Yet another blackened recommendation direct from the unholy oracle, otherwise known as AQ comrade in evil, Wrest of black metal horde Leviathan:
When asked to review a couple of discs for Aquarius, I was psyched to find they were among my favorites cds of '03. "The Burning Deed of Deceit" is this Polish artist's third official release and it is definitely Satanic Blackened Metal at its sharpest. Thunderbolt is created almost solely by Paimon, with a session drummer and keyboardist. Paimon, definitely from the school of Snorre Ruch (mastermind behind Thorns and father of the Norse guitar attack), writes hymns with ferocity not felt since early Immortal or old Satyricon. Noteworthy also is the fantastic drum playing and natural drum sound. Levitating blasts, odd time signitures and abrupt tempo changes make up this six song epic. Highlights include "Die With Your Religion" for its hauntingly dischordant keyboard and "The One Who Sleeps", which trudges through the fields of the righteous, the spell broken only by a melancholy acoustic interlude. The soundtrack to a blood-ritual in the name of the one with horns. Hail Satan!!!
We were WAY skeptical of the claim that Tiger Throat sounded like "an Instrumental Bone Awl thrown into a blender with Mono and HEALTH", but it kind of really does, and even though such a description would piss off the misanthropic Bone Awl, we're pretty into it.
This are only three songs (even though there are 10 actual tracks, the rest are weird noisy interludes), but those 3 songs cram in a crazy amount of wild spastic drumming, frenetic buzzing riffage, and all manner of blown out glitch and skitter. The record opens with a soaring almost Cave-like fuzzy hypno krautrock workout, pounding and epic and melodic but still pretty raw and frenzied, until part way through the track crumbles, the song lurching through a field of downtuned guitar groan, grinding effects, backwards drumming, only to explode in an almost D-beat blast, while somehow remaining poppy as fuck, like a more fractured and melodic Ancestors? Whatever you compare these guys to, it works, the track winds down into something more slowcore and post rock, all loping drums and sprawling downtuned buzz. All kinds of sounds worm into the mix. And even though it thrashes pretty hard, it's also catchy and sort of fun. Plenty of weird electronic parts (the HEALTH influence) mixed with the aforementioned thrashy, punkish energy. Pretty unique in parts, pretty psychedelic and very melodic.
The second track is way more dirgey and doomy, but in a sort of spaced out post rock way, the guitar shimmering and ringing out, not really distorted, the drums WAY in the red, very practice space sounding, until the track shifts gears and the guitars explode, and vocals come in, super processed and warped, the whole track music and vocals seems to undulate and twist, like a sonic funhouse mirror, but it's also probably the blackest moment on the record, it goes on for a few minutes, but we were sort of wishing it would KEEP going. So rad.
The final track opens with a mathy manic start stop, you can hear a band member breathlessly counting it off in the background, the result is a lurching squelchy skronky no wave-ish electronic noise rock jam, that gets more and more dense and harsh as the track progresses, finally spilling into a rad hypnotic dirge, the guitars are all overblown while the drumming is teetering on the edge of distorting, the track winding up with a cool staccato grinding metallic outro.
Probably not metal enough for most metal heads, even with the Bone Awl / Ancestors references, it's obvious from the artwork and band name that the black metal influence, while definitely there, is more sort of abstract and just another part of the noise, that said, adventurous metalheads line up here, and for the rest of you, who dig noisy, hooky, electronic, metallic, psych rock weirdness, this is WAY recommended.
"Reissue of the Five Tjolgtjarian Keys + The Gate To Vruguun (2003) and Nuun Raaguun Skuulkuun (2002) Demos comes with a Bonus Track "Devil,Take Me" and marks the first time these recordings have been pressed to CD"
We've never really listed any releases by Midwestern lo-fi black metal combo Tjolgtjar, at least not knowingly. Let your mind wander back a list or two, to a band called Xexyz, a bizarre stumblingly blackened horde who employed a Nintendo game system in lieu of a keyboard, even going so far as to cover (or re-imagine) their favorite 8-bit video game theme songs, transforming them into a truly freaked out bleeping buzzing black metal. Well, we later discovered that this Xexyz band, was in fact essentially a permutation of mighty Midwestern black metal warriors Tjolgtjar. Which makes a lot of sense when you hear their latest, Halloween, a tribute of sorts to the classic eighties slasher flick of the same name. And it's another far out, what-the-fuck blast of damaged and demented black metal. Made even moreso by the fact that about half of the tracks are in fact blackened versions of music from the movie.
The opener will be immediately recognizable to anyone who was a horror movie obsessed nerd in the eighties, that ubiquitous theme song, here rendered in buzzing guitar and pounding drums, complete with relentless double kicks WAY down in the mix. Fucking genius. Track two is more incidental music from the movie, that creepy, stalking song that kept surfacing throughout the movie, here incorporated into the bands buzzing black verses, an ultra lo-fi riff beneath harsh gargled vocals, but always returning to that theme. Still sends shivers up our spines, and somehow it sounds even scarier all blackened up. It's hard to always tell which bits are actually from the movie, some parts are obvious, but it all sounds ultra creepy and like perfect horror movie music. We still wonder why someone hasn't had some grim black metal band score their film. Someday...
The rest of the record blasts through various motifs from the movie, usually set amidst stumbling black blasts of grim buzz, a couple tracks are just creeped out keyboard ambience, haunting and droney, with bits of dialogue from the movie popping up here and there, truly spooky. And so fucking brilliant. And demented. Dementedly brilliant! Anyone who bought that Xexyz disc NEEDS this, and should probably pick up any Tjolgtjar they can find. We'll definitely be listing more in the near future.
And be sure to stick around for the bonus track, an unbelievably annoying metallized version of that song the kids sing in the movie "Eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...", gradually counting down the days until it's "No more days til Halloween...". Ssssssscary...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We haven't ever heard any of the other records by this strangely monickered duo, and in some ways it's probably that name that kept us from exploring their music in the past. We know, book, cover, band name, check. But with so much stuff to listen to, it's inevitable that something like album cover or band name or label, will influence what you listen to first, or maybe even at all. But heck, it's Kranky, and the album cover is pretty cool, so two out of three ain't bad. And we have to say we're glad we did finally decide to take the plunge, cuz the world of TKAPB is a gorgeously gloomy one, a haunting and otherworldly late night drift through a world dark and ominous, and occasionally downright frightening. Think Grouper, Mazzy Star, Kuupuu, Valet, that sort of gauzy dreaminess, murky and muddy, spacey and druggy, with ethereal female vocals, barely there drum skitter, warm languid bass, the instruments less recognizable as instruments, and more as sound generating devices, each emitting long tones, or soft rhythms, the result is a slow burning jazzy drone-y drift, but TKAPB seems a bit more sinister than the rest of those bands, imbuing their hazy midnight drift, with some deep drones, some jagged shards of distorted crunch. A creepy dreamy slowcore, with hints of something darker, heavier, and noisier. Just check out "The Needle", a loping slow groove, minor key and tense, the vocals sultry and smoky, creeping and crawling, until suddenly something hellish surfaces, a squall of demonic buzz and noise, only a second or two, but it adds such menace to the track, as does a swirling sea of cymbal sizzle and what sounds like a moaning string section. Almost like some sort of doom torch song.
The rest of the record is maybe not nearly so intense, but it is a very dark record, think Portishead, Grouper, Skepticism, and Bohren all wound up in a sprawling songsuite of drummachined black ballads, harrowing love songs, grim ambience and blackened downtempo electronica, with a sound so gauzy and washed out and murky and psychedelic, and yeah, occasionally menacing, that it's impossible for us not to give this our highest recommendation.
Another new I, Voidhanger treat. Although this is the first thing we've reviewed by 'em, some of us here have long been seriously obsessive fans of weirdo, avant/experimental black metal outfit Todesstoss (which means Deathblow), and pretty much everything about this band screams "what the fuck?", and thus essentially also screams AQUARIUS! There's the name, which is of course spelled with the German Eszett (way more kvlt than a dumb old umlaut). There's the cover, which features an anthropomorphic penguin, in a cosmic robe, standing above a human brain on a plinth, all within some sort of ruins. Oh and that's just the slipcover, the actual cover art is some sort of double polar bear, with one of it's head a crazy, human toothed iron skull, and a weird tenatacled brain emerging from a bloody hole in the middle of its back, oh and there are doggy dishes for both heads, and this is all taking place in some sort of stalactite-d cave. The artwork and band photos inside the booklet get even weirder. And hell we haven't even gotten to the music yet, which appropriately enough begins with some weird spate of tappy percussion, and creepy dripping sounds, then harmonica (!!), before exploding into a furious blast of blizzard blur, but within seconds, any semblance of traditional black buzz disappears in a cloud of dramatic over the top vocals, strange industrial thrum, the production blurry and abstract, the harmonica returns, and hell, we can't really do it justice, considering the first song alone is nearly 30 minutes long, and thus goes through about a million sonic permutations, all of them ridiculous and amazing, and while there are stretches of proper black metal, they are definitely in the minority, with the rest of the track careening wildly from Devil Doll like drama, to gnarled rhythmic psychedelia, to woozy, metallic shred, to jazzy, proggy freak out. Needless to say, it's totally fucked, and completely next level bonkers.
We'd love to dig into the second song too, but that one's THIRTY FOUR minutes long, and goes through about the same number of sonic shifts, albeit, leaning a bit toward the dirtier side of the equation, but again, it's a bafflingly wild ride, and one that we imagine would have most traditional metalheads diving for the eject button. But we're guessing since you're reading the aQ list, and have made it this far in this over-long review, you might be just the sort of weirdo that this stuff is made for. The final track, super short in comparison (12 minutes) gets all sultry and slithery, a little bit electronic, and about as far removed from black metal as you could imagine, a sort of creepy cabaret, replete with woozy fretless bass, anguished Scott Walker with a lobotomy crooning, and ends up sounding like some demented Lynchian doom jazz. Needless to say, totally and unequivocally recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been digging this band for a while, but weirdly enough this is the first record of theirs we've reviewed. When we first heard about Toil, they were described to us as a band that sounded "exactly like the Cure, only with harsh black metal vocals," which sounded pretty good to us, gloomy gothic, new wave indie rock with black metal vocals? Awesome. And it was!
Things have changed a bit on Lullabies For Insects, the Cure vibe is still there (they do a Cure cover after all, more on that in a second), but the sound is more metal, more rocking, and if anything, Toil sound quite a bit like Lifelover, the same sort of strange juxtaposition of howling harsh vox and melodic almost indie sounding black metal. In fact, opener "Moth With Fractured Wings" is a dead ringer for Lifelover, which is not at all a bad thing, c'mon, there are a million bands who sound like Darkthrone, and more keep popping up every day, we're pretty psyched on all these bands exploring their poppier side.
After a cool 5 minute noisdrone piece, the band launch into a depressive dirge, that musically reminds us of Urfaust, or Hypothermia, lilting, loping, the vocals still frayed and maniacal, but the music, so warm and melodic, with some cool breaks with clean guitar and drums. And then finally, the Cure cover, a pretty straight version of "Love Song", except for the vocals, which are insanely over the top, a shrieky demonic falsetto, totally at odds with the music, which is what makes it so ridiculous and so awesome!
Cool packaging, one of those 3" cd's embedded in a normal cd sized plastic disc, with the artwork printed over the whole thing!
Of all the weird black metal tapes we've gotten recently, this just may be our absolute favorite. So much so, that Andee was thinking about getting in touch with the band to see if they wanted to do a record for tUMULt.
The best way we can think of to describe Tomb Of... is maybe something like a black metal George Winston. Or Nortt making a record for Windham Hill. That's right. This is ambient funeral doom music, death, depression, misery, sorrow, but the instrumentation is mostly just piano and vocals! Seriously. And it still manages to sound bleak and miserable. Ominous and a little bit scary. Mournful minor key piano melodies beneath harsh hellish black metal vocals and rumbling guttural growls. Way in the distance soft swirls of faux strings or thick swells of sound, occasional guitar leads. It almost sounds like a mash up, the sound is at first so incongruous. But the more you listen, the more it sounds perfect. It makes all other singer songwriters, perched at their piano, seem totally pointless and inconsequential. This is so bleak and black and emotional. A super personal miserable missive from some dark lonely place.
Fucking awesome.
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
We went absolutely nuts for the last record by this UK via Greece ambient doom one man band, a baffling mix of Windham Hill like piano, and harsh hateful demonic growls. As if George Winston were possessed by the spirit of Satan. Simultaneously soothing and dreamy, ominous and so very black. The combination of piano and vocals was so simple, yet so intense and emotional, a bastardized take on the singer songwriter, a lonely soul expressing sadness and misery through music, but placing it in a black ambient context. We sold tons and it even compelled Andee to get in touch with the band to see about releasing a record on tUMULt.
So here is the follow up to ...The Rotting Break, and while in some ways it is sonically similar, it is different enough to be exciting and new. This time instead of piano, it's huge expanses of sweeping synths, delicate crystalline chimes, huge swells of rumbling low end, very epic and dramatic, with an almost loped hypnotic quality, it's like the super dramatic denouement of some horror movie, but looped into some slowly evolving mantra, the whole thing wreathed in dense swirls of reverb and echo, the vocals, sometimes a deathly growl, other times a strange alien grumble, way down in the mix, guitars wail and scream, but they too are buried beneath the thick tendrils of warm whirring chords and buzzy blown out ambience. It's almost like entering some crumbling old church in a dream, everything foggy and indistinct, the sky is visible through the roof, the windows are all broken, you can see hills and trees outside, lost and wandering in a dreamlike daze, slowly taking in all of the destruction, the mystery and the misery. It doesn't even have to be a church, just some old ruined building, as long as it has history, and is imbued with the life force of lost spirits and lonely souls. ...Those Dismal Moments is actually quite true to its title, if anything it just may be more sad, and miserable, more mournful and dismal than ...The Rotting Break. And we're not sure whether it's intentional or not, but there is so much distortion and tape hiss, so much fuzz and buzz, it almost sounds like a Tomb Of... record recorded by Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, all blown out and blurry, indistinct and shot through with warm streaks of dusty sunlight... So completely amazing!!
Not to be confused with the Canadian Tomhet, this Tomhet hails from Italy and features members of two of our favorite depressive black metal hordes, Leaden and Anwech. Leaden's awesomely titled Monotonous Foghorns of Molesting Department is still one of our all time favorite chunks of blackened stumbling doom-ed weirdo depressive blackness. And Leaden, well, their sound was even weirder, some sort of droney doomy black metal gloom pop insanity. Needless to say, ever since, we have been on the lookout for ANYTHING from those guys. So we discovered this cd-r, not at all new, in fact, it's from way back in 2001, it's their only demo, they're apparently still a band, but these three songs are all they've released. But fuck it, we'll take what we can get.
Not as weird or as gloomy or dementedly depressive as Leaden Or Anwech, this is feral and raw, more black and buzzy, furious and fast, totally relentless, the sound super saturated and in the red. The guitars are thick and distorted, crumbling and massive, the vocals harsh and drenched in reverb, the drums chaotic and furious, some seriously killer riffing, the songs occasionally slipping into something slightly slower and groovier, but even then the sound is corrosive and blistering, and eventually those grooves splinter as the song explodes back into more blown out buzzing black fury. Frenzied and intense, brutal and black, heavy as fuck and most definitely grim and raw. Well worth your six bucks...
Cold frosty, grim and furious black metal from Germany. Total Transylvanian Hunger worship, and we LOVE it. Taking the feral blackness and primitive old school buzz of Darkthrone and somehow making it even more blown out and black, more drenched in hiss, this is total vacuum cleaner whir, hailstorm on a tin roof ambience, the band blasting away behind thick sheets of dense gritty distortion, at low volume, it almost sounds like a TV between stations, but listen closer, and the abstract buzz coalesces into killer riffs, howling hellish vocals surface, the drums are buried WAY down and stay buried, a distant clatter beneath the suffocating maelstrom of blackened riffery, this one is not weird or fucked or damaged (although the extreme buzz might just set the record for the most buzz drenched disc we've heard), but it is as we said above, buzzing, cold, grim, cvlt, frosty, hateful, brutal, old school, TRUE black metal.
Two new slabs of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a new cd-r from Astral Womb, but this right here is record number two from Torture Gnosis, a duo whose first record seemed to slip right by us, for which we are now definitely kicking ourselves, cuz this stuff is seriously ruling.
Fans of the Frequency Thirteen label, the home of 'True Sheffield Black Psychedelia', and the various TSBP bands we've gushed over in the past: Black Vomit, Dukkha, Rape Rack, Ice Bound Majesty and Skultroll, should probably just stop right here and add this to your cart, but for everybody else, imagine a sort of twisted more lo-fi and sci-fi Expo 70, the same sort of psychedelic bliss out, long expanses of cosmic shimmer, but not rendered in the typical tropes of 'kosmische' music, instead, these are weirdo lo-fi metallers crafting a gorgeous fractured songsuite of intergalactic ambience. Their first record was a much noisier beast, with many of the tracks leaning way more toward a dizzying chaotic confluence of black metal, free jazz, and industrial clatter, but even then, the band would pepper these blasts of blacknoise and tangled metaljazz skree with hushed expanses of druggy drift and mesmerizing shimmer, and for II, it seems the band have jettisoned the blackness, ditched the rhythms, and instead opted for something much more tripped out and tranquil, soft focus swirls drifting weightless through clouds of effects, raga like drones layered into lush swells, all the tones stretched way out, meditative and dreamlike. But fear not, there's still plenty of darkness, with a handful of tracks playing out like soundtracks to some low budget VHS Alien knock-off, and we mean that in a good way, creepy ominous cinematic sprawls laced with weird sounds, is that some creature chewing human bones, or the footsteps of some mysterious figure trudging though some alien graveyard, or a mad scientist in a cave assembling some infernal machine, the synths rumble and thrum, occasionally blossoming into something that sounds more like the music from a seventies planetarium show. Killer stuff. And definitely recommended for all you into the current crop of psychedelic space synth and retro-futuristic Carpenter / Goblin worship who might be up for something a bit more fucked up.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!
Another mysterious blast of weirdo Aussie blackness, this one from the awesomely named duo Total Fvcking Darkness, who based on the name and the art and the record title, we would have assumed were gonna spit out some classic Scandinavia beholden buzzing blasting grimness like many of their aQ beloved countrymen, but instead this boy/girl duo kick out some seriously lo-fi blackened doom dirge drone-gaze jams, that sound a bit like blackened new wave via depressive black metal, minus the rasping demonic vokills, this stuff would sound right at home on Siltbreeze, stumbling skeletal drumming, beneath heaving swells of crumbling distortion, and mournful minor key melodies. And hell, on some of the tracks, the vocals are crooned anyway, and then TFD end up sounding like some sort of mysterious lost death rock combo, which is most definitely not a bad thing. Super low fidelity, raw and primitive, and its crooniest and most melodic, this definitely settles somewhere close to Finnish post black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus, that same sort of dour black-wave gloominess. But TFD are definitely a meaner and much grimmer proposition, their sound much more feral and fucked up, and while the band do occasionally get seriously black and blasting and buzzy, even then they still manage to sound less black metal and more sort of like some wildly chaotic blackened gloom punks, the songs all rife with samples too, they're a twisted proposition for sure, and tough to pin down, but we find ourselves digging this quite a bit, and listening to it pretty much nonstop, and we're guessing if you're like us and dig gloomy blackened noisiness, and buzzing lo-fi minimalism, and fucked up doom-gaze dirgery, then Total Fvcking Darkness could be your new favorite band.
Packaged with a full color J-card, and 4 inserts, with different images on one side (including a band photo), while all four can be combined to complete the lyric sheet on the other side.
The Belgian duo Trancelike Void have somehow managed to slip through the cracks here, though at least two of us are big fans, but somehow, we've never listed on of their records until now. Which is a shame, especially considering the current obsession with post black metal shoegazers like Alcest, Les Discrets, Lifelover and the like. TV are definitely black metal, but their sound is warm and lush and blissed out, more Sigur Ros or Godspeed than Darkthrone or Immortal.
Which brings us to Where The Trees Can Make It Rain, the latest from TV, which only furthers that sort of non black metal vibe, in that it's wholly acoustic, just acoustic guitars and drums, two long tracks, each, doleful and meditative, dreamy and tranquil, softly reverbed notes ring out and hang in the air, the overtones spinning off into the ether, the drums, simple and spare and skeletal, darkly moody and melancholic, subtly dynamic, building to softy emotional crescendos, only to slip back into a somnambulant drift. Clouds of strummed steel strings hover and slowly dissipate, leaving, stray notes to flutter and fade out.
The two songs here are quite minimal, almost like shadowy sketches of songs that could have been, which is precisely what makes them so appealing, they're hushed and abstract and shadowy, they drift and shimmer, flicker and fade, the sound is lush and organic, but also fleeting, a soft sound, that manages to evoke all sorts of emotional responses, a fleeting glimpse of some otherworld, where these hushed sounds are the soundtrack.
The second of two new tapes from Black Horizons this week, this one a split with another rad local tape label Merz Tapes, a kick ass cassette reissue of a long out of print 10" originally released on the now defunct Release The Bats label, a soul searingly menacing, ultra grim black industrial ritual from this Swedish outfit, all slow motion churning blackness, creeping bleak ambience, and demonic processed vox. This demonik invokation was inspired by the late '40s Babalon Working conducted by rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons (along with none other than L. Ron Hubbard!!), a series of magic ceremonies designed to conjure up the physical manifestation of the divine feminine archetype. Needless to say, this is some haunting, atmospheric, gorgeously pitch black stuff. Deep rumblings, ominous scrapings, all blurred into a heaving, roiling expanse of sonic malevolence, and all underpinning some intense vocalizations, a harrowing speaking in tongues, wreathed in effects, heavily processed, drifting from bestial gurgle to anguished almost black metal shriek, but smeared into something way less focused, and more impressionistic, the whole thing simultaneously tranced out and mesmerizing, chilling and downright disturbing.
Like all Black Horizons tapes, fantastically and elaborately packaged, this time the J-card, transformed into a deluxe mini-booklet, aping the package of the original 10" screen printed on thick cardstock and printed in metallic silver ink. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
Celtic Frost is dead, long live Triptykon! Yes, this is the debut disc from the new project of Celtic Frost and Hellhammer mainman Tom G. Warrior (aka Thomas Gabriel Fischer), a band he formed after the recent implosion of Celtic Frost. It's billed as an "official" continuation of the CF legacy by other means, and it's even got an H.R. Giger cover painting to prove it. Well, that's not all that proves it, just listen! This album contains several songs originally written for CF's aborted followup to their 2006 highly-regarded comeback album Monotheist, and is much in the tradition of that excellent album: an oppressively heavy juggernaut of black/doom metal mastery with avantgarde elements. Parts are speedier than Monotheist, though others trudge with riffage on the slower side... While a long way from the raw primitive dirge of Hellhammer so many years ago (the subject of a lavish new book by Tom G., also reviewed this list), Triptykon IS plenty dirgey, just not so "garagey", with high tech production. And all Celtic Frost and Hellhammer fans will be relieved to know that Tom's trademark death grunts made the transition to Triptykon intact, along with his more gothic and guttural, spoken/sung/chanted vocal style. Furthermore, just like when we saw him on Frost's final US tour, he's still wearing that knit hat pulled down to just over his raccoon-painted eyes...
The nine, mostly long songs on Eparistera Diamones (which means, uh, what's it mean?) are proof that even 28 years after Hellhammer's formation, and 26 after Celtic Frost's, Tom G. is still relevant to today's "extreme metal" scene, matching anyone out there for relentless density, negative expressivity, anti-religious artistry, and sheer heaviness. If we have to cite his previous band(s) as a reference point, that's no surprise. If CF didn't exist, or all we had ever heard was Triptykon, maybe we'd be comparing 'em to Neurosis or something. Heck, the female vox and classical grand piano that appear on track 7 "Myopic Empire", and the similarly moody experimentation that continues onto the entirely un-heavy, atmospheric track 8 "My Pain", is not only worthy of latter-day, trip-hopped Ulver, but in its Teutonic seriousness could be Tarwater or something, yet is followed by the pounding "You shall perish I shall live" metallic affirmation of "The Prolonging" (which also lives up to its title by being almost 20 minutes long!), ending the album leaving nobody wondering about Triptykon's place in the hierarchy of hell.
Reverently packaged with a thick cd booklet that includes not only more sexy/scifi perverted alien H.R. Giger art, but also portraits of each band member by another equally disturbed artist, as well as lyrics to each song AND personal liner notes from Tom G. about each track too. While in these the sometimes self-important, self-absorbed nature of the whole Celtic Frost thing is evident, so is Tom's artistic torment and sincerity (if you're read his autobiography, Are You Morbid?, which we recommend, you know what we mean). Hail!
Ough!!! Let's get that out of the way right off the bat. It only takes 30 seconds into the first track to get that trademark verbal expulsion, courtesy of metal's most uncompromising (and often misunderstood) artisan Tom G. Warrior. And that's worth the price of admission alone! But luckily there's plenty more bleak metal greatness to be found here as well. After already cementing himself a Metal Legend status with his early works in Hellhammer and Celtic Frost (not to mention 2006's superb CF reunion record Monotheist), Tommy G is back with the second full length of his most recent passion project Triptykon, and man oh man it does not disappoint. Sickening, slithering grooves are bent to their breaking point. Riffs seem to go in and out of tune even in the middle of a single note. The riffing is simple yet compelling - hypnotic and enveloping, like some musty lightless cocoon. Tom Warrior's vocals are as commanding as ever. He seems to be hurtling dogma from a pulpit with the passion of a mad zealot - his influence on vocalists like Satyricon's Satyr or Immortal's Abbath never more apparent. The drumming, freeform and almost jazzy at times, nicely offsets the vocals and the guitars, bringing something a bit more organic and human into the fold, but they still get very tribal and seriously heavy when they need to be. It's a rotting alien obelisk of an album. Even the brooding gothic balladry of "Boleskine House" with its ethereal female vocals, or "Aurorae" with its drifting reverbed guitar and lazy drum shuffle, seem to lurch and twist on a nauseous alien wave. And although occasionally we'll be assaulted with a thrashy downbeat pummel, Melana Chasmata is almost entirely a downtrodden affair - wallowing in the pits of mid-paced despair and dreadfully doomy inevitability. But for all its forlorn pallid squalor and slimy dissonance, it's still a bewilderingly catchy record - the chorus from opener "Tree Of Suffocating Souls" almost guaranteed to earworm its way into your psyche, whether you want it there or not! At over an hour, it's an exhausting, all encompassing experience, more akin to something like Swans' The Seer than your average metal record. And like that album, while it may not always be the easiest listen, it's more than worth the effort if you're willing to follow the dark corridors and shadowy labyrinthine passages of Melana Chasmata.
Tom G. Warrior is definitely BACK. First there was the successful (until they broke up, again) Celtic Frost reunion. And then, the debut from his new act, Triptykon, also almost universally praised by metal critics and CF fans alike. Now, not so long after that full-length, Tom & Co. bring us a new ep, Shatter, featuring 3 new songs plus two bonus live recordings, running close to about a half an hour total time. The new songs are in the vein of Eparistera Daimones: dark, doomy, disturbed, with a slight gothic/industrial vibe. The first two are both chunky, sluggish to mid-tempo offerings of Teutonic heaviosity, with the opening, title track offering up a tad more melody, while the lengthier "I Am The Twilight" is an epic, heads down grind, that kinda bridges the likes of Isis with black metal. Tom's vocals switch between angrily gargled vokills and a Type-O Negative croak, accompanied on "Shatter" by female vox as well, in a sort of Hammers Of Misfortune mode. Those two are followed by the other new song, "Crucifixus", a quietly haunting, ambient metal (mostly-) instrumental. Eerie and engaging enough, that if Triptykon were to do an entire extended album of just that sort of thing, we'd surely sell a bunch, it could maybe be released on Miasmah or Editions Mego!
Then there's the live tracks. Not just any live tracks, but Triptykon versions of two old Celtic Frost classics, "Circle Of The Tyrants" and "Dethroned Emperor", recorded at Holland's Roadburn festival earlier this year. Death grunt in full effect. And, there's a special guest Nocturno Culto of Darkthrone singing on one of 'em! Hey wait a sec - Allan was at Roadburn, caught part of Triptykon's set, but doesn't remember seeing that. Must have gone off to see another band on another stage. (Kicking self....)
Another mysterious black metal horde from the great white North, hailing from Quebec, Canada, Triskele, like many of their French Canadian black metal countrymen, have much in common with their actually French brethren, owing much to the Black Legions and the various groups and scenes that brief movement inspired.
Les Murmures is not new, it was actually released way back in 2003, and there are two more recent records, but as those two were SUPER limited and both seem to be out of print now, we figured that probably some of you, like us, managed to miss out on this, which is a shame, as this is some seriously blown out, buzz drenched, miserablist black metal.
Supposedly Les Murmures was recorded in a forest (Like Ulver's epochal Nattens Madrigal) and it definitely sounds like it could have been, after a brief ambient keyboard / chanted intro, the band spews forth a churning torrent of crumbling black distortion and blasting drums, almost totally obscured by the sheet of hiss and buzz that envelops the proceedings. Almost more than a forest, this sounds like it was recorded in a cave, or at the bottom of a well, or in some massive concrete bunker. The vocals are a harsh glass gargling howl, inexorably tangled up with the buzzing reverb drenched guitars, and those drums that sound more like a wall of cymbal sizzle punctuated by barely audible rhythmic pulses, but don't get us wrong, it sounds AMAZING, super lo-fi and totally raw, slipping from chaotic stumbling blast, to lurching doomic creep and back again. Some tracks are explosions of furious white noise buzz and relentless drum splatter, but when the band locks into a groove, and slows it down a bit, the depressive genius shines through, the vocals transforming into an hysterical shriek, all manner of melancholy and mournful melodies rising to the surface, before being obliterated by another frosty white blast of black fury.
Then there's the title track, a nearly 12 minute stretch of buzz and drum ambience, the drums pounding out some tribal rhythm, while all around it streaks of whir and buzz swirl and swoop, the drummer also managing to incorporate some unlikely percussion, there's even some primal wailing at one point, it's actually nearly impossible to imagine this track NOT being performed in the forest, lit by firelight, the mysterious haunting sounds holding the woods' wild beasts at bay.
WAY recommended. Essential for fans of outsider depressive blackness and grim blown out black forest buzz.
Some�of you folks who took advantage of the black metal cassette grab bag might have been lucky enough to nab Stiny, the 2006 full length from Czech blackdoomlords Trist, a gorgeously bleak slab of plodding doomy blackness. Falling somewhere between�Burzum, Nortt, Make A Change... Kill Yourself and Hypothermia.
Thankfully, Ars Magna, the label responsible for the mind blowing black miserablism of Animus'�Poems For The Aching, Swords For The Infuriated and the clinical black blast of Black Hole Generator, has swooped in to re-release that tape on compact disc, so now all you black hearted frozen souled metalheads who ditched the walkman years back, can still dig into this intense collection of bleak black misery.�
Four ultra long songs, the first clocking in at 16 minutes, the last at 11, Trist traffic in ultra repetitive, hypnotic looped riffage wreathed in frosty ambience, the sound is all guitar, the bass barely noticeable (if there is any bass at all), just grim sheets of keening riffs, sometimes soaring and epic, other times tangled and furious, dripping with reverb and not all that distorted, a sort of dirty clean sound, perfectly complimenting the buried vocals, an abstract screech that ends up sounding like another layer of buzzing sound, which serves in some ways to make the drums a focal point, surprisingly busy, going from simple plod to intense squalls of almost mathy drumming, bursts of double kick, some wild fills, but it all fits really well, the songs often veering from doomic trudge to almost groovy midtempo, and once in a while almost full on blastbeats.
And while the sound is plenty hateful and miserable and depressive, it still manages to be pretty at times, with little melodic bits that wouldn't be that out of place on an Alcest or Amesoeurs record... Way recommended. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands will find Stiny to be an essential addition to their library of sonic sorrow and musical melancholia.
The return of one of our favorite one man weirdo (post) black metal outfits, Lonesummer, who hails from Philly and who teams up here with another aQ fave, another one man band, Trist, from the Czech Republic (not to be confused with the German Trist!), both of whom offer their own twisted take on black metal.
Trist is up first with a single 20+ minute epic, a slow depressive blackened dirge, all fuzzed out and dreamily buzzy, rife with melancholy melody, barely any vocals, and when they do surface, they're buried WAY down in the mix, the drums simple and buried in the mix, the guitars thick, the distortion crumbling, it's the sort of black metal for people who might not like black metal, since it's usually the vocals that drive people away, but even more, the sound here is washed out and shoegazey, we hear Sonic Youth and Bailter Space and My Bloody Valentine way more than Immortal or Darkthrone. Darkly mesmerizing, and dreamily hypnotic, even at 20 minutes odds are you'll find yourself setting your player for repeat.
Lonesummer is up next, and we never know what to expect, after all our favorite Lonesummer jam found LS mixing some old African record with his black buzz, but here, we're presented with what we've come to dig about LS, a mix of indie jangle, folky strum, and heavily melodic black buzz, the vocals here shrieky and hysterical, definitely of the Bethlehem variety, cranking up the weirdo factor for sure, cuz otherwise the music is darkly melodic, with some strange off kilter rhythms and soaring guitars. The second track is even poppier, sounding almost like Dinosaur Jr. or something, SUPER melodic, fuzzy and dreamily distorted, the vocals just pushing it over the top, and back into black metal land. And that's pretty much how the rest of the tracks play out, a sort of black buzz infused, fuzz guitar, indie rock, albeit on the blacker and buzzier side, with those vocals wild and shrieked, culminating in kick ass closer "Mundane Dreams About Flash Floods", which is the perfect mix of clean guitar strum, churning blackened heaviness, melodic jangle, vokill shriek, and even some almost mathy noise rockiness. Hard to describe, but then the best stuff usually is.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest in the ongoing series of super limited 3" cd-r's, paying musical tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Past installments have come courtesy of UK avant black metaller Caina, Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist, black noise occultists LVTHN, Kentucky one man USBM outfit Sapthuran, blackened French metal combo Smohalla, legendary Italian dark metallers Frostmoon Eclipse, aQ faves, Texan black metal Lovecraft worshipper Brown Jenkins, Frostmoon Eclipse side project Stroszek, and now, Italy's The True Endless, whose split with Angmar was a big favorite around here (we still have a few copies, just ask), and whose sound we described as buzzing black Mayhem worship, and very little has changed, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums pound relentlessly, the songs are epic and majestic, blazing and frenzied, but often slowing down into churning chugging stretches of lumbering doom, before exploding back into another burst of frenetic Norwegian style classic blackness.
The True Endless here sound a bit like some weird hybrid of Khold and newer Funeral Mist, with midtempo almost-grooves, killer stuttery start stop arrangements, some super intense and epically anguished guttural vokills, woozy melodic guitar melodies, all wrapped in a gauzy blurred black buzz production, and surrounded on all sides by furious bouts of blown out blasting blackness. Awesome.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, we got 20, and can't get more, so grab one quick, cuz these always disappear right quick. Packaged in a slim jewel case, with a 4 panel booklet and a thick card insert with a photo of Lovecraft on one side and an essay on the other. And it's always worth mentioning, that TTE bassplayer Soulfucker, is still quite possibly the foxiest babe in black metal...
The Profound Lore label begins what we hope will be an extensive reissue campaign, focusing on some of the more obscure members of the Twilight Black Circle, a tightly knit USBM scene/collective based in Southern California, similar in sound/spirit to the legendary French Black Legions (Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, etc.), which counts bands like Dolorvotre, Volahn, Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Ashdautas, Arizmenda and others among its members.
Tukaaria, which is an Yaqui word meaning 'the night', is another one man band, whose sound, like many of his Twilight Black Circle brethren, is raw and repetitive, but unlike the lush layered chaos of Odz Manouk, whose reissue can be found elsewhere on this week's list, Tukaaria is definitely more on the primitive and old school side, churning murky riffage, and furious stumbling blasts, but this primitivism is tempered with a seriously experimental bent, that manifests in strange and subtle ways, introducing plenty of warped weirdness, and providing a bizarre production/arrangement that make the sound something altogether different than your run of the mill black metal.
Repetition is a big part of Tukaaria's sound, with the sound constantly locking into long stretches of looped black mesmer, whether it's blurred churning riffage, or slippery tangled melodies, it's all driven by urgent, on-the-verge-of-collapse drumming, the vocals a buried in the mix demonic rasp, those drums flat and weirdly produced, set amidst a landscape of echo drenched droned out riffage, muddy, and blurry, and hazy, and woozily washed out, the vibe almost psychedelic, definitely mesmerizing, total tranced out black buzz bliss, with the sound occasionally splintering into something more melodic, more textured and spaced out, but seemingly always returning to something heady and heavy and hypnotic, a murky and mesmerizing.
This cd reissue of Raw To The Rapine includes the 2011 full length of the same name, and tacks on the Tukaaria tracks from a 2011 split with Odz Manouk and his 2010 split with Volahn.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super swank oversized A5 book style digipak!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Third album from these Norwegian black metallers (who double as the Old Man's Child touring band). Maybe this'll be the one to move them up to the next level (of Evil 2000?).
Finally, now you can not only proclaim your love for Andee's record label and all the killer bands who have released records on tUMULt: Weakling, Leviathan, Iran, Hammers Of Misfortune, Harvey Milk, Bathtub Shitter, Souled American, but also your disdain for all other bands! Or maybe just ALL bands...
This two button set features one button with the ubiquitous tUMULt upside down cross logo, a logo so heavy it seems to have slid down the button, to settle near the bottom, the other featuring the ever popular "I hate your band" legend printed all by its lonesome. Perfect as a non verbal response to the age old query "So, what did you think of my band" or even "How did you like the cd I gave you". Just point, and problem solved! So c'mon, represent!!
Both buttons are extra big too, not tiny band button sized, but also not huge weird soccer mom button size either, just a little bit bigger than your typical 1" button (they're 1.5" just so you know), so they're small enough to decorate your favorite denim vest or trucker hat or tube top, but big enough to make the rest of your buttons cower in terror! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
This one is for all the folks who bought the Botanist 2cd on tUMULt, who have been hankering for another record of botany themed black metal. This one comes from the oddly monikered Turdus Merula (which is the taxonomic term for a kind of bird, the Common Blackbird), who are a Swedish one WOMAN black metal band, a rarity in black metal for sure, and what makes it even more rare is that this record is all about hallucinogenic and poisonous plants, which makes sense as the title, Herbarium, is of course, a collection of dried plants and flowers, and sonically, well, that's where the comparisons to Botanist end, although the opening track all old timey piano, wreathed in echo and washed out, is to these ears, quite evocative of some old botanist in his greenhouse, but that image soon fades about 2 minutes in when the guitars swoop in, a mournful downtuned buzz, depressive and dark, we were prepared for some plodding miserablism, when all of sudden, POW, the song explodes in a frenzy of super blown out in-the-red chug and churn and pound, the sound so heavy and loud and thick, the vocals a raspy wail buried beneath the furious sonic assault, the sound is pretty incredible, really powerful and thick, there's definitely a Burzum vibe, but TM's sound is so much more dense, and almost noisy, the riffing shifts occasionally to something more melancholy, but quickly returns to the black buzz crush.
The Burzum (and Xasthur to a degree) comparisons become a bit more noticeable as the record progresses, the second track is a pounding midtempo buzzscape, all minor key, with lush layered guitars, and moaning distant melodies, the guitar drenched in cool effects, that sound a little like the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" but only in the way they pulse, creating a weird rhythmic effect, and as the record progresses, in some weird way it gets prettier and less heavy, with the second to last track, an epic nearly 14 minute sprawl sounding more like a sort of blackened buzz pop, with a bit of jangle and melody mixed into the swirly buzz, and that's not to mention the cool cinematic chamber music interlude about halfway through. The track before too is a droned out bit of mostly solo guitar, that only picks up drums about 4 minutes in, and continues on as a sort of moody downer pop dirge until finally the vocals surface, and the track becomes much more blackened, although without ever completely ditching the moodiness that came before. And after a final brief bit of blast and buzz, the record finishes off with another stretch of creepy, cinematic echo drenched, darkly distorted piano, a perfect finish, to a killer chunk of atmospheric depressive blackness that we've been digging way more than we expected to...
Second record from this nature obsessed one woman black metal band from Sweden, whose last record, the flora focused Herbarium, paralleled another record we were freaking out about at the time, a double disc from one man, drums and dulcimer black metal weirdo Botanist (released on Andee's tUMULt label), the two 'groups' both with unique sounds, and both with a fixation on plantlife, nature, and man and womankind's perilous place in the the ever evolving ecosystem, one in which it seemed both groups were convinced plants would eventually, and perhaps rightfully take over.
While the first Turdus Merula record was most definitely beholden to Burzum and Xasthur and the like, it definitely infused a sound we already dug with all sorts of cool sonic weirdness, whether it was blown out drones, or weird almost poppy jangle, it all resulted in a record that managed to be both grim and black, but also plenty tripped out and damaged sounding. On Mentem Recipere, while some of the elements from the first record are still present, the vibe overall is much darker, more doomy and dismal, the atmospheres more bleak and harrowing, there's a dedication in the booklet, to a lost loved one, and it doesn't seem like it's reading to much into the sound here to realize it must have been influenced by that loss. Opening with a dark balladic creep, all reverbed piano and hushed ethereal vox, it's not until the second track that the metal kicks in, and even then it doesn't so much kick in as slowly ooze and drift, the guitars woozy and washed out, the melodies minor key, the vocals tortured, the buzz blurred into smears of black thrum, eventually the song does actually begin to blast and buzz, but even then, while the drums and vox intensify, the guitars seem to continue on all haunting and soft focus, which makes the sound less black, and more sort of grey, almost in a strange way, warm and soothing, tranced out and mesmeric. Which is pretty much how the whole record plays out. The sound shifting from doomic plod, to loping crush, to blasting blackness, but all the while, the sound, the mood, the vibe, remains haunting and melancholic, that's not to say that it's not heavy, or buzzy or black, it most definitely is. But it seems that the underlying emotion give the sound a mournful quality that makes it not only darkly personal, but also keeps it from sounding like every other black metal record out there, which it absolutely does not.
Fans of the first record will want this too, but anyone into gorgeous depressive buzz and heavy psychedelic blackness will definitely dig big time.
Now with Thurston.
Whoa. Just when we warmed ourselves to the idea that this would NEVER happen... it happened. The return of Twilight, described out of necessity as a "black metal supergroup", a bad description for something so awesome, but more or less to the point. The core lineup of Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), N. Imperial (Krieg), and Wrest (Leviathan/Lurker of Chalice) soldiered on without past contributors Hildolf (Draugar) and Malefic (Xasthur), and made themselves even more super with the additions, on this recording at least, of Sanford Parker (Minsk/Buried At Sea), Aaron Turner (Isis, etc.), Robert Lowe (Lichens, 90 Day Men, and now OM apparently), and Stavros Giannopoulos, who is new to us but whose presence is at the very least justified by the his awesome name. And yes, we realized how many bands we had to list in parentheses, but if anything, that should accommodate you to the awesome pedigree on display here, letting you know that there is no way in hell it could be anything except completely awesome.
Monument To Time End is not only great, but full of unexpected turns throughout. Unlike its self-titled predecessor, which was pretty much as black as black metal can get (opening song "Woe Is The Contagion" being one of the most terrifying things EVER), there is a surprising amount of diversity here. For example, would you have ever expected this horde to whip out an emo-ish breakdown with disco beats? Probably not, and the good news is that it doesn't suck at all, it just confounds in the best way imaginable and makes you love this band even more. And while the other album was created by swapping tapes through the mail with the fidelity being pretty much what you would expect from such, Monument is a work of well thought out, amazingly produced ART. This no doubt has much to do with Parker's presence and the use of his Volume Studios, not to mention the amount of time that has passed since the first album. Best of all, none of these upgrades in any way represent a more subdued or cuddly Twilight; on the contrary, this shit sounds even more dangerous, unstoppable, and out to kill. But enough rambling, let's talk songs here.
Doomy opener "The Cryptic Ascension" sounds a bit like a more evil Pelican, and Turner's signature is in full effect for the aforementioned emo-ish breakdown replete with disco beats. Imperial's vocals, however, definitely help bring things to another darkened realm. And while we really don't need to say this, we will: FUCK is Wrest an amazing drummer, and his bell heavy work on the ride cymbal helps carry this song to its amazing fadeout before everything is overtaken by Parker's spaced out synth buzz. The word "epic" is thrown around all the time in metal these days, to the point where it seems to have lost its meaning, but here Twilight completely own the term. Really no other word will do; this shit is EPIC. "Fall Behind Eternity" is up next, sounding a lot like Leviathan's creepy ambient moments with more spacey synth until the brutality kicks in with a dizzying blast. On "8,000 Years", things manage to be both soaring and pummeling, and the combined talents of these guys gives birth to some of the most adventurous and impressive metal we have heard in, well, forever. "The Catastrophe Exhibition" opens up with some ominous acoustic strumming and weird ambience with effected martial drums before venturing into unknown terrain where the band sounds a bit like an evil Don Cab being broadcast out of a portal to Hell. The album closes with "Negative Signal Omega", another awesome surprise that begins as a crumbling drone experiment and ends with a choraled vocal chant that is stunningly beautiful. Did you ever think we would use words like "stunningly beautiful" to describe this band when they first came out? Neither did we.
We say a lot of things about all the metal coming in these doors, but Twilight have set the bar pretty high with this album. Monument To Time End will without question end up on many year end best ofs, and with good reason. The greatest success here is the fact that everybody's dirty, blackened fingerprints are all over this project, but the end result is something totally of its own creation. Not many guys could pull this kind of thing off without seeming at least a little bit self-indulgent. Twilight have surprised us all by putting out one of the best metal records in recent memory. Until we fully understand what the fuck happened in Chicago, where the album was recorded, we're just going to be blasting it nonstop. While words may fail to convey just how amazing this is, we give it our highest seal of approval and have no doubt you too will agree...
What do you get when you mix Wrest from Leviathan, Malefic from Xasthur, Hildolf from Draugar, Imperial from Krieg and Azentrius from Nachtmystium? Odds are by the end of that sentence, most of you black metal fans don't even care, you just want it whatever it is! Well, what IT is, is a long in the works collaboration dubbed Twilight, featuring the above mentioned black metal masters, all conspiring to produce the sickest, grimmest black metal ever. And Twilight certainly is both grim and sick, but the sound manages to be much more, veering dramatically from the various contributors' usual sound and sounds. The first track is a massive and thick, buzzy and blurry tarpit of swirling BM, that is so unbelievably dense at times that the vocals and guitars and drums almost merge into a single massive blackened drone, before random parts shift ever so slightly and are allowed to drift to the forefront before slipping back into the murky blackness. Layer after layer of downtuned riffing, insane blast beats and hellishly surreal super processed howling vocals (sounding almost like all five of them are singing simultaneously). Quite possibly one of the most frightening black metal tracks EVER. We were totally thrown for a loop though with track two, which starts off with a bizarre jaunty black metal jig, accompanied by grunted troll-like vocals, before splintering into more familiar buzz and drone territory. After that it's exactly what you would expect from a BM dream team like this, lots of midtempo Burzumic throb and buzzy BM drone, plenty of growled, howled, gurgled and shrieked vocals, completely amazing riffs, veering from echoing spacious doom to razor sharp blackthrash to weirdly melodic almost jangle, catchy melodies that reveal themselves slowly with each listen, and of course there's Wrest's amazing and super creative drumming holding it all together. The sticker on the front pretty much says it all: "As an entity, they have delivered a mammoth, blackened metallic statement. Bleak, cold, darkness within and beyond the void."
A few lists back we were singing the black praises of the grim, necro, frosty, raw black metal of Transylvanian trio Tymah. Not only do they masterfully blend the raw buzz of outfits like Darkthrone, Mayhem and Ulver into their own bleak fuzzy blackened sound world, but they are the rare black metal beast, a female fronted BM horde, she a demonic hellion whose banshee shriek and hellish riffing are the driving force behind these brutal black warriors. Funeral Fog is Tymah's demo cd, limited to 666 copies, which finds the band's sound even more murky and raw, and it almost sounds even better than their record proper. Opening with a Mayhem cover (title track "Funeral Fog") that hews pretty dang close to the original, Tymah, continue to spiral gloriously Southward, a relentlessly buzzing blast, thick swaths of corrosive riffing and thrash attack drumming, with insanely howled vocals, sounding quite a bit like Weakling at times. It's that perfect buzzing blackness we can NEVER EVER seem to get enough of. The bonus track ups the production a bit, shrugs off a bit of the murk, and in the process gets even buzzier and harsher. So good.
The disc also includes a video for "Transylvanian Dreams", gorgeous shots of forests and fires and fjords, the corpse painted band members superimposed, either in the studio, carrying torches and swords, or just a murky mysterious visage, shrieking harshly over the glorious background buzz.
LIMITED TO 666 COPIES. Each disc hand numbered!
The return of Transylvanian black metal horde Tymah, who besides delivering a blackened howl equal parts Mayhem, Ulver and Darkthrone, also have the distinction of being one of the only black metal bands fronted by a woman.
Their last two records were furious blasts of buzzing Norwegian style blackness, and this one is no different. Many of the songs begin or end with slow, woozy, midtempo stretches of Burzumic buzz, but the bulk of the record is blasting old school blackness. Troo and grim. The drums a relentless blastbeat, beneath lightning fast riffs, and frontwoman Dim's hellish howl. The riffing isn't just fast and frantic, it's also epic and majestic, weaving triumphant melodies, and unleashing some killer hooks. Rare is the riff that sticks in your head like a pop song, but a handful of these songs have been lodged in our black skulls since we first got this in. Even one of the mailorder folks was just humming along to "In Devenit Satana" as these words were being written.
The sound is thick and intense, the guitars writhing and whirring and whipped up into an absolute blackthrash frenzy, the production full and HEAVY, none of that tinny lo-fi brittle buzz, this is the sort of blackness that crushes and pulverizes. Managing to sound true to the old masters, but to infuse their sound with energy and originality, much of it due to the axe mastery and throat shredding wail of the lady Dim. Folks are so impressed by that woman who sings for Arch Enemy, and rightfully so. She is pretty bad ass, but all she does is sing. Imagine her squaring off against Dim, bespiked and corpsepainted, axe in hand, atop a mountain of black amps, behind a wall of black fury, forest by her side. No contest.
Yet another fantastic grim black missive from quite possible our favorite band from Transylvania.
Ahhhhh, grim, necro, frosty, raw black metal. It's an acquired taste, but once you've tasted that black blood, there's no turning back. Whether it's Darkthrone's Transylvanian Hunger, Ulver's Nattens Madrigal, or any one of the legion of lesser known black hordes, it's a sound that soothes like only raw fuzzy, buzzy, Burzumic guitardrones and blurry battle blasts can. Hungarian black metal horde Tymah's take on this bleak, harsh and blackened buzz doesn't veer far from their influences, this is as grim and as true and as black as you could hope for, the majority of Transylvanian Dreams a dizzying blur, a near dronelike wash of low end rumble and insect swarm guitars, while beneath, a relentless lightning fast blast, and above, pure tortured yowls and demonic shrieks, which is where Tymah do truly distinguish themselves, as vocalist / guitarist Dim is a woman, a rarity for sure in black metal (and metal in general), not that you necessarily could tell from her harsh and harrowing, truly anguished sounding screech (very reminiscent of Weakling at times), but still there's something truly inspiring about a corpsepainted, be-spiked, axe slinging, sword swinging she-demon lurking wraithlike in that same black forest, holding her own and then some with the black metal boys club. And if for some reason those sorts of things don't do it for you, just close your eyes and forget we said anything, and you'll soon be basking in (unisex) black metal bliss.
Lupine Norwegian tricksters Ulver have been around for 10 years now, and mark the occasion with this invitational remix album, something very appropriate for a group whose whole career has been about morphing and reinventing themselves, remaining weirdo outsiders in whatever genre they visit. A decade ago they started out (and still have some residual allegiance to) the Nordic black metal genre, but today we're not sure what genre they claim, certainly it's not metal anymore. Glitchy electronica and downtempo beats took over from buzzing guitars and blast beats, but there's a definite connection between the two as this project proves.
Remixers include Ulver themselves (whose track goes way back to their Vargnatt demo tape from '93 for source material) and an international cast of experimentalists: Merzbow, Fennesz, Stars Of The Lid, Neotropic, Bogdan Raczynski, Third Eye Foundation, Information, Upland, Pita, V/Vm, Jazzkammer and a few others. An impressive and unusual line-up, certainly not entirely what we expected. Some do drones, some delve into beat-scapes, while others go for the raw black stuff, such as Merzbow (of course) whose ten-minute "Vow me Ibrzu" is one of the highlights, being a properly scary and noisy trawl through the evil riffage of Ulver's metallic past. Quite a few of the mixes are drawn from Ulver's more recent electronica efforts (Perdition City, the Silence eps, and the Lycantropen Themes soundtrack), but not all -- early stuff from Ulver's classic lycanthropian "Trilogie" of black metal albums (Bergtatt and Nattens Madrigal specifically) makes it on here as well. Several more mixes derive from Ulver's industrial version of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the double cd that was an early signpost of Ulver's willingness to violate genre norms and musical categorization. Like it says here, wolves evolve...
MPEG Download: FENNESZ "Only The Poor Have To Travel" [/audio/ulverfennesz.mp3]
MPEG Stream: FENNESZ "Only The Poor Have To Travel" [/audio/ulverfennesz.m3u]
MPEG Download: UPLAND "Lost In Moments Remix" [/audio/ulverupland.mp3]
Now available on vinyl for a limited time, this strange little moody ep From Norwegian horde Ulver, no black metal here though, this is later, the ambient electronic mysterious side of the band that created the grim blackbuzz classic Nattens Madrigal.
Red vinyl, printed inner sleeve. And of course super limited...
The title doesn't lie. This 2003 transmission from those Norwegian eccentrics Ulver consists of but four songs, a sampling of gothic glitch rock, the sad-synth-symphonic soundtrack to a ghost story left to you to imagine. The melodies and electronic beats give little clue to Ulver's origins as a vulpine black metal band, although the final track is in fact a rearrangement of a piece from their 1996 Kveldssanger opus, and makes an ominous, distortion-filled ending to the ep without altering the mood already set by the chamber strings and doleful male singing of the previous three tracks. With this ep, Ulver continue their ectoplasmic existence as a restless spirit that filters through many musical bodies, fully possessing none but leaving weird nightmares behind...
