Hell YEAH! Chicago's reigning lords of spaced out, immensely psychedelic black metal return with this 4 song rager, and if for some reason you needed more proof that Nachtmystium was at the top of their game, look no further. Few metal bands, black or otherwise, could pull this kind of thing off without looking like the half assed amateurs they undoubtedly are. Nachtmystium, on the other hand, expertly utilize buzzing Moogs (and even piano!), tons of atmospheric FX, Blake Judd's throat-shredding vocals, and enough thrashy riffs to keep this thing going on repeat all night. It's not that any of these elements in themselves are so unique, but Nachtmystium's approach is just so classy, and while the results reveal plenty of impeccable influences throughout metal's long and glorious history, the only band they sound like at this point is Nachtmystium. They've got balls, and they aren't afraid to go against the accepted "rules" of a genre that, in its own way, is just as regimented as anything else. Unlike many metal bands, Nachtmystium possess a strong sense of actual songcraft, which ultimately makes them that much more potent, and in the end, it can't be denied that Nachtmystium are one hell of a rock n' roll band. There is just such a perfect understanding of how to groove. These riffs are going to stay in your head for days, while the outstanding production, courtesy of the band's new synth wrangler, Sanford Parker (Minsk, Buried At Sea) clearly put these dudes multiple steps beyond the competition - if there is any competition.
Southern Lord is turning into the go to guys for underground black metal. Scooping up super limited releases, slapping on their logo and giving some way too limited and thus mostly unheard weird black metal records some well deserved attention.
This is Southern Lord's reissue of Eulogy IV, from Chicago's Nachtmystium, who also happens to do time in a band called Twilight with Wrest from Leviathan (coming out soon on Southern Lord as well!). Nachtmystium plays the sort of black metal we just can't get enough of, that buzzy fuzzy midtempo grimness, similar to AQ faves Burzum, Woodtemple, Graveland and the like. Super distorted guitars fill the air with a suffocating black fog, while the drums churn underneath, gasping for breath, while the vocals howl and wail and growl. The cool thing about Nachtmystium is their weirdly traditional melodic sense. You'll have burst of black metal intensity, underpinned by a totally catchy NWOBHM guitar lead and an almost classic rock melody. Weird but totally effective. Dare we say toe tappingly catchy? I know, no black metal guy wants to hear anyone say that about his ultra grim black metal troop, but damn if the title track here isn't the catchiest black metal track ever! And without losing any brutality. That track in particular sounds a little like the Scorpions and The Steve Miller Band dipped in a huge viscous vat of roiling guitar fuzz and demonic rasp and broadcast from the classic rock station in hell!!!
Bonus tracks include three covers, an EARTH cover (a track from Earth's Pentastar performed live, including the Nachtmysticum singer's instruction to the audience to shut up and pay attention!), a Burzum cover and a Von cover, as well as a live track recorded last year.
LIMTED TO 1000 and numbered!
You don't often think of the word psychedelic when talking about black metal, but the latest (and we're late too, with this review) from USBM institution Nachtmystium is maybe the most psychedelic black metal record we've heard.
On first listen, this just sounds like a killer slab of thrashing blackness, buzzing downtuned riffs, demonic howls, blasting drums, but at some point, in almost every song, something really strange happens, and what was once a grim black blur, becomes a resplendent fuzzy soundscape of thick dreamy FX and blown out soft focus fuzz. Some tracks take off into endlessly rocking near-pop shimmer, like suddenly someone opened the recording studio door and M83 was recording next door, and the two sounds get all gloriously blurred and tangled. On other songs, the buzzing thrash falls to pieces into an abstract soundscape of strange FX and bits of crumbling sound. The core sound, a furious buzzing black metal, is surprisingly catchy too, with post rock arrangements, and plenty of space rock sensibility creeping into the more traditional grimness, but it's the lengthy outros and bridges in each song that make this record so bizarre and so cool. Can't imagine that some of this will go over too will with the ultra cult black metallers, but for those of us who like our metal twisted and tweaked and out of the ordinary, Nachtmystium's new sound totally hits the spot. A dense blissed out dreamy fuzziness impossibly wrapped around spikey crusty black metal buzz, culminating in the 6 minute final track, a slowly shifting black ambient space out, over slowly churning riffs and mesmerizing tribal drums. So good!
Chicago's psychedelic black metallers Nachtmystium have a full-length coming out on Century Media full-length (called, wait for it, Assassins: Black Meddle Part I... no really, get it? 'Cause they love that early Pink Floyd) and this ep is a teaser of sorts, maybe...
Originally meant to be a split with Leviathan, we don't actually know how much this ep is indicative of what's to come on that full-length. There's just two new songs here, one very very psych, slow and spacey ("Worldfall") and another much more traditionally black metally ("Depravity"). There's also a re-recording of an older tune of theirs ("Solitary Voyage"), and two covers: Death In June's "Rose Clouds Of Holocaust" and Goatsnakes's "IV", interesting 'cause industrial-folk and Sabbathy stoner-doom are not exactly Nachtmystium's core sound.
So, how does it stack up? We gotta say whoa, the blasting tracks two and three remind us a lot of With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness era At the Gates. Fucking rad! Also, the Death In June cover is shockingly faithful to the original, and the Goatsnake cover is pretty good too, even those of us who don't like Goatsnake that much agreed. Again it's pretty faithful, but has been black metallized with raspy vocals improving upon the original... so, something for everyone here, or maybe just for Nachtmystium fans.
The third album of real serious, advanced black metal from these serious, advanced Germans. Their previous effort incorporated an experimental electronica element, but this one seems to discard that idea (perhaps as being too trendy and gimmicky -- heck
Latest blast of black metal murk from this French duo, whose grim brand of depressive bedroom black metal has been getting lots of play around here, the sound muddy and muted and washed out, lo-fi for sure, but lush in its low fidelity, the long stretches of blasting buzz, seeming to melt into a more droned out buzz, the tempos constantly shifting, with a second guitar adding some woozy post rocky melodies, not to mention some tripped out synths that add a folky vibe, that sounds almost Native American at times, opener "Face Of Extinction" is the perfect example, it's all grim buzz, but the sounds are sort of soft focus, blurred a bit, instead of being fierce and frenzied, it sounds warped and droney and sort of druggily dreamy, there's some gnarled Deathspell style riffery going on, and its easy to hear that with a huge production, these guys could sound epic, but this murkier sound suits them, the lurching lumbering groove wreathed in strange atonal guitar melodies, and underpinned by bursts of double kick drumming, and then when that synth swoops in, it's weirdly dramatic and folky, and at last here almost Native American sounding.
The sound on the rest of the record is pretty varied, with lots of more traditional blackness, for sure, but also plenty of swooping backwards effects, warbly droned out guitarscapes, that sound like Fear Falls Burning or some other experimental guitarscaper, there are stretches of doomic plod, rife with twisted melodies and bursts of distorted crunch, plenty of loping post rockisms, some D-beat pound (coupled weirdly with monklike chanting), and plenty of noise drenched midtempo lo-fi blackness, culminating in the strange anguished abstract atmospheric blackdoom of the closer.
Another killer match-up between two different UN-black warriors, and yep, that means Christian black metal, a genre we've become pretty dang obsessed with. This one slipped through the cracks, we've had it for a while, bit for some reason never got around listing it until now.
Flaskavsae is one of our favorite of the UN-black hordes (another Flaskavsae split is reviewed elsewhere on this list, teamed with our other favorite, Light Shall Prevail), and these three tracks definite demonstrate why once again. Three murky blasts furious black buzz, the guitars blurred into heaving droney slabs, the programmed drums relentless and machinelike, with awesome off kilter fills, and the vocals a buried monstrous growl, the melodies are epic, the sound sweeping and majestic, there must be keyboards cuz guitars just don't swell like that, or maybe they do, the EEE folks can do fucked up things with sound, the production always as much a part of the sound as the sound itself.
This is the first we've heard from Nahum though, but their sound is a perfect compliment to Flaskavsae's, a furious relentless droned out buzz, the drums chaotic and frenzied, the cymbals awesomely loud in the mix, but it's the vocals that turn this into something fucked up and amazing, a howled falsetto screech, doused in reverb and delay, which results in the vocals careening all over the place, overlapping and getting all tangled up, very dubbed out, which makes the whole track sound sort of psychedelic. Nahum also offer up some gorgeous washed out keyboard-heavy breakdowns, all woozy and dreamy, and some super squiggly leads, all draped over the super distorted murky UN-blackened chaos below. Awesome stuff.
Black metal by its very nature is fairly isolationist, especially considering that one of the mains strains consists of one man bands holed up in their bedroom / attic / shed / shack / cave, shunning humanity, sunlight, any sort of personal interaction, filtering all of that negative hateful energy into their grim black buzz. Even proper black metal groups, with more than one member, are often quite tribal, kvlt-like you might even say, performing sonic rituals in some dimly lit rehearsal space, channeling all manner of dark energy and creating music both bleak and brutal, evil and cathartic. That sound, created by a group, is still intensely personal and to a certain degree is created more out of a need to create, than a need for adoration or success.
But what if you turned that whole dynamic completely around. Removed all aspects of kvlt-ishness, of individualism, what if you created a black metal horde open to anyone, anyone with an amp and a guitar, or even just a computer, could record tracks, and contribute to what would eventually be woven into the first open source black metal record.
And here it is, masterminded by the guys behind gloomy bliss metal duo Have A Nice Life, Nahvalr is indeed, as far as we know the very first "open source" black metal band. Parts and songs were solicited online, contributed via email, handed off in person, donated anonymously, and eventually the HANL guys took all the various tracks and deftly assembled them into this buzzing black behemoth. And there is in fact, plenty of buzz obviously, layer upon layer of crushing downtuned insectoid buzz, but also loads of creepy ambience, weird warbly doomy bits, super lo-fi blasts of near white noise, insane grinding drum machine stutter, haunting black ambience, deep ominous rumbles and softly glowing shimmers, weird chanted vocals, industrial scrape and pound, blown out blissed out blackened drifts of crumbling soft noise, it's all very schizophrenic, but it doesn't at all sound like a hodge podge, it sounds more like a truly expansive sprawling chunk of demented abstract black metal weirdness. Which is precisely what it is. It just so happens that there's way more than 4 or 5 guys "in the band."
Some songs are so steeped in buzz it sounds like records by Ildjarn, Velvet Cacoon and Wrath Of The Weak all being played simultaneously, other tracks are loosed from their black metal moorings and sound like Skullflower, thick sheets of sound, spaced out noise drenched ur-drones, others are gloomy and darkly melodic, simple guitarlines unfurling over streaks of feedback, howled anguished vocals, and shimmering black drones, while still others are furious dense blasts of raw, noisy black metal, in the red, speaker destroying missives from hell, swirling and roiling and churning maniacally, but often splintering into creepy doomic crawls or fucked up abstract Abruptum like blackened soundscapes.
The record begins with a sample of conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Art Bell, talking about digging a hole to hell in Siberia, before launching into blown out super saturated black metal blast, but the source material is so varied, that even the parts that sound like black metal on the surface, have so much going on just below, twisted warbly melodies, keening wails, disembodied voices, textures and layers, so immersive and expansive, headphones are like X-ray goggles, revealing a whole other world hidden to the casual listener. The record then swerves from warped slow motion ambient doom, to soundscapes of high end skree and garbled guitarnoise, to grinding blacknoize fury, to downright gorgeous blissy drones and all the other various sonic stops mentioned above. Not at all typical black metal, instead, more of a weird sound experiment, based around black metal tropes, and created with a core of buzzing blackness, but allowed to sprawl WELL past the usual boundaries that define the genre, creating something extraordinary yet still distinctly black in the process.
It's probably no surprise that we were intrigued when we first heard about this disc, after all the press release claims that it "researches the dark associations of post-black metal". And they go on to recommend it to fans of Burzum's masterpiece Filosofem! However, it must be the ambient aspects of Filosofem they're referencing, as you'll find no true frosty guitar buzz here, instead this is a purely digital, all-electronic album released by the UK's ever reliable, experimental Touch label, home to the likes of Fennesz, Philip Jeck, B.J. Nilsen, Chris Watson, and others. Intriguing, eh?
Of course, if we hadn't read that press release, we might never have related this to anything black metal at all, but we'd still like it. It's a very pleasant and varied dronological document, suggestive of field recordings, even though all these sounds are abstract ones, mostly realized inside a computer. There's passages that seem like buzzing insect swarms ("Process Philosophy"), or lashings of wind and rain ("Space-Time Continuum"), or Tibetan temple bells ("Semantic Shift"), or the gentle swaying of leaves and branches in a breeze ("Sun Wind Darkness Eye"). That particular track goes on to generate a mysterious low, soft hum, eventually accompanied by a beating electronic pulse, like much of the minimal techno we enjoy...
It's all quite evocative and lovely, although now that we think about it, some of these sounds could also be, like, cold winds blowing across frozen fjords, or sinister rumblings heard inside a subterranean crypt... And who knows, perhaps Nana April Jun (aka Christofer Lamgren), who hails from Sweden, wears corpsepaint whilst working with his digital tools. Probably not, though, since the majority of the text we read pertaining to this release was on the academic side of things. And although discussions of subjects like "the ontology of noise" and other psuedointellectual concepts can be a mite pretentious, regardless of that, all the whooshing, hissing, droning here is very good listening indeed.
Over the past couple of years we've listed, and recommended, a half-dozen or so titles from German one-man-black-metal-band mainstay Kanwulf aka Nargaroth, including his most recent effort, Prosatanica Shooting Angels, just this last December. But we've never had enough stock of this most essential Nargaroth title to stock -and list- until now! No Colours has repressed this, Kanwulf's seminal third No Colours release from 2001, and we've got 'em. And you should get one too. If you're into the real raw necro black metal that is! And if you've got any Nargaroth, you need this too, and if you don't have any, this is the one to start with!
Subtitled "A Dedication Monument", this seems to be an album of black metal *about* black metal. The song titles indicate as much, from the title track to such cuts as "The Day Burzum Killed Mayhem" and "Possessed By Black Fucking Metal". Hard to resist, eh? And it's very clear the black metal he worships is the cult necro stuff, not "nowadays" black metal as he puts it. None of that gothy commerical keyboard black metal here -- not to say WE don't like that stuff too. But we do understand how undergroundier efforts like this MEAN more. Y'know? Somehow a guy obsessed with Burzum and Mayhem and the length of the spikes on his leather arm-brace sometimes (like in the case of Nargaroth) just makes THE most intense, weird, blackest of black metal. It's that sound we can't ever get enough of. Endlessly droning riffs, lengthy and hypnotic arrangements, buzzing Burzumic melodies stumbling galloping rhythms and of course Kanwulf's demonic demon screech. A spiky, scratchy grim black cloak of cult black fuzz.
Nagaroth IS Kanwulf, but on Black Metal Ist Krieg he's aided by guest musicians from Maniac Butcher and BM legends Moonblood.
This one is definitely for the true fans only. The grim, the troo, the obsessive. A double dvd collection designed to give the listener / viewer a glimpse into the soul and spirit of Kanwulf, the man who IS Nargaroth. Through the music of Nargaroth obviously, but also, plenty of more personal stuff, some introspective writing, and lots of Vietnam, but more on that in a second.
The first disc, is the live stuff, all shot pretty lo-fi, handheld camcorders, either from the crowd or the side of the stage, the sound super blown out and buzzy, the vocals so high in the mix they nearly swallow up the rest of the music. But the band are tight, the crowds wild, head banging, thrashing, horns held high, recorded live in Belgium, Austria, Portugal and Italy. Having listened to Nargaroth for so long, not only is it weird to see them/him performing live, but also weird to see them playing in what appears to be a school gymnasium, or a small rock club. The music of Nargaroth is so epic and sweeping and majestic, we always envisioned flaming chariots, and dark snowy forests, storm clouds and black skies, so it takes a minute to adjust to the idea that they are in fact an actual band. And even the shit sound quality doesn't detract from the fierce performances.
The second disc is where it gets weird and personal, but in doing so, makes this so much more interesting than your run of the mill music dvd. The first section is called "Dead Shoots", one subsection is marked "Private" and is a slide show of band photos, live shots, images of hills, and seas and trees and skies, plenty of candid "dudes at rock clubs" shots, LOADS of photos of Kanwulf, hanging out with other metalheads, lurking in the forest, or sitting on a station wagon in front of his parent's house, intercut with images of Kanwulf when he was in the army, or sporting Vietnam style camo, all set to some neo-classical soundtrack. But then, Kanwulf is obsessed with the Vietnam War, the last record was called Semper Fi after all, and the next section of the dvd, called "'Nam" is nothing but images from the Vietnam War set to the music of Jefferson Airplane and classical music. Weird! But pretty interesting.
The next section is called "Live Shoots" and is all clips from the various live shows on he first disc, a slideshow set to Nargaroth songs, not sure what these are for, since the other disc has all the same images LIVE, but still some cool shots.
Next up is a section called "Digital Thoughts", personal writings and thoughts from Kanwulf, on making the dvd, and on his development as a person and an artist, very cool and personal, and not at all hung up on the usual grimmer than though stuff.
The there's LOTS more Vietnam. First a section called "Swamp Thing", A sort of homemade Vietnam documentary featuring some amazing shots of the war, images of helicopters and soldiers, jungles smothered in smoke, this time set to the Doors' "The End", Hendrix and other sixties rock, with voiceover from Kanwulf (we presume) telling the story of Vietnam, and its affect on him.
In the same section, another menu leads us to another section, this one called "Vietnam", where Kanwulf writes extensively on Vietnam, his feelings on the war, and how the war influenced his thinking, feeling and music making, as well as his plans to visit Vietnam to try and understand and experience what went on.
There's also a documentary called "No Mexican Tequila Massacre", which is a short film about an aborted Mexican tour, lots of rehearsing, hanging out and drinking, smoking, some jamming, but lots of nothing going on, the guys in the practice space, changing strings, waiting for the show(s) to be confirmed, which they never are. Plus you get to see Kanwulf in Birkenstocks�
The final section is called "A Way" and is a surprisingly personal missive about Kanwulf's development as a person from when he started Nargaroth, moving away from hate and emptiness to become more of a real person with real feeling and emotions, scene politics be damned, not at all what you might expect from a black metal legend, but pretty refreshing and heartfelt.
The first disc will definitely appeal to true black metalheads, some awesome rare live footage, appropriately lo-fi and grim, thrashing and black, but the second disc turns this into something way weirder, and way more intimate, as Kanwulf constantly states on the dvd, this is not the sort of thing that endears him to 'the scene', sharing and feeling and honesty are not typically selling points for black metal, but then, this is far from a typical black metal dvd.
Packaged in a full color cover, with a complete discography (including shirts even!) on the flip side visible through the clear dvd case, full color booklet, with notes, and photos, and strangely the second disc seems to be a dvd-r, while the first disc is a proper factory produced dvd. All region.
We haven't been able to list much Nargaroth, unfortunately, mostly because we've been unable to get enough in stock. But as far as elite black metal goes, Nargaroth stands tall in a dubious pantheon that also includes AQ faves Graveland. Hateful German TRUE black metal, Nargaroth have been spewing anti-Christian vitriol for years now, culminating in their legendary Black Metal Ist Krieg album from 2001. So here we have Kanwulf's (the man who is Nargaroth) latest missive, and it's as bleak and miserably misanthropic as ever. Four epic tracks of brittle frosty guitars, plodding midtempos, struggling simplistic drumming, occasional fuzzed out blast beats, throat shredding howls and truly cold cold atmospheric ambience. It's all about the DRONE and the DIRGE. Ten plus minutes of the same riff, sawing away and lulling you into a trancelike state, letting the minor key melodies drift from beneath the sheets of icy guitars and and settle on your lifeless body, entranced by the endless riffage. Seriously, this is like a black metal Gore (Dutch hypno metallers who specialised in repetition). So endless and hypnotic and totally transcendent. And like most black metal we champion, just to keep you confused, there are lots of ambient forest sounds, birds, dripping water, rain, and of course didgeridoos(!). Plus inexplicably, the photo of Kanwulf on the inside of the digipak has lyrics from the Moody Blues' "Knights In White Satin" printed over it!
By now, you should know what you're getting into with every new Nargaroth record. A blast of hateful, misanthropic, buzzing lo-fi black metal madness, grim and sorrowful, a Burzumic hatescape of midtempo pummel and stumbling blast beats with creepy ambient interludes of rumbling drone and gutteral vocalisations (and even a Blue Velvet sample). If that sounds like your particular blackened cup of tea then by all means, you're gonna love this. But as they say, the devil is in the details, and with Nargaroth the details are always completely baffling and brilliant. Beginning with the "band" photo in the booklet. Above the picture in huge letters: "No Dark Throne Fan!" and below it the words: "Poser picture of Kanwulf inside a barn". And the photo does indeed show Kanwulf (who is Nargaroth) wielding a rifle and posing in front of huge bales of hay! Then there's the song titles: "Love Is Always Over With Ejaculation", "Be Dead Or Satanic", "Satan Industries", "Thinking Below The Ocean". And of course there's a dedication section, divided into "Thoughts about Death Cocks" and "Thoughts About Black Spikes", both of which hail a handful of bands, specifying of course the OLD versions or DEMO versions of most of them. And finally there's a paragraph detailing an infamous shootout that Kanwulf sampled gunfire from, and his final quote pretty much says it all: "Most of melodies and riffs were created during the recording itself, by making mistakes or by playing something just to fill up some empty spaces between two different melodies. I didn't spent much time for the creation. That's the way so called "satanic art" should created! The "Satan" within us acts! He does not try!"
Talk about cult black metal! Nargaroth's Rasluka Part II (not sure what happened to Part I...) pretty much defines it. This four song, 25 minute ep is the latest blast of hate-filled mayhem from infamous German black metal maniac Kanwulf and his hordes.
Like all true black metal, this begins with a creepy intro track, featuring someone playing a recorder along to a bunch of morosely-quacking ducks, which then gives way to Naragoth's equally morose but much louder buzzing guitar/drum pound and vocal rasping, a la Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone. Nice n' evil like it should be. But despite the almost symphonic, ambient cascades of distortion in which their music is bathed, as well as Kanwulf & Co.'s questionable ideology, this is still at heart simply rock n' roll -- which goes some way to explaining why track four is preceded by sound samples discussing the drunken death of AC/DC's original singer Bon Scott!
With black metal's focus on Nordic pride, Satanism, anti-Christianity and EVIL, it's easy to forget how ultra personal and intense the music making process can be. A way to purge the soul, keep depression at bay, satisfy the need to create, and in the case of Nargaroth's Rasluka eps, to mourn the loss of a friend. This is Rasluka part one, not to be confused with part two which came out first, but both have been lyrically and spiritually based on Kanwulf's (the sole member of Nargaroth) experience of losing a close friend and going through the emotions of that loss, the grief and the anger and the regret. The story inside the booklet is truly heart wrenching, and the music is appropriately buzzing and snarling, a thorny sonic miasma of violent emotions laid out in sound, the usual black metal elements are present, the droning simple riffs, the relentlessly pounding drums, the demonic vocals, but coupled with the story behind the songs, they music seems imbued with just that much more intensity and brutality and hopelessness. The fact that the first two tracks are based on Chopin's "Funeral March" seems a bit hokey at first, but that too-familar melody is soon obliterated by a massive overblown black metal onslaught, that pounds away relentlessy, abating only occasionally to allow haunting heavily reverbed piano to shimmer sadly and then fade into the distance before it's quickly subsumed again by a churning, roiling wave of fierce blackness. So good.
Originally recorded back in 2001, and intended to be a musical 'fuck off' and 'farewell' to the black metal scene, which as far as Nargaroth mainman Kanwulf was concerned had turned into something sad, sorry and distasteful, finally sees the light of day after 6 years of laying dormant. Not sure what changed after the recording of Semper Fidelis ("always faithful"), but Kanwulf continued to record, letting this vitriolic slab of scene directed hate sit hidden and covered in dust, to fester and remain nothing but a musical myth.�
The original version of this disc was limited to 99 copies, and to receive one, you had to write a letter to Kanwulf, explaining to him some personal secrets or weaknesses, sharing some dark part of your soul. In exchange, not only did you receive the record, but also various personal and intimate belongings from Kanwulf's home and private collection. Needless to say, no one here or anyone we know, managed to�be one of the lucky 99, thankfully, Kanwulf decided to release the record anyway, allowing the rest of the scene enjoy his blackened scorn and brutal contempt.�
Good thing too, cuz this stuff is amazing. Ultra raw, super fierce. The sound is pretty lo-fi, the guitars a corrosive buzz so thick that the riffs are sometimes smeared into near drones, the drums are buried underneath it all, more of a throb than a beat, and the vocals are probably as harsh as they've ever been, a raspy howl, acidic and bitter, a hellish hoarse caterwaul. The songs too are raw and simple, pounding monochromatic blasts of blackness, laced with sorrowful melodies, but for the most part straight ahead and generally midtempo, no furious blasts, no plodding doom, just a relentless black crush, primitive, raw and very very kvlt indeed. But as with much music like this, the key is close listening, the various riffs and melodies, changing shape and revealing hidden darknesses not necessarily obvious at first glance, the relentless mesmeric riffing, only a few steps removed from the ultimate soundform, the drone. These tracks are epic and majestic in their stripped down simplicity, hypnotic and repetitive and so gloriously trance inducing.�
The liner notes give some hints as to the background of this record, and the strange mindset of Kanwulf, a missive directed at fans and enemies, a description of the recording, and the amp used (set afire when left on the stove, hurled from the window, beaten with the guitar), and most strangely, the dedications, to Klaus Kinski, the German Federal Armed Forces and the US Marine Corps in Iraq. Semper Fi indeed.�
We most definitely have a thing for Russian black metal, Old Wainds, Stielhas Storhett, Forest, Branikald, Raven Dark, Nav, Ithdabquth Qliphoth, we could go on and on. So we're always psyched to discover some new band we had never heard, or heard of before, such was the case with Native In Black, whose 2008 disc At The Gates Of Eternal Winter we just managed to get in, and it's a killer, but the cool thing is it's a whole different take on black metal than we're used to, especially from Russian bands.
Their sound is cold and grim and frosty and buzzy, but it's not really furious or fast, it's also not stripped down or raw, instead it's almost like some weird variant of classic eighties metal, mixed with a little blackness, and a lot of thrash. It's hard to describe, but much like the Ruins cd reviewed elsewhere on this list, the more we listen to this the better it sounds. Most black metal is droney or blurry, barely headbangable, but this shit is epic, and totally rocking, midtempo most of the time, and when it is fast, it's not blast beats, but more furious and sort of punk rock. Lurching and lumbering, pounding fists in the air. The vocals are awesome too, definitely a black metal shriek, but also frenzied and super dramatic, a bit like Mr. Doctor or something, giving the black metal a distinctly over the top Devil Doll vibe. In fact the more we dig into this record, the less distinctly black metal it sounds, and the more it sounds like some fucked up noise rock band, who just so happen to have some metal roots, a tangled mathy buzz, wrapped around those crazy vox, and shot through with a bit of stumbly punk rock, and streaks of blackened grimnity. Live these guys could easily either be corpsepainted and bespiked, or a bunch of bearded dudes in jeans and tshirts, leaping all over the stage, flailing wildly and stage diving, hardly matters, either way this shit rules!
For those of you patiently awaiting the newest opus from Russian black metallers Old Wainds, expected any day now, this might just hold you over. Two demos of ultra raw black buzz from Old Wainds offshoot Nav, fronted by OW drummer Izbor, available on cd for the first time. Nav's last record, the surprisingly polished and weirdly melodic The Wolf Sun, definitely rubbed a few people the wrong way, with a sound way more NWOBHM than black metal, not so much blasting and buzzing as riffing and rocking. Sure it was unexpected, but we dug it anyway. Maybe precisely because it was so awesomely confounding.
But this is something else entirely. Something more like the Nav (and the Old Wainds) we know and love. Imagine the first Nav, Halls Of Death, via Old Wainds' Wither Of The Wainds, and you'll get something very much like From Nav To Jav, the sound on these demos, originally released in 1996 / 1997 is raw raw raw, super lo-fi, chaotic and frenzied, the guitars are murky and muddy, the riffing surprisingly complex, but plenty blurry and washed out, the drums wild and splattery, the vocals a harsh demonic croak, with long swaths of fuzzy warbly keyboards, the recording in the red and ultra distorted, causing the songs to seemingly warp and crumble as they come careening out of the speakers. Sort of like the EEE un-black releases, the recording here is as much a part of the sound as the songs. A sound so saturated and fucked up, it almost sounds like Faxed Head, but still with that unmistakable Russian sound, so distinctive and evocative, hateful and harsh, shot through with a drone drenched buzz, killer riffing, everything completely fried and fractured and gloriously blown out.
Essential obviously for fans of all things Nav, Wainds, Russian and black, but maybe just as crucial for anyone into raw metallic chaos, and droney distorted buzz (lots of overlap there wethink), or heck, even if you just wished Faxed Head were deadly serious and way more heavy, then this is most definitely for you.
Very much like how all the black metal bands in the Ukraine seem to be made up of the same 5 or 10 people, just in different combinations, black metal bands in Russia also tend to revolve around the same 2 or 3 visionaries, along with whatever black legions they can enlist from their little scene to help shape their black musical world.
We recently reviewed the only currently available disc from Russian cult underground legends Old Wainds, who as we mentioned in that review, are THE grim cult horde of choice among the black metal elite. And almost appropriately, all of their records, minus the just reviewed demo disc, seem to be way more difficult to track down than they should be, and thus of course, are seriously big ticket items on eBay.
So here we have the group Nav, also known in Russian as HABb, a black metal band made up of 50 percent of Old Wainds, primarily the project of Old Wainds drummer Izbor, so as you might imagine, the sound does not wander far from Old Wainds' grim frosty buzz. Which is of course a good thing. The same sort of fuzzed out primitivism, a gloriously murky production. But Nav add plenty of their own unique style, everything is so strangely mixed, with loud LOUD drums and guitars that swirl into a nearly impenetrable blackened haze. Demonic vocals that go from buried way down in the mix to a blown out raspy roar often within the same song, and bits of chaotic rhythmic stumble and haunting ambient weirdness, complete with the thunderous sound of horses hooves.
And unlike the straight black buzz of Old Wainds, Nav sounds a slight bit more melodic, with much of the riffing displaying a classic metal vibe, as well as rhythms that vary from the old black stand-by, the blast beat, lurching lopes, galloping thrash, pounding doom, lots of fuzzed out midtempos, all twisted amidst some strange breakdowns, where the rhythms constantly shift and the riffs contort and morph into slightly different shapes, there are even some super demented LEADS! Still, all the while the band continues to forge a wholly unique pitch black path. Fans of all things dark and frosty and cult and grim would do well to bow before the black knights of Nav!
We haven't been able to track down the cd, but we do have the ULTRA LIMITED vinyl version. Gatefold sleeve. Limited to 300 copies!
Old Wainds. Maybe one of our favorite black metal bands ever. They're from Russia, and bands like Crebain and Leviathan and pretty much every metal band we know LOVE them. And while they're not fucked up and damaged and freaked out and fractured like much of the black metal we love, they manage to move us in a similarly strange way, by employing the usual black metal tropes, the buzz, the blast, the grim necro vocals, the furious riffing, but turning them into something emotional and dark and unique, which is a rarity in a genre that in many ways insists on uniformity, to remain grim and cvlt and true.
In our obsession we also discovered Nav, HABb in Russian, the project of former Old Wainds drummer Izbor, and featuring at least one other member of Old Wainds. Their sound was not all that far removed from the OW mothership, if anything they managed to sound a bit more chaotic and a lot more like classic eighties metal. More old school riffing and melodies, but that sound still somehow woven into OW's super distinctive black metal.
As we wait hopefully for word from Old Wainds, regarding the rumored new album (and while we wait for news about all of their other releases, none of which we've been able to track down for ages, sorry), we've got a brand new Nav record, 4 years on from their debut, and if anything, they've gone even more classic old school metal. So much so, that minus the vocals, and some extra grim buzz, one might be forgiven for thinking this was some unearthed blackthrash rarity from1988.
Just take the first song, starting with a lo-fi classic metal riff, that quickly ramps up to full strength, some noodly leads, a splatter of chaotic almost-blast beats, until the song lurches into a full on metal gallop, the riffing not black at all, instead totally timeless, with shouted background vocals, some woozy arpeggiated breakdowns, and then about halfway through some full on tweaked and trippy keyboards that ooze and warble and buzz and make the whole thing sound slightly maniacal. But soon the keyboards are replaced by some furious leads, until the end, when haunting swells fade in and out until the end.
And then just like that, we're hurled back into the melee, more speed metal riffing, pounding drumming, freaky spaced out keyboards, every song featuring long stretches where the band drops out and the guitarist just riffs all on his own, often 2 or 3 times per song! Plus there's even a track called "Old Wainds" which is a total slow doomy groove, almost a black metal ballad, with swooshes of synth, and a total eighties metal main riff, which does eventually give way to some buzzing blackness, but throughout the song they continue to return to the old school.
It's hard to imagine ANY metalhead that wouldn't dig this like crazy, the sound is huge and heavy, the riffs are crazy catchy, might not be black enough for some, but for what it lacks in blackness, it more than makes up for in true metal!
Along with the gorgeous washed out ambient nature doom of Celestiial, and the epic outsider black metal mystery of the most recent Blood Of The Black Owl comes this, another new release on the cult Bindrune label, the first record from amazing one man band Nechochwen, a black metal act of sorts, whose intent is to explore Native American Indian heritage, through sound, but this is a strange hybridized exploration of Native American culture for sure.
Beginning with classical guitar, tribal hand drums, ominous spoken word, streaks of keening high end guitar, wailed emotive wordless vox, it definitely sounds a bit Native American, until the band launch into some seriously blasting full on metal, thrashing blackened riffage, pounding drums, with flurries of double kick, growled gruff vokills, rife with sprawling arrangements and epic melodies. It's thematically focused on the tribes that dwelled in the Ohio River Valley nearly two millennia ago, not that you'd necessarily know that from just listening, but it definitely infuses the sound with a unique vibe, that you're unlikely to find in much music, let alone black metal. Acoustic guitars, simple loping drumming, and chantlike vocals, in fact much of the record is acoustic, darkly melancholic, lush and warm and hauntingly beautiful, with fluttery flutes, hand drums, sitar like steel string buzz, occasionally erupting into blasting blackness, or twisted bits of rhythmic churn, or plodding ambient doom, or creepy black ambient drone, masterfully exectued, an expansive, incredible exploration of history through blackened folk flecked sound. Like other those Bindrune releases, not quite like anything else.
From the same label that brought us the most recent Clair Cassis ep, and the Velvet Cacoon Dextronaut reissue, comes this, the gorgeous hazy, shoegazey depressive black drone pop debut from Pakistani one man band Necktarium, whose sound is just barely black metal, sure, there's plenty of buzz, and some hellish vokills, but those elements are buried in billowy layers of gauzey fuzz, and washed out shimmer, woozy melancholy melodies, and tinkling pianos, all cloaked in blurry Burzumic thrum, the tempos lazy and laid back and a little waltzy, the sound lush and warm and rife with clean spidery guitars, whirling chordal swells and lovely field recordings. Burbling brooks and bird calls drift beneath a haze of translucent glimmer, soon buried beneath an avalanche of blasting blackness, but that blackness is burnished and glows with a strange warmth, wrapped in tendrils of swoonsome melody, everything indistinct and otherworldly, even at its fiercest, Dreamblur manages to be both, dreamy and blurry, like an even more washed out and druggy Velvet Cacoon, Necktarium paints gorgeous landscapes of abstract sonic drift, black metal rendered in shades of blues and greys, moon lit and obscured by flickering shadows, the sound shifting from murky muddy churn, to hushed chiming ambience, from melancholy lullaby to creeping, lumbering sorrowful blackdoomdrift, from gorgeous crystalline atmospheric minimalism, to lo-fi in-the-red blackblur bliss.
Totally fantastic, and absolutely recommended for anyone into dreamy depressive blackness, washed out shoegazey buzz and dreamy droney blurred and bleary blissiness, and tragically LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!!!!
Local label Flenser is quickly becoming the Bay Area's primary bastion of blackened buzz, with a seriously stellar first batch of releases, Bosse De Nage, Ghast, Palace Of Worms, Panopticon, Skagos and now the first proper full length from West coast USBM-ers Necrite, whose sound is really only loosely black metal, instead, these guys traffic in creeping, crawling, atmospheric dirgery, as much about atmosphere and texture as blasting riffs.
The sixteen minute opener sets the stage with a haunting skeletal guitar party, all spidery and minor key, a chilling sonic refrain that sort of drifts over spaced out mathy drums and inhuman hellish shrieks, that sometimes slip into belching death metal grunts, or even now and again almost Tuvan sounding humming vocal buzz. But fear not, these guys definitely offer up some ferocious blackness, bursting into face melting stretches of woozy blurred blast beating and frenetic insectoid riffing. In the case of the first track, the blasting subsides leaving some strange abstract post rocky ambience, crumbling abject atmospheres rife with creepy vocal mewls, and all manner of buzz drenched noise, only to explode again into some seriously intricate noisy blackness, infusing it with all manner of twisted melody and gnarled rhythmic weirdness.
The next three tracks follow a similar pattern, the band deftly slipping from super abstract ultra doom creep, to soaring Norwegian style raw and primitive black buzz, to tangled mathy post rock blacknoise psychedelia, plenty of ambience, lots of intricate melodies, even some sort of guitar leads weaving lush harmonies over and within the proceedings. All of this is wound into some super twisted arrangements, and the weirdly cavernous production only adds to the fucked up feel.
Then there's the nearly half hour title track, the majority of which is hushed blackened ambience, reverbed streaks of blackened shimmer, rumbling vocal murmurs, shards of guitar melody, building to a huge almost static wall of glacial crumbling black buzz, spare doomy drumming, it's not even until more than halfway through that the band offer up some buzzing blasting blackness, and even then, it soon splinters into weirdly tangled heaviness, before fading into some gorgeous minimal droney drift.
Which leads directly into the final track, "Worship The Sunn ((O))", which as you could probably tell from the title, is a sprawling chunk of SUNNO))) worship, but Necrite make it their own, adding mysterious chant like vocals, roughing up the guitars a bit, adding church bells and other ambience, the superdistorted riffing is not as static as it would seem, constantly undulating and squirming, making for a gorgeously bleak and ultra heavy bit of blackened and tangled ambient guitardrone.
The second installment in a proposed trilogy of 12"s from one of our favorite weirdo electronic outfits, UK duo Necro Deathmort, who besides having a grim and brootal, almost metallic sounding moniker, kick up a sound that's seriously warped, an atmospheric, blackened electronica, with the early records sounding a bit like SUNNO))) meets Squarepusher, the sound seems to be delving deeper and deeper into texture and nuance, beat driven moodiness, and almost cinematic sounding, tripped out psychedelic dub.
Still plenty ominous and sinister, EP2 opens with "Sundive", a droned out, industrial sprawl, that sounds more like the minimal techno murk of Silent Servant crossed with the grim-goth rhythms of Vatican Shadow, the pulsing echo drenched beat draped over a thick backdrop of ominous, rumbling thrum. "Mirus" begins life as a hushed swirl of low end pulsations, and gauzy synthesizer squelch, but before too long, the song explodes into some full on metal, a lumbering droney doom, thick down tuned riffage, minimal metallic drum pound, some serious metalgaze style hypno-dirgery, but the whole thing is wreathed in thick swirls of synth shimmer, and more droniness, the vibe almost like John Carpenter by way of Godspeed by way of Neurosis or Nadja. "Channel Fever" lays down a framework of gated beats woven into a skittery eighties sounding rhythm, again, drifting atop undulating waves of synthdrone and atmospheric shimmer, all spacey and washed out, still a bit ominous, but even more so in the last coupe minutes with some ribcage rattling bass, and some slowbuild atmospherics.
The second half of EP2 delivers more of the same. "Bleeding" sounding like it could have been borne of some obscure Justin Broadrick project, or perhaps a remix of Moss or The Body, a churning blackened doomic riffscape spread out over a sea of squelch and a backdrop of crumbling distortion, harsh metallic vokills, a lurching slab of electro-doom, swaddled in arcs of blurred melody, adding a strangely melancholic vibe to the proceedings, but for all the little electronic bits this is some straight up metal crush, that should have doooooooomlords digging it big time, but also probably a little confused, especially when that track bleeds directly into "Deadlight", which sounds like some creepy Carpenter soundtrack, all woozy synths and sinister minor key melody, kosmische drift meets eighties horror VHS ambience, sounding like it could easily have been an alternate soundtrack for recent dystopian seventies style sci-fi art flick, Beyond The Black Rainbow. That sound continues right into the closer "Are", all pulsing synths, and swirling cinematic ambience, unfurling like more soundtrack drift, before the drums come swooping in, transforming the sound into something weirder and heavier, a spaced out doom-psych maybe, or some cinematic psychedelic synth doom, not sure what to call it, but it's pretty fantastic, a lumbering landscape of rumbling, atmospheric drones, swirling synth shimmer, moody melodies, and minimal drum pound, all brooding and tense, super atmospheric, haunting and heavy, again sounding like the score to some lost avant / arthouse sci-fi epic.
LIMITED TO 333 COPIES!!
This record seemed like it was custom made for aQ. They're called Necro Deathmort, the record is called This Beat Is Necrotronic, they've been described as SUNNO))) meets Squarepusher, it's heavy, it's skittery, it's dark, it's like a metal dubstep record, or a grim electronic laced doomdrone record, some of the tracks are stuttery and rhythmic, others are grim and ominous and intense, all of them are heavy, the sound veers from spaced out and downtuned, to skeletal and psychedelic, to thick and caustic, to big beated and bassy.
Thanks to aQ customer Mark for introducing us to these guys, we've been listening to it nonstop since we got it in. It's definitely a tough one to pin down, a little all over the map, but no matter what's going on, the various sounds and vibes and moods are definitely connected, joined by a thick grim black thread.
"Spilth (Spill Your Filth)" starts things off with a lumbering electro jam, all squiggles and squelches, glitches and buzzes, but underpinned by some serious speaker destroying bass, fuzzed out and thick and rumbling and very very prickly, like the heaviest dubstep bassline you've ever heard, cranked even higher. "Hurt Me I'm Bored" is where the band get serious, spreading out a serious chunk of smoldering electronic flecked doom, haunting and propulsive, the drums simple and stripped down, the main riff minor key and a little bit woozy, all around the main groove, clouds of static and hiss swirl and spark, the low end again thick as hell, the guitars gradually growing more and more metallic until, the track is full on doooooooom, but still peppered with little squiggles of distorted leads and various shards of electronic detritus.
"I Can See Through Time" is all washed out whir and hushed shimmer, looped and chopped sounds smoothed into a droney almost pop ambience, which quickly gives way to "Return To Planet Atlas", a sort of trip hopped slowcore jam, all big beats, and thick gnarled woofer shredding low-end, surrounded on all sides by streaks of high end, and all manner of swirling effects. The beats are definitely reminiscent of Scorn, even Bomb The Bass (remember them?), but a bit amped up and a lot heavier: "Necro Effigy" is another strange beat driven groove, with strange voices, croaking frogs, fractured glitched out crunch, and stuttery stop start beats, "Broadcast" is a dreamy interlude, sampled voices, looped bass notes and distant drone-y rumbles, dreamy and ethereal, which leads right into "I Fought The Law And The Law Won" which sounds like Portishead, all smoke-y and late night, or maybe a more beaty Bohren, creepy crawly, mysterious and weirdly pretty, "Technicolour Minstrel Show" begins with a SUNNO)))-y wall of crumbling blackened sound, only to give way to a whirring soft focus dreamscape, while "Origami Werewolf" is a dark loping jam, all throbbing beats, sheets of blown out guitar, keening feedback, and some serious industrial riffage, and finally, the record closes with the nearly 13 minute "Ultimate Testament", a gorgeous super minimal slowcore crawl, the beats skeletal and spaced out, the guitar raw and distorted, thick and noxious, but the melodies epic and majestic, it sounds like it might build to classic post rock crescendo, but instead, everything drops out except for the drums, and the last few minutes are a strange minimal beatscape, booming, pounding, crashing, but with tons of space, the beats echoing into the blackness before winking out, only to be replaced by another beat, until there's nothing left.
This shit is amazing, so dark and heavy and unlikely. Gorgeously packaged too, in a super swank fold out six panel sleeve, adorned with some garish woodcut style illustrations, and be sure and check out their Myspace page as well, tons of other music that didn't make it onto the cd, including a killer reinterpretation of an old Nirvana song, that gets all Necro'd. So Rad. And just for the record, January is in no way too soon to start picking records for your best of 2010 list... just so you know...
It's been 8 long years, but German black metal weirdoes Necrofrost have resurfaced with a brand new record. Their 2000 / 2001 one two punch: In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor and Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrungas' Dunkle Necrotoner, pretty much set the bar around here for fucked up freaked out supremely damaged and fractured outsider black metal. There's probably not an aQ favorite black metal record that didn't get compared to Necrofrost. And until very recently we just assumed that Necrofrost were indeed dead and gone, laying forever dormant beneath that swampy floor where dead things go to rot and fade away.
But Blackeon Lightharvest proves otherwise, finding the dreadful duo of Seirim and Fimbulraven offering up another glorious collection of sick, murky black filth. Not too much has changed soundwise since the last bit of necro frost, the songs are still woozy and midtempo, stumbling and buzzy, the vocals harsh and hellish, the songs simple and stripped down, locked into long stretched of furious blurred blackness, with the occasional chunk of more lurching doominess.
If anything, the band sound better. More polished, but not obviously so, unless you're super familiar with the other two records. Where those records sounded fucked up, and almost retarded at times (a compliment btw), here the weirdness seems more an organic part of the whole. The songs are simple, but dense and textured and layered, the recording is still bizarre, some songs super in-the-red, others muddy and muted sounding, and all kinds of tape drop outs and blasts of too-much-distortion that cause the levels to fluctuate, but much like Faxed Head, those bits of fucked up production only add to the mood and vibe, making a weird record sound even more weird.
Some might be disappointed by the inclusion of a band photo, showing Fumbulraven as a normal looking sideburned guy wearing a knit cap and Seirim as a pretty average looking metal dude, but the band photo is labeled "The Checkered Forest Sofa", um, okay, and the guys are credited with "space signals and vector echoes" as well as guitars and drums, and there are still awesome song titles like "Your Flesh Is My Convenience", "Steel Forests Of My Deserted Dreams", and in a bid to describe their sound, "Ugly Misanthropic Metal". Plus Sin Nanna of Striborg contributed to the record's intro somehow, supposedly. Needless to say, this all adds up to some good old Necrofrostian weirdness, and thankfully, the record lives up to all that, a seriously skewed chunk of surprisingly melodic, but WAY damaged black buzz.
First there's the intro, which does indeed remind us of Striborg, trash can drumming, over blurred sheets of mournful minor key guitars, and a super harsh rasped vocal, but that quickly gives way to a dirgey, almost punky bit of raw midtempo old school black metal. Definitely melodic, and sort of loping and lumbering tempo wise, but with some fractured more frenetic breaks, and some wild squiggly guitar bits, all very cyclical and hypnotic, and the sound very muddy and lo-fi, which leaves you pretty unprepared for "Steel Forests" which just might be our favorite track on the disc, a furious blast of super charged buzz drenched guitars, a wild insectoid main riff, wild blasting drums all but buried in the mix, the vocals also pretty buried, all wound into a tight, seriously blistering black metal frenzy, and hooks galore, too, that main riff will stick in your had like mad, and then when the track shifts gears, and gets all dynamic, that's when the levels go haywire, the sound shifting from overblown saturated tape blur, to muted underwater thrum, with some awesome off kilter edits and breaks, might just be BM jam of the year.
And of course the next track switched gears again, with a cool almost post rock crunch chug, with little flurries of harmonics, before lurching into and almost D-beat pound, which makes the long piano part in the middle all the more unexpected, a pretty, moody, minor key vamp, replete with shimmering dramatic strings. Huh? Well, it is Necrofrost after all.
The title track offers up so more weirdness, beginning with backwards processed guitars before launching into a plodding groove, the buzz and pound laced with tangled almost NWOBHM guitar harmonies, and then comes "Ugly Misanthropic Metal" which is indeed all those things, a raw, almost doomy blackened dirge, the vocals extra harsh, the guitars super tense and dramatic, which is followed by a weirdly keyboard heavy jam, which sounds like a Black Sabbath outtake slowed waaaaay down and smeared in black filth, before exploding into a super intense blast, complete with more of those guitar harmonies, before finishing off with a track of haunting creeped out ambience, all chittering insects, whirring New Age synths, deep ominous rumbles and soaring guitar leads.
The first few times we listened to Blackeon Lightharvest, we were convinced it was not nearly as weird as the other two records, but now we're not so sure, like we mentioned above, the weirdness seems to be just less obvious, instead, it lurks inside every note and riff and melody, so even when on the surface, it seems just like classic blasting black metal, it's really not. At all.
No surprise really, considering that Necrofrost is definitely in our black metal pantheon, but this is quickly becoming one of our new favorite BM records.
Oh, how we have been waiting for this! Finally, after years of being unavailable, both records by the mighty Necrofrost are available again. If you've been paying attention to the AQ list, you will probably recognize the name Necrofrost from citations in various reviews of damaged, demented, freaked out fucked up black metal. Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, The One. It's pretty much impossible to talk about bizarre black metal without mentioning Necrofrost. And here's why:
Okay, we know that black metal is a serious and GRIM business. There is no place for humor or frivolity. No smiling or laughing and definitely no smirking. Just bitter bleak misanthropy. Suicidal despondency. Utter frosty misery. But absurdity is a whole 'nother story. We've championed some truly absurd/damaged/demented metal in the past, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Vondur, and of course last week's record of the week Meads Of Asphodel. But I think Necrofrost just might take the cake. This is one of the most fucked black metal records we have ever heard. Start with the titles. The record is called Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner! Some of the song titles: "Carcass Carried By The Crawls Of Titanbats", "Me The Tundra", "Slaughtered In A Misanthropic Intent", "Nostalgia Freeze The Norse Reaper", and on and on and on. The record starts off with grunting and growling and mewling, like a legion of just birthed demons, struggling to awaken and crawling up through the murk and the mire, inexplicably accompanied by some jaunty renaissance faire minstrels! Weird. The band then launches into some buzzing stumbling, chaotic, ultra grim lo-fi black metal. Struggling blastbeats, caterwauling guitars, midtempo dirges and some truly necro grunts. But suddenly the song breaks into a bizarre acoustic/country tinged breakdown, complete with warbly wicked witch vocals shrieking and squealing above the din and later, creepy keyboards evoke some long lost Z grade horror movie, while out of tune guitars emulate some sort of scary circus music. Weird! While the core of Necrofrost's sound is definitely ultra frosty, uber grim, lo-fi black Black BLACK metal, even their metal is damaged and demented. Super spastic drumming, retarded guitar, ridiculous mixing, tape drop outs (a la Faxed Head?), vocals that threaten to overwhelm the mix and occasionally do, becoming a Merzbowian blur at full shriek, baritone chants weaving in and out of ear shredding high end blur, muffled blast beats underpin, pretty arpeggiated guitar melodies while the vocalist speak/sings a litany of evil, in his best grumpy grandma moan. There's just too much weirdness to really do this record justice in a review. You just gotta hear it. A frosty, hellish mud covered, grim chunk of brilliantly skewed outsider avant black metal!
With a title like Dark Fog Hovers Near The Wooden Caves Of Aldrakkiian Bloodforest, it's gotta be Necrofrost, easily one of our favorite fucked up outsider black metal hordes. Quite possibly THE favorite. They might just be one of the most referenced bands on the aQ site, since whenever we need to describe a band that is warped and confusional and baffling and freaky and fucked up and damaged and retarded, well, Necrofrost is pretty much the gold standard.
Dark Fog Hovens Near The Wooden Caves Of Aldrakkiian Bloodforest is Necrofrost's legendary 1998 demo, so limited we had never even heard of it until we heard about this reissue, available on vinyl for the first time ever, and of course crazy limited. And while most of the songs here were re-recorded later for the albums proper, here, they are, and we never thought it could be possible, EVEN MORE fucked up and amazing.
Beginning with some strange synth and strings and tympanis sort of classical intro, the band launch into some of the sickest, most frenzied and furious black buzz EVER. Super blown out and in the red, the guitars so distorted they threaten to crumble into pieces, the drums a relentless pound, and the vocals, you thought they were sick before, here they're super high in the mix, LOUD, and inhuman, and super effected, the howls and screams nearly swallowing up the rest of the music. And that music, weirdly melodic, but plenty buzzy and black, with woozy super alien sounding tinny leads all over the place, the overall sound so distorted and weirdly recorded that it almost sounds avant, especially when the guitars and vocals lock into weirdly convoluted lurching bursts of fragmented buzz. So goddamn good. Anyone who owns the other Necrofrost records NEEDS this, and if you've never heard these guys before, then this will either blow your mind completely, or send you running off in terror. Either way, this fucking RULES.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
We love Necrofrost. The ultimate in damaged weirdo outsider black metal. Managing to be completely bafflingly bizarre but still grim and cult and black and heavy as fuck. This is one of two long overdue reissues, this one from 1999, and still sounding as amazing and as fucked as ever. It's called In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor after all, and features some of the best black metal song titles EVER: "Slaughtered With Misanthropic Intent", "Rapacious Forests In Ultimate Sleep", "The Return Of Animalian Bloodlust", "Bloodthrones And Legionwoods"...
And while the sound is appropriately black and buzzy, it's ultimately filtered through Necrofrost's cracked and distorted metal sensibility and ends up being some of the coolest weirdest black metal you will ever heard. At it's core, this is a loping midtempo, slightly doomy, buzz drenched black metal. But Necrofrost take that sound and drag it kicking and screaming, bloody and battered through some haunted forest, into a cave and down into the pits of hell. While not as completely wacked as their other record Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner, In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor is more subtly fucked, its dementedness demonstrated less by bursts of renaissance faire folly or country banjos and more by some inherent, intangible what the fuck vibe that seems ooze from every recorded second.
After a weird, horror movie piano intro, with minor key strings, sounding like some Morricone spy thriller, the band lurch into black action. Sheets of blasting buzz, howled demonic shrieks, over a stumbling chaotic blast beat, the tempos ever shifting, bizarre atonal Greg Ginn guitars playing tangled angular leads, strange doom breakdowns, almost jaunty polka style rhythms, twisted and tweaked circusy guitar melodies, albeit all doused in grim blackness, thick washes of medieval keyboards, haunting minor key arpeggiated guitars, these are all part of Necrofrost's sinister sonic world, but ultimately, their grim black blasts are fucked enough, the perfect black metal gateway, luring you with blast and buzz, grimly sucking you into their strange sonic underworld, and maybe once you have successfully traversed Necrofrost's Misty Soar and Swampy Floor, you'll be ready to brave their Bloodstorms...
Essential for all fans of Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, Benighted Leams, Furze, Urfaust, The One and other practitioners of the dark and damaged black arts...
Allan's favorite Greek black metal band.
This is not a new record, but we have been dying to review something, ANYTHING, by these terrifying Swedes, and this is as good a place to start as any, their debut full length from 2002. Folks familiar with Swedish black metal will probably at least have a rough idea of what they're getting into, Watain, Marduk, Kill (in fact Kill and Necroplasma share a member or two), you know, fast and furious and frenzied and fucked up, but you'll doubtfully be prepared for just how intense and heavy and utterly soul crushing Necroplasma really are.
Beginning with a weird fuzzy Brainbombs-ish bassline, the band almost immediately launch into an impossibly blasting onslaught, lightning fast blastbeat, super blown out distorted bass (which is probably what makes this sound so fucking heavy, most black metal records have ZERO bass), wild insectoid guitar buzz, inhuman throat shredding demon vokills, only the occasional breakdown, where just the main riff is unfurled only to be obliterated seconds later by the band lurching into yet another frenzied attack.
Within all this blasting and buzzing, there is some seriously twisted shit going on too, within the title track there are some strange stretches of muddy muted tribal weirdness happening, "Heavens Above" is a fucked up lurching dirge that sounds almost like an entirely different band, until the sound suddenly launches into a hyperspeed blast, the opening riff for "Blessed By Him" is a dead ringer for Bastro's "Shoot Me A Deer", the same sort of muted damaged chug, but none of that stuff is what Necroplasma are all about, those are merely drops of black blood in NP's sonic cauldron of crusty filth and sick buzz, a fantastically fucked up and utterly relentless black metal assault that makes the music of most of their compatriots sound downright tame in comparison.
Latest full length from this long running German black death horde, and even more than their previous outing, Doom Of The Occult is a sprawling, ambitious epic, that takes the sound of classic death metal (Autopsy, Incantation, Hellhammer, etc.) and fuses it to the gnarled blackness of newer bands like Deathspell and Katharsis, and creating a stunning songsuite of mid paced blackened death metal, that is black enough to appeal to the true grim hordes for sure, the riffing thick and twisted, the drumming intricate and powerful, the vocals a reverbed demonic bellow, verging on gurgling DM growl, perfectly matching the tenor and energy of the music.
At first glance, there seem to be an insane number of tracks, but the band has woven multiple interludes and sonic experiments into this record, and that's on top of various intro and outros, all the various non metal pieces super varied sonically, ranging from droned out ambience to hauntingly Middle Eastern sounding arrangements of choirs and synths, but it's the metal obviously that's the focal point here, and it's the sort of black death we can't get enough of, thick and cacophonous, doomier and mid paced, the sound churning and roiling more than thrashing and blasting, the sound surprisingly melodic, those melodies often very Eastern sounding, giving much of NC's sound a mystical exotic vibe, not to mention that they don't shy away from infusing their metal with chanted crooned vox, or swirling synths, the result is a surprisingly melodic, blackened death that is coming dangerously close to being one of our new favorite metal records.
Straight up, Satan lovin' black metal here from previously obscure necro Norwegians Neetzach, who piqued our interest 'cause they've got drummer Dirge Rep in the band, he who previously pounded the skins for AQ fave Viking-prog kings Enslaved (and some other bands too, like Gehenna and Gorgoroth). That's a fair assurance of quality, and these True Servants Of Satan don't disappoint, if it's a grim and violent, raw thrashing black metal buzz (and buzzing) you're after. Blurring blasts and noxious rasps emanate from this disc like fumes from a toxic tomb, the old-school atmosphere enhanced by some slower, sea-sick riffage and the way Dirge's drums beat on your skull. Good Satanic stuff for fans of Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Darkthrone and the like.
With all of the black noise swaddled in runes and death-obsessed iconography, it was only a matter of time before the cult label Vaald released a proper black metal project. Negative Crown seems to hail from an undergrowth somewhere near Athens, Georgia; but this diabolical horde keeps this suitably inscrutable on their first demo. Chiming, loner chords leave a Slinty taste in our mouth at the onset of this tape before a blizzardy blast-beat and some matching guitar fury tear through the plane of existence followed by a sustained blood-curdling scream. The track soon collapses into a swirl of blackened, dense FX, completely fuzzed out and drone-on white noise that is more hypnotizing than pummelling. This and the other two tracks on the A-side (all parts of a trilogy called "Bracken") aligning in all the best possible ways with Paysage D'Hiver. The B-side opens with a black ambient swirl of mournful and sinister synths, giving way to a throat-ripping finale of start-stop-start BM buzz'n'riff, and as before the blast-beats and diabolical vokills melt into a soft-focus blur of hypnotic, grim, miserablist drone-sheeting. Super fucking limited, and pretty fucking epic.
A couple people asked us/told us about this before we got it... apparently word-of-mouth among cult black metal mavens was strong early on! And all their hushed queries and whispered expressions of awed enthusiasm are well deserved, we discovered, once we heard it ourselves. This is definitely NOT just another run of the mill black metal album. Negative Plane somehow have captured something more ancient and strange than usual in their music. They have a real "old school" mystique about them, that Venom / Celtic Frost / Bathory feel, yet at the same time this is infused and infested further with an especially alien weirdness, a bit of the same vibe as Nordic avant-gardists Ved Buens Ende. The album is drenched in effects, rendering the rasping vocals into an internal, infernal dialogue with themselves due to the amount of reverb, echoing in collusion with the music to make extra-effective what's otherwise indecipherable.
And though so seemingly raw and olden, there's a lot more "going on" here than with some of the dronier black metal efforts we've heard -- these tracks are full of complex runs, twisting turns, sudden changes. And sheer atmosphere is not neglected. Neg Plane's doomy vibe, their church organ tones and eerie melodies, are one important aspect of this record -- lashed with tons of FX to their other aspect, raging riffage, you've got an underground cult already established, the duo of Nameless Void (guitar/vocals) and Bestial Devotion (drums) requiring servitors rather than mere fans. Very special.
Hmmm, we must have done something to obtain Satan's approval, since he has recently rewarded us with releases from two of our absolute favorite cult black metal bands, and both exceedingly idiosyncratic ones at that. There's Inquisition's highly anticipated and indeed amazing Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm opus, which we'll be reviewing next time (we ran out this week!), and this, the equally eagerly-awaited 2nd album from Negative Plane, whose 2006 debut caused us to describe them as "very special", a band so underground and cult that they require the devotion of "servitors rather than mere fans". As such, we bow and praise, for five years later, this second strike is another slab of antiquarian, abyssic genius.
Doomy, dramatic, delirious black metal that's so thick with true old school feeling that after a few spins, the only thing you can follow it with are crackly vinyls by '80s and early '90s underground overlords like Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, Possessed, and Mayhem. Yet their artistry is directed down their own path, not that of retro nostalgia, even if they stir up the same Satanic vibrations as those ancient ones.
Negative Plane are masters of mystique, their music a masterful combination of atmospheric (and not only that, but also interesting) interludes, that evoke eerie olde silent film musick, and much more metal onslaughts, that emerge intricately from the hissing murk with pounding drums, swarms of guitar, and raw guttural vokills. Field recordings, bells, cello, piano, organ, and some female vocals are all woven into the mix, creating something quite unique and effective.
These rumbling, rollercoastering compositions, with their sepulchral production and strangely classical motifs, are all cloaked in weird, haunting ambience, it's like they recorded with Leyland Kirby or Indignant Senility in the producer's seat. If it's truly possible for metal to not just be about the occult, but actually BE occult, the reverby rituals recorded by Negative Plane are, and leave us with a Lovecraftian "indescribable" to add to this review.
Vinyl version to be unleashed in March, FYI.
This isn't new really, but we've been dying to review this blast of black frost for ages, and we were only recently able to get enough to list.
This German horde are not fucked, or bizarre, or damaged, they're really not all that weird actually, but man does not live by weird alone, sometimes, all it takes is a huge heaping dose of ultra blazing, super intense, grim and frosty black metal. And Negator are indeed that.
This is blurry, buzzy, dizzying and epic, majestic and mournful melodies, insane technical riffing, incredible blast beats, and a killer production that does away with the lo-fi buzz of bedroom black metal and replaces it with HUGE heaviness, a swirling black cloud of blizzard like brutality. Speaking of blizzards, Old Black is probably the frostiest, fastest, grimmest slab of icy blackness to come our way since Immortal's legendary Blizzard Beasts record. Which is saying a lot, but damn if this hasn't become one of our most listened to BM discs of late.
In fact, we hear so much ultra personal bedroom black metal, and damaged stumbling outsider black metal, and don't get us wrong, we LOVE that stuff, but it's sort of refreshing to hear some real, true, fierce and furious, classic sounding black metal. Think Immortal, Emperor, Mayhem, Dissection, Dimmu Borgir, 1349, if these weren't young guys from Germany, you'd definitely be forgiven for thinking this was some slab of blackness from Norway circa 1995. And that's a very good thing.
All bow before the new Blizzard Beasts....
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The return of Romania's avant black metallers Negura Bunget, who were best known around these parts for their last record, which sounded remarkably like SF black metal legends Weakling. NB have progressed, or regressed, or at least moved on, so now they truly sound like nobody else. Four epic tracks clocking in at almost an hour, and sonically all over the place. Dark, ambient rumbles evoke the spirits of the forest before the first track kicks in sounding a bit like Don Cab, with spastic drums, way up in the mix while grainy guitars saw wildly away. Eventually BIGGER riffs come tumbling down like a black metal avalanche and the whole thing becomes a swirling, bloodied whirlpool of octopus-armed drumming, possessed keyboards and buzzing mosquito riffs. Occasionally the metallic fury abates allowing gently strummed acoustic guitars and field recordings to weave simple melodic soundscapes in the lulls. Really strange breakdowns are peppered throughout, like a drum/keyboards/clean-vocal part that sounds like an ultra raw Killing Joke or Sisters Of Mercy, ambient passages with howling wind and far away wails, a loping black metal waltz, buzzing and swaying drunkenly, and a closing drone that rumbles and whirs and sounds as good as any Jonathan Coleclough record. While there are moments of black metal familiarity here and there, there's just so much strangeness, even just in the way instruments sound or how they play certain parts. There's a definite post rock vibe in the song structures especially in a lot of the drum parts. Strange production with quiet guitars and LOUD guitars and occasionally LOUD drums. But it all makes for a really unique record. Some seriously twisted, rhythmically bizarre, completely damaged, grandiose and melancholy black metal supposedly inspired by "Romanian mysticism". And, it comes in a really beautiful oversized cardstock sleeve that unfolds sort of like a map and contains an actual twig from some Romanian tree!
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Finally re-pressed and back in stock but not sure for how long!!!
We sold SO many of the last Negura Bunget album 'N Crug Bradului and for good reason. It was one of the coolest weirdest black metal records we had ever heard. So when we found out about this triple cd set collecting all of their earlier long out of print releases we knew we had to haveit (and figured you probably did too)! We described Negura Bunget so well the first time around, I'm not sure how we could do it any better. So here's what we said about this mysterious Romanian black metal band:
"Dark, ambient rumbles evoke the spirits of the forest before the music kicks in sounding a bit like Don Cab, with spastic drums, way up in the mix while grainy guitars saw wildly away. Eventually BIGGER riffs come tumbling down like a black metal avalanche and the whole thing becomes a swirling, bloodied whirlpool of octopus-armed drumming, possessed keyboards and buzzing mosquito riffs. Occasionally the metallic fury abates allowing gently strummed acoustic guitars and field recordings to weave simple melodic soundscapes in the lulls. While there are moments of black metal familiarity here and there, there's just so much strangeness, even just in the way instruments sound or how they play certain parts. Some seriously twisted, rhythmically bizarre, completely damaged, grandiose and melancholy black metal supposedly inspired by 'Romanian mysticism'."
Wow! They sound pretty good huh? Well, they ARE that good. This box compiles the first three Negura Bunget albums dating from 1995 to 2000, including their first demo from when they were still called Wiccan Rede. The albums are: Sala Molska, Zirnindu-Sa, and Maiastru Sfetnic, each in a jewel case and all bundled in a cardboard slipcover, all with amazing new artwork. The sound on these earlier recordings isn't quite as polished and fully realized as on 'N Crug Bradului, it's actually a lot rougher and simplistic, but perhaps because of that, it's also a whole lot weirder, grim and creepy but damaged and freaked out. Keyboards play a much bigger part, huge swaths of buzzing melody laid over the thrashing metallic onslaught. Probably the most interesting aspect is how much Negura Bunget sometimes sounded like SF black metal legends Weakling. Whether it's the agonisingly wailed vocals, or the epic droning riffage, you know that sounding even remotely like Weakling is a REALLY good thing. We get these direct from Romania and as always we can't be sure how long they'll be available so don't miss out on these again!
Finally, the older earlier records from our favorite Transylvanian black metallers are getting their due, some super swank deluxe reissues packed with extras. For the longest time, we carried the cd box, which we got direct from the band in Romania, which contained Negura Bunget's first three albums and an ep. Lots of long time aQ list readers no doubt have that box, as it's some of the most essential black metal we've ever heard. But for years now, we've been unable to get those boxes back in, and now we know why. Lupus Lounge has decided to re-issue all of those records, with extra tracks, and in the case of a couple of them, extra discs containing whole extra alternate mixes of the records proper. Also, the new versions are now housed in super nice multi panel full color digipaks.
We have all four (one of the original three, was split back up into its original two separate parts) in stock, in very limited quantities, have a look at the 'in stock, not yet reviewed' section, if you want to go nuts and get all of them (and why wouldn't you?!) but for now, we're gonna list/review From Transylvanian Forest first, and get to those other ones later. And this is as good a place to start as any. An ep from 2000, which was in fact a remixed and remastered version of a demo by PRE Negura Bunget outfit Wiccan Reed, before they changed their name, but already, their unique sound was fully formed.
For those new to Negura Bunget, here's how we described the band on more recent releases: Dark, ambient rumbles evoke the spirits of the forest before the music kicks in sounding a bit like Don Cab, with spastic drums, way up in the mix while grainy guitars saw wildly away. Eventually BIGGER riffs come tumbling down like a black metal avalanche and the whole thing becomes a swirling, bloodied whirlpool of octopus-armed drumming, possessed keyboards and buzzing mosquito riffs. Occasionally the metallic fury abates allowing gently strummed acoustic guitars and field recordings to weave simple melodic soundscapes in the lulls. While there are moments of black metal familiarity here and there, there's just so much strangeness, even just in the way instruments sound or how they play certain parts. Some seriously twisted, rhythmically bizarre, completely damaged, grandiose and melancholy black metal supposedly inspired by 'Romanian mysticism'.
On From Transylvanian Forest, and all of these older records in fact, the sound isn't quite as polished and fully realized as on the newer records, it's actually a lot rougher and simplistic, but perhaps because of that, it's also a whole lot weirder, grim and creepy but damaged and freaked out. Keyboards play a much bigger part, huge swaths of buzzing melody laid over the thrashing metallic onslaught. Probably the most interesting aspect is how much Negura Bunget sometimes sounded like SF black metal legends Weakling. Whether it's the agonisingly wailed vocals, or the epic droning riffage, you know that sounding even remotely like Weakling is a REALLY good thing.
WAY WAY recommended. As are all four of the reissues!
This is not brand new, but instead is an ep from right before the most recent full length Om. But until recently we were never able to get more than a handful of copies. But finally, we have enough to list, but we're not sure how long we'll have these in stock, so don't dawdle if you want one.
Negura Bunget, one of our favorite avant black metal bands, hailing from Romania (okay, Transylvania!), a band who weave dense black soundscapes incorporating lots of traditional black buzz, but also mystical folk, haunting ambience, and whatever other sonic strangeness is part of their twisted black vision. And who even at their most 'metal' and most 'traditional' still sound weirder than almost any of their contemporaries.
The opening track begins with thick washes of super dramatic keyboards, and mysterious monklike chants, as well as all sorts of traditional percussion and hand drums, before some killer blackened riffing joins in and the band launch into a twisted black journey, along the way blasting briefly beneath majestic keyboard swells, weaving through some convoluted Voivod riffage with some crooning clean singing and finishing up with some seriously mathy rhythms beneath more keyboards and tangled blackened guitars.
The second track is some haunting forest ambience, long stretches of droning rumble, strange rhythms over swirling misty keyboards, bizarre vibraphone like melodies, and all manner of creepy creaks and unidentifiable sounds. Track three is the centerpiece of Inarborat Kosmos, a mostly midtempo atmospheric black jam, with super strange (and unbelievably catchy) riffing, dense tangled rhythms, huge swaths of epic keyboards, and about a million different parts, a song that seems to constantly shift and change shapes without ever losing cohesion or direction. Occasionally the keyboards become so dense and massive that they overpower the rest of the instruments and the song becomes a weird high end drone, at least briefly. A head spinning blast of baffling blackness for sure.
The final track is another swath of foresty black ambience. Long slow drawn out keyboard drones, and thick clouds of crumbling distortion, but most notably, all manner of strange and guttural, creepy and almost monstrous vocalizations, howling and growled, tortured and anguished, sounding like some ancient clan, gathered around a fire, performing some strange rite or ritual.
Which, when you get right down to it, is how Negura Bunget always sound, like some mysterious ancient clan, performing all manner of forest flecked black metal rituals. So great.
Also included two live videos viewable on your computer.
LIMITED TO 734 COPIES!!
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.
Brand new record from unconventional Romanian black metallers Negura Bunget, who began life as a buzzing Norwegian style shrieking black metal beast, sonically quite reminiscent of legendary SF horde Weakling, but who quickly developed into a super unique, folk flecked avant metal combo, mixing their buzzing blackness, with traditional folk melodies, plenty of ambient drone, and with Romanian lyrical themes well outside the prescribed satanic and evil norms of their black brethren.
On this, their latest record, they spread their wings even further, letting songs and parts of songs, develop slowly, build even more gradually, or bliss out into long stretches of droning buzz.
Following a similar path as Enslaved, the band continue to incorporate more and more distinctly un-black metal elements, in the process becoming more and more proggy, with extended song structures, lengthy convoluted instrumental passages, LOTS of keyboards, multiple vocals and unlikely harmonies, dense rhythmic workouts and thick fuzzy almost-postrock. Quite weird, so much so that it sometimes doesn't feel like a black metal record at all. More of a super heavy, atmospheric rock record, with little bits of thrash and prog and blackness mixed in.
Om is most definitely the most moody and atmospheric of NB's releases. Plenty of time is definitely spent buzzing and blasting blackly, but it feels like more of the record is split between loping midtempo jams, long stretches of ethereal space rock ambience and gorgeous bits of dreamy dronefolk drift.
A few folks we spoke to found the new NB a little too out there, too melodic, and not nearly black enough, but as far as we're concerned, Om is plenty black, it's just surrounded by various shades of grey (even some light blues and browns), which, if you're like us, and you like your black metal unpredictable and confusional, then that's exactly what you want. And need!
Includes a DVD, that has amazing stop motion animation menus, with an old frayed rope, that squirms and slithers depending on your selection. Two videos, the first is a series of gorgeous landscapes, forests and slow moving clouds, intercut with some impssobily mind bending shots of forests and waterfalls, super processed and affected so it almost looks like animation, a sort of dizzying water colored 3-D effect. Or something. So beautiful, but so confusing to your brain it's almost impossible to not look away. The other is quite similar, but a bit more lo-fi, with various shots of the band members in a moonlit forest, back lit trees and thick storm clouds as well as some arty shots of faces superimposed on flowing magma, hands in water, lots of washed out abstract images, all on different film stocks, from super high definition to super grainy 16mm. Three live clips, each super arty, one all smeary and indistinct, washed out colors and artful blurs, the other two are all super distressed black and white, with the film shimmying and shifting along with the music, like some old nickeloddian. Pretty cool.
Extras include an interview with the band, a short promo video with more breathtaking images of the Romanian countryside, a slideshow set to music, as well as another live clip and some appropriately arty credits.
Packaged in a super deluxe 8 panel digipak, with super cool, pagan Wickerman / Jan Svankmyer style artwork.
