning effects, not to mention the twisted mind(s) that conjured up these alien sounds.
Some of the tracks get downright shoegazey, all washed out and shimmery, the delicate melodies drifting through clouds of muted crunch, laced with an M83 style retro electronic haze, the drums driving this weird black pop into even further reaches of the know black metal universe, one moment it sounds like blackened Cocteau Twins, the next like some post rock band covering Abruptum as covered by Alcest, there are field recordings, long stretches of spaced out collaged soundscapes, but everything is woven together into a single multi movement gloriously blissed out, post black metal psychedelic drone drenched drift, and is just about the weirdest and coolest black metal record we've heard in FOREVER.
Here's one possible reason that this record sounds nothing like most black metal, according to the band:
"All the Murmuure material is based on a one hour guitar improvisation from November 2006. The selected parts were then further edited to fit a rhythmic structure, and merged with additional layers of sound. The percussions are a mixture of the original programmed drums, and some (extremely re-edited) additional live drumming. Vocals were recorded during a cathartic trance at a sacred place in the forest, with a mini-disc recorder. Being almost inaudible in the music, they're strictly conceived as a vocal sigil technique, a vehicle for intent."
Awesome. The sound is dizzying and confusional and so original, hell, if this were not a cassette, and not already out of print, this would be some serious Record Of The Week material for sure. But it is just a tape, and these are the LAST COPIES, saved just for us, and you, but fear not, we got a whole bunch, but considering how awesome, and awesomely fucked up this is, you still oughtta grab one of these quick, cuz without a doubt, this is our black metal record of the year!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. WE HAVE THE VERY LAST OF THESE TAPES!!!
The unexpected return of one of the most infamous black metal bands of the nineties, French horde Mutiilation (yep, two 'i's), one of the best known of the Black Legions bands (along with Vlad Tepes and Bleketre) even though technically Mutiilation was kicked out of the group early on for abusing drugs (who knew a black metal 'collective' would have such a tough stance on drugs?) although another report replaces drugs with an argument about Meyhna'ch from Mutiilation's childhood molestation by his father, which seems even stranger...
Lots of folks were bummed out on the last two Mutiilation discs, Majestas Leprosus and Rattenkonig, although if you ask us, it might have been more a case, of that cooler than though "oh I only like the old stuff" sort of thing, cuz both those records were pretty fierce and furious, grim and black. But Sorrow Galaxies is definitely an improvement on both of those, being that there's now live drums, and the songs are much more fleshed out, more melodic, longer and more varied, lots of doomy slow parts and half time breakdowns scattered amidst the blasting buzz. It definitely doesn't compare to the first two, since for one, it doesn't sound shitty, er, we mean cvlt, it actually sounds lush and heavy, a seriously great production, and because it's been 12 years since Vampires of Black Imperial Blood, the world has changed and one would assume that so has Mutiilation mainman Meyhna'ch (who also fronts Malicious Secrets, Hell Militia and Gestapo 666).
It seems like most of us were sort of assuming Mutiilation were dead and gone, it had only been 2 years since the last record, but there has been barely a peep about Sorrow Galaxies until it was suddenly out. But the fact that there was a new record was the first surprise, the second was how cool and weird the new record is. Four long tracks, the shortest 9+ minutes, the longest 12+, each one epic and expansive, and as mentioned above, super lush and complex, with the addition of haunting samples, gorgeous melancholy melodies over slow buzz, garbled super effected vocals, creepy ambience, all woven into and around some thick relentless riffing, the guitars buzzy, but not brittle, instead thick and warm, a swirled washed out vibe, that makes the whole record sound even darker and more melancholy, a bit like Xasthur in that respect, but these songs are dense and serpentine, with blurred blasts separated by strange, almost proggy breakdowns, the guitars angular and obtuse, a sort of stumbling mournful doom, but the tracks never veer far from another burst of dense black blur and anguished buzz.
The best track is definitely "The Coffin Of Lost Innocence" with its killer super melodic main riff, and it's almost Black Flag sounding verse, the guitar doing some sort of muffled chug, before slipping back into the haunting fluid minor key melodic refrain, so so pretty and sad sounding, even the fastest and heaviest bits are rife with melancholy, the drums a strange convoluted rhythm beneath, not a blast, a weird shuffle, with some truly intense and moving ambient interludes. Who would have thought a Mutiilation song could be so pretty, and emotional, and still be black and grim. But it really suits them. All four tracks definitely have that vibe, although maybe not to that extent.
"Cesium Syndrome 86" has some strange breakdowns in the middle, and a strangely groovy bridge, peppered with all sorts of strange effects, atonal chords and lots of random bits of dialogue, while the epic closer, "Acceptance Of My Decay" begins with some awesome and unlikely high end guitar lick, that continues on beneath the warm buzzing blast that takes us into the rest of the song. There's also an almost cabaret sounding middle portion, and the end just loops the same minor key riff over and over, before dissolving into a confusional, partially ambient coda, with that strange lick resurfacing, more voices and dialogue, soft synth swells, and what sounds like a distant heartbeat.
Pretty fucking awesome. Not at all what we were expecting, but way better than just a Vampires Of Black Blood part two, although we're sure the grim black hordes might think otherwise...
This is as grim as it gets. Yet another legendary lost French black metal classic gets reissued. The French Black Legions, Vlad Tepes, Belketre and Mutiilation (yes, two i's are more evil than one) were stirring up black clouds of hate way back in the early nineties, early enough to influence basically every black metal band worth a shit, but a little too early (and a little to far from Norway) to be caught up in the black metal mania that made Emperor, Mayhem, Satyricon and the like household words (even in only mildly blackened households). But that's probably for the best. As their records became impossible to find, and only the grimmest and truest BM warriors could boast of ever having heard Mutiilation, their legacy and legend as black metal visionaries was sealed. And listening to this, arguably their best and most revered release, it's easy to see why. And let's not forget that Mutiilation continue to record, having just released a brand new record earlier this year, easily as grim and buzzy and amazing as ever. Vampires Of Black Imperial Blood, released in 1995, sold out of its limited pressing and has remained incredibly difficult to find for years. So this reissue is a godsend (um, devilsend?) with extra artwork, two bonus tracks and remastered sound. But no amount of remastering can disguise the ultra primitive sound quality, that 4-track, practice space sort of recording, the -sound- that fits this sound so perfectly, making Darkthrone sound downright hi-fi. Buzzing minor key guitars, a mournful sounding arpeggiated midtempo droniness that certainly informed Xasthur's sepia toned fuzz, chaotic way-up-in-the-mix drums, guttural, growled vocals, and strangest of all some really catchy songs underneath all that buzz and blackness,
Even this reissue is for some reason ULTRA LIMITED, so if we run out we may not be able to get more.
New Norwegian death/black metal band hyped as a cross between Morbid Angel and Emperor. Well, they're on Emperor's label and Samoth from Emperor is even quoted on the cover sticker as saying: "Myrkskog kicks ass!". How cool is that? They must have been stoked. And, Samoth tells no lie: Myrkskog are the real deal. Super intense shit!
Much hullabaloo has been made over Myrkur, this one woman project from Denmark, and it seems most of that hubub tends to focus on the fact that she performs that most sacred of musical forms (black metal of course) but has the gall to do so after previously playing in a... *gasp*... indie rock band!!! Personally we could care less if she used to be in The Wiggles, because when a record is this glorious, expansive, raw and beautiful nothing else much matters. M is the debut full length from Myrkur and incorporates in equal parts classic Norwegian black metal (the album is in fact produced by Ulver's Garm and there are definitely more than a few hints of their seminal Bergtatt album here), ambient, Cocteau Twins style ethereal vocal drift, new age (some of this seriously sounds like black metal Enya, and we mean that in the best way possible - Euronymoco Flow anyone??), Scandinavian folk, and epic naturistic harshness a la Wolves In The Throne Room. The songs themselves are barely even songs, more like ideas drifting in and out of consciousness, often fading out into a blissfully warm abstract soundscape. The affect is enveloping and largely dreamlike, like some sort of melancholy lost message sent across time from a once-mighty civilization, now in its crumbling death throes. A singular gorgeous vision and highly recommended for all those who don't mind their black metal lush, melancholic and a bit pretty.
Yes, Mystic Forest indeed -- this French, one-man black metal act even has songs entitled "Eternal Myst", "Mysterious Flowers", and (the best one) "Theme Of The Squirrel", an instrumental! The sound of water burbling in a brook and birds twittering in the trees first greet the listener, before the filthy distortion kicks in. Make no mistake, this is a black metal, not new age record, with a full-on-fuzz attack that's worthy of Burzum. And, despite the drone quotient inherent to this style of black metal, Mystic Forest really ROCKS, urgently so, something we don't usually expect in this genre. Baroque keyboards, frantic drum programming, ragged gasping vox, and as we said, FUZZ. This 1999 release is the first of two albums from Mystic Forest, whose mastermind S. Kozak has also released a very similar sounding opus under the band name Eikenskaden (with even more ridiculous song titles, and equally great songs). So far, this is the only one of 'em we've been able to get in stock at Aquarius, but we're trying our best to bring in the other S. Kozak discs as well, 'cause we've become rabid converts to his brand of black metal weirdness.
Ah...romance. Candlelight, red wine, roses...and Mystic Forest's black metal? Fuzzed out, depressive guitars and keyboards, blasting drums, and rasping vocals. So romantic! Well, there's also sometimes a woman whispering (in French, of course, the language of romance and also 'cause Mystic Forest are from France) and the keyboards are a bit accordion-like and there's also some gentle, classical-sounding piano, all recumbent in a warm bed of distortion. And being slow to mid-tempo and minor key, this Romance is rather sad, as some romances are... It's like Burzum plus Katatonia plus the music in a French restaurant! As you might already know, here at Aquarius we heart Mystic Forest, along with the related (and marginally less romantic) band Eikenskaden, and so this "limited edition" fourth album from them has us swooning.
3rd and latest album from S. Kozak's Mystic Forest. If you liked their Green Hell album you'll like this. Mystic Forest is somewhat "happier" sounding than Kozak's Eikenskaden stuff, but really quite similar and thus totally wacked and excellent. See the review of Eikenskaden's The Last Danse (also on this list) for more about the Kozak sound. His classical influence is really pronounced here, not just an influence really as many of the songs are in fact "collaborations" between Kozak and Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, or Tchaikovsky! Dunno if those composers would have appreciated the violent drums and brutal distortion however. Or the gothy, fetishistic subject matter either, for that matter. But it works for us, along with the occasional French female vocals. Mystic Forest is a "Beauty and the Beast" kind of thing, and really really over the top with it too.
MPEG Download: "Tandis Que Les Arbres Regandent" [/audio/mystictandis.mp3]
Brand new disc from Imperial, who for the last 12 or so years has been spewing a gorgeously grim and noxious black buzz under the banner of Krieg. As well as contributing his own black brand to BM super group Twilight (along with Wrest from Leviathan, Hildolf from Draugar and Blake from Nachtmystium) We were sort of just expecting more kvlt�Kriegish blackness, which would have been fine, we dug the last Krieg big time, and in some ways, much of this does sound like a continuation of Krieg, but in other ways it's definitely a whole 'nother sort of blackened beast.
N.I.L is much more minimal and drone-y, augmenting the usual bass, guitar and drums with some seriously non-black metal instruments like mandolin and Tibetan Singing Bowl, creating slow moving black sonic blurs, reminding us much more of Xasthur than Krieg, each song basically a single riff, repeated mantra-like, smeared into hypnotic and mesmerizing, drawn out and murky doomic black dirges.
There are a few fast tracks, and those definitely sound more like Krieg, blasting and furious, swirling and chaotic, raw, primitive black metal brutality, but it's the slower tracks that make this record so weird and cool, from the haunting opening, wrapped in record crackle, a simple acoustic guitar weaving a mournful and melancholy dark folk melody, to the gorgeously fuzz drenched Burzumic plod of "Here I Found No Shelter" to the depressive miserablist strum of "Serpent Circle" to the gorgeous washed out Xasthur meets Katatonia style black epic that is "Negative Frequency Entity", and let's not forget a killer, and fairly straight, cover of Big Black's "Bad Houses", the only real difference being buzzier guitars, and the growled demonic vocals, but what a classic riff, malevolent and dramatic and so goddamn catchy, and yet somehow it meshes perfectly with the bleak black buzz of the rest of the record...
Within the last few years we have witnessed Chicago's Nachtmystium evolve from a grim exercise in nihilistic, kvlt as fuck black metal to a group that seems to be completely ignoring the accepted rules of the genre and pretty much surpassing all the competition. It would be flat out stupid to deny the blackness on display here, and yet it is so much more than just a black metal album. We've always loved Blake Judd and his cohorts (featuring here, in addition to long time guitarist Jeff Wilson and synth lord Sanford Parker, Will Lindsay of Wolves In The Throne Room and the incomparable Wrest of Leviathan on drums) but with the release of Addicts: Black Meddle Pt.2, it is now abundantly clear that they are one of the best metal bands in operation. The songs venture all over the place, never failing to surprise with their unique structures and brutal instrumentation, and the greatest success here is the fact that these are, get ready: some of the catchiest, blackest, and most psychedelic POP SONGS we have heard in forever. This album is just as amazing as the recent Twilight record, and not surprisingly, three of the players had a hand in that as well. And while Twilight caused some jaws to drop with things like emo breakdowns and beautiful choral vocals, the sick minds in Nachtmystium have found even more ways to astonish. Oh, and it's a bit of a concept album about, you guessed it, the fun and timeless subject of drug addiction.
Beginning with intro "Cry For Help", in which creepy, guttural voices spell out a negative statement (we won't ruin it for you) that sets the tone for the album over echoed drumbeats, the band then kicks into "High On Hate", a thick whirlwind of classic black metal riffs flying around some darkened vortex. It's melodic and catchy, but also terrifying and uncompromising, and Judd's vocals are as killer and harsh as always. It's surprising how many interesting ideas Nachtmystium is capable of injecting (ha!) into their songs, which take you on a crazy black metal journey in generally 5 minutes or less. Nothing here is formulaic, especially the next number, "Nightfall". Your first reaction will be along the lines of, "Holy fuck! Is that a tambourine?" It is, and by the end of the song Nachtmystium has also thrown in an awesome woah-woah gang vocals (wonder if they're Naked Raygun fans, being from Chicago and all) and a giant classic rock guitar solo. You may wonder where they can take things next, but then they hit you with the biggest mindfuck on the album, "No Funeral", which will be described as "new wave black metal" until a better term comes to light. The song is carried by Parker's spacey synth melody and a heavy industrial dance beat that is so damn poppy we kinda can't believe it. There's some mind altering progginess on display, like on "Blood Trance Fusion," but thankfully things never get too academic or concerned with shit like time signatures. Instead, synths squiggle like parasites worming through your veins and blast beats jolt you out of your trance as the band holds things down like it's what they were born to do. "Ruined Life Continuum" resurrects the, um, new wave black metal we heard earlier, another too catchy to ignore number, before ending on a suitably bleak note with "Every Last Drop", where acoustic guitars and throat singing are consumed by a lumbering dirge and some soaring clean vocals courtesy of Yakuza's Bruce Lamont. When the sounds of an oscillating synth note bring Addicts to a close, you will probably be just as blown away as we were.
So yeah, once again, these guys have furthered the cause and raised the bar higher for anyone who thinks they are up for the task of making black metal in 2010 and beyond. If there's a Part 3 in the works, we're down for it, if not, we can't wait to see what Nachtmystium cooks up next.
Illinois' "psychedelic black metallers" Nachtmystium are back with their eagerly anticipated (and somehow controversial) new full-length album for big new label Century Media (after several on Southern Lord). The underground is abuzz, and we couldn't wait to hear it, being big fans of their previous album, Instinct Decay (and intrigued by their recent Worldfall ep, featuring a couple unexpected covers). Probably what's controversial isn't their psychedelic musical direction, which we already had major clues about from the catchy, buzzy, dreamy, E-bowed and bizarre Instinct, but just that Nachtmystium are moving on up from the underground, getting more "indie" scene attention... for instance, a review on Pitchfork, who even wonder if this is really a black metal album. The fact that Pitchfork is even writing about it, makes all the "true" black metallers wonder the same thing. But whatever, yes it's a black metal album, albeit one with lots of Moogy synths and backwards tape effects and even some saxophone (from Yakuza dude) on the three-part, 12 minute "Seasick" opus that ends this disc, and other left field, post/prog/psych rock twists and turns. There's a track ("Away From The Light") of pure ambience. But also quite a few tracks of pure black metal brutality. And beautiful blends of both.
Overall, Nachtmystium mostly remains a raging black metal beast, dosed with spacey FX. Think (later) Satyricon meets Neurosis, maybe, with the controls set for the heart of a dead black sun. Really, if black metallers can deal with the likes of Sigh and Arcturus and gone-prog Enslaved, they can't possibly have a problem with Nachtmystium. In fact, quite the opposite!!
And as far as we're concerned, this is possibly Nachtmystium's best yet. Certainly best produced, and most ambitious. The fullest realization to date of this band's genre-bending progression. And the punny title is pretty clever. Black Meddle, get it? You do if you're a Pink Floyd fan. And it's not the only Pink Floyd reference here. We're not sure that if Pink Floyd circa Meddle were to have made a black metal album it would sound like this, or even if this is supposed to be Nachtmystium's best guess at what that would sound like, but the inspiration at any rate has worked to create something pretty special. There's utter blasting blackened riffarama with rasping vokills, moody stretches of instrumental psychedelic '70s space-out bliss, and, well, what more do you need to know? Already sounds like a thumbs-up AQ item, right? We have always wanted post rock bands like Pelican to be just a bit more metal, and Nachtmystium shows that can work perfectly from the other direction. Recommended. What will Pt. 2 hold in store we wonder?
We recently listed the newest release from midwestern black metallers Nachtmystium on Southern Lord a few weeks back, but we also managed to get just a few copies of the previous Nachtmystium cd, a wrist-slitting slab of ultra suicidal depressive, lo-fi black metal, suffocatingly bleak and buzzy, thrashy and chaotic. Mostly midtempo, with occasional stretches of blasting black metal, this is melancholic and miserable, grim and sorrowful, the riffs blurring into near-drones while distant melodies drift in the background and the drums sort of plod along contributing to the mesmerizing feel. A brutal mix of classic old school norwegian black metal (Immortal, Emperor, etc...) and more modern suicidal-drone black metal (Xasthur, Leviathan, etc...).
