More "True Black Nekronoise Metal" from our man Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk! Vargr is HNB's one-man black metal outfit in the grand tradition (from Burzum through Xasthur), bringing grim guitar buzz to the fore, although it often sounds as if his raspy vocals ("nokturnally recorded in Swedish Swedish forests"!) are accompanied by vacuum cleaners or industrial grinders instead. Grim and buzzing NEKRONOISE it is regardless. No surprise since Vargr's HNB aka Lord Nordvargr was known to us originally as an experimental drone artist, a member of such dark ambient industrial outfits as Folkstorm and MZ.412 and a collaborator with the likes of Merzbow. He made his first foray into "true" black metal realms with the Vargr disc Wehrmacht Satanas reviewed here just a couple weeks ago, and this new one, released by the ever-reliable 20 Buck Spin label, is in much the same vein of extremely-noisy-even-for-the-genre black metal, a noise album in black metal guise. Or should we say, in wolf's clothing? That's what Vargr means, Wolf. The logo was done by Jazkamer's "Count" Marhaug, and there are guest guitars on track (excuse me, "hymn") eight from HNB's old collaborator, Drakh.
It's hard to say if all the Christ-hating conceits of this album are sincere, or included simply as signifiers of the black metal concept being celebrated and/or subverted... but since when was that really an issue? It certainly seems serious. Howling distortion is a language spoken in both the genres of metal and noise, and with all the the eerie isolationist ambient elements -- disembodied voices, electronic drones, echoing bootsteps -- this certainly sounds like it could come from the most dark and demented depths of the black metal's caverns of chaos, wherein dwell the likes of Abruptum, Striborg, and Wold.
The Dark Lord Nordvargr has been threatening us with it for ages, but as the sky blackens, and the thunder rolls in, the air grows thick, the ground rumbles and cracks beneath our feet, it is finally here, the debut from Nordvargr's grim black kvlt alter ego Vargr. And just like it says in the liner notes "Vargr plays True Black Nekronoise Metal exclusively."
We sure don't need to tell you how much we love Black Nekronoise Metal (at least now that we know such a thing exists) and there really is no better way to describe this caustic chaotic brutality here, but we'll give it a try�
Wehrmacht Satanas begins with soft swirls of sound and cold winter winds, dark and drifting and very much like much of the stuff we love from Nordvargr, but then super harsh vocals surface from within the muted drone-y backdrop and are promptly swallowed up by a massive wall of some of the harshest, heaviest, crustiest, most distorted and buzz drenched noise metal chaos we have ever heard.
Riffs are more sort of big prickly downtuned smears, drums (are there actually drums in there?) blast like a hailstorm of hiss and buzz, the vocals hissing and howling, all crumbled into a serious ear shredding rrrooooaaaar�.
It actually sounds bit like a Darkthrone record on DHR, imagine Alec Empire, had he grown up on Venom And Bathory� Primitive, grim black buzz, but completely blown out and in the red. The riffs are looped and cyclical, totally hypnotic, definitely for fans of the ultra raw BM like Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Beherit, Ancestors� "The Crushing Weight Of Sin" is about as hooky as it gets, with an actual melody, and plenty of space, in the context of the rest of the record it's practically a pop song. But it's quickly followed up by "Svavelsjalar" a gorgeously thick washed out blast of blackness, everything so blurred and buzzy that it almost sounds like a black metal Fennesz, until about halfway through when the sound lurches suddenly and transforms into what sounds like a radio station between stations, bits of some super lo-fi live Beherit rehearsal coming through between the jagged shards of static and white noise.
And most of the record sort of straddles that line between blasting black metal and buzzing ambience, much of this disc actually, reminds us of weirdo Canadian black metallers Wold, a twisted convoluted blurred black metal warped and wrapped in layer after layer of distortion, but where Wold was all smeared and soft focus, Vargr sharpens the edges, everything black and glinting, sharp and harsh�
Later in the record, "Total Cryptic Darkness" is everything the title would lead you to believe. Gorgeously thick and viscous black bottomless sonic pit, a near static sea of low end whir and deeeeeeeeeeeeep dark drones. A bunch of the tracks are super intense, almost techno-like looped shards of hissy crunch, almost like black gabber, while others bliss out big time, like a blackened Total, with epic ur-drones, huge swaths of metallic reverberations and warm washed out skree.
The disc finishes off with a Burzum cover, and weirdly enough it's an ambient number, one that Nordvargr, deftly tweaks into something slightly grittier and more bleak, a gorgeous slab of groaning ambient drift� very tidal and hypnotic, the perfect aural balm after the skin flaying sonic assault you've just endured�
Noisy, crushing, harsh, grim, nekro, black, brutal and fucked up. Hail the True Black Nekronoise Metal!!!
We know not what "Vasaeleth" means, it sounds sinister, vaguely itchy, certainly evil and obscure enough to be a good name for this new band on Profound Lore (an adventurous metal label that manages to be both deeply cult, and fairly diverse). Although metal fans revel in the distinctions between subgenres impervious to outsiders, Vasaeleth is one of those bands that seems to cross over betwixt death and doom and black metal. If we had to choose, we'd catagorize 'em as death metal, yeah, definitely, but creepy old occultic death metal, that shares a lot of the raw Satanic spirit of the most cvlt-ish black metal. The likes of Portal and Impetuous Ritual, also with recently raved about cds on Profound Lore, come to mind (and also the disc of Cremation demos listed last time) as being the the sort of primal death that appeals to the black metal aesthetic too. Vasaeleth is further evidence that it's coming back (from the grave), that filthy festering old school death metal, the sort that possesses a sludgey doomic vibe as well, harking back to early Obituary, Autopsy, Incantation and that sort of thing.
Shrouded in excellent, arcane cover art (by the same artist, Antichrist Kramer, who did covers for black metal band Inquisition's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer and Nefarious Dismal Orations albums) this duo's debut oozes with ancient atmosphere, each song barely emerging from the thick soupy murk, the entire album to be regarded as one crushing ritual from the bowels of hell. Oh, how we love the morbid miasmic tones of the guitar and bass, their congealed riffs shuddering over drumming that sounds like the tramping boots of the legions below! The vokills are continuous, vomitous heavings of guttural grimnity, as if another abstract instrument adding to the dirge-droneiness of this metal of death, which is also embellished by eerie synth as well. Heavy, hypnotic, haunted, so ugly that it becomes beautiful.
Recently, we've been stocking some killer old school death metal on the Razorback label, bands like Skeletal Spectre and Decrepitaph, and this fits with those, though there's a "fun factor" to those Razorback acts that Vasaeleth are just too grim to share, their brand of blackened death being so much more seemingly serious, spiritual, and dare we say it, artistic. And that's awesome as well. Wretchedly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ved Buens Ende is the extremely weird Scandinavian Black Metal band that has more in common sonically with Slint than Bathory. This disc (packaged in a beautiful black box) features demo and rare tracks from prior to their "Written In Waters" masterpiece. Avant garde melancholy post-Black Metal? Recommended.
Praise Odin! At long last, a reissue of the sole full-length Ved Buens Ende album, originally released in 1995 on the now defunct cult label Misanthropy. A black metal super session of sorts, this band featured past, present, and future members of Satyricon, Dodheimsgard, Aura Noir, Cadaver Inc. and Arcturus. But Ved Buens Ende ('At The End of the Rainbow' in English) hardly sounded like ANY of those black metal stalwarts -- as avant garde as any of them ever got, Ved Buens Ende went way beyond. Yes it was heavy and dark and the vocals had a unique Viking/monk chant strangeness that isn't typical of black metal but would make even less sense coming from another genre of music... but rather than black metal, Ved Buens Ende could just as easily be categorized as a post-rock or math-rock band. A really amazing math-rock band, with Don Caballero's "2" being the closest comparison! But totally sad and metallic and strange and forlorn and beautiful. Utter weird progressive instrumental genius. And the vocals, once you get used to them (and they do add to the bizarre vibe already created by the unsettling, atmospheric music) are used to deliver some mysterious, poetic lyrics as well. Overall, this is not like anything else!
It's too bad they never released another record (except for a disc of demos) but it's also unlikely that they could have surpassed this masterpiece anyway. Over the past eight years, this record has really proven itself to be a lasting classic, growing in stature, foreshadowing (but still exceeding) much of the 'post-black metal' innovations to come -- such as the most out-there psychedelic parts of recent Enslaved albums, for instance, or Opeth's epic dynamism. It's been out of print for a long time, and hopefully now will reach a whole new audience with this remixed, remastered re-release, which features brand new cover art/graphic design that's not bad at all, kind of a fancier, Ralph Steadman ink-splatter take on the original artwork. As one of our favorite so-called black metal albums EVER, this gets the highest recommendation, though the vocal style may be a test that hopefully you will pass.
MPEG Download: "I Sang For The Swans" [/audio/vedbuensendeIsang.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "I Sang For The Swans" [/audio/vedbuensendeIsang.m3u]
As much as we dug the most recent record from Prurient, a seriously caustic slab of NOISE (and we're VERY picky about our noise) we're beginning to think Prurient mainman Dominick Fernow's true calling is playing in an actual band. It doesn't really matter what kind, as long as it's noisy and distorted and heavy and fucking LOUD. We've been freaking out about Fernow's black metal duo Ash Pool, a buzzing black beast as blown out as any noise combo, but here we have another of Fernow's bands, this one more rock than black metal, at least as far as we can tell. Actually for all we know the Vegas Martyrs could be black metal too, it's sort of hard to tell under all that noise and static and buzz and hiss.
There's lots of melody peeking out through the chaos which leads us to believe that somewhere in there lurks a rock band.
Like Ash Pool, Bone Awl, and Ancestors, it's all about the recording and the sound around the songs, which here means a swirling dense cloud of harsh buzz and whir, crumbling and grinding and hissing. But underneath are looped hypnotic melodies, howled vocals, pounding drums, all but completely obscured by that layer of blown out noise. It's almost like some rock band recorded by Merzbow and then mixed by Tim Hecker if that makes any sense. Or imagine the My Bloody Valentine model applied to noise rock instead of indie rock, less dreamy and blissy and more harsh and chaotic. Heavy, brutal, cacophonous, grating, in the red, overblown, ear splitting and dissonant, but at the same time, weirdly and impossibly pretty.
Packaged in a thick black and white sleeve, and pressed on super thick clear green vinyl. Limited to 750 copies, only 250 on green!
Not so sure how to peg the title of this album, which is actually three horizontal lines that some have transcribed on the internet as a squiggly version of a Greek epsilon. Oh, what funny characters can be found in the nether regions of the various fonts of the world! Typographical challenges aside, this album marks the debut album for the Swiss gothgaze outfit Veil Of Light. All of the gloomy references to Joy Division, Lycia, Death In June, and Swans are present for Veil Of Light in these skeletal songs of militant march and funereal mood. The album's languid melodies are crafted almost entirely through reverb drenched synths which cling to the persistent snap of a drum machine that is pushed way forward in the mix. Vocals, guitars, and bass are all intermittently dropped within these songs though these instruments are blurred not so much by effect but in how soft these are in comparison to the drum machine's danse macabre. For all of the '80s goth ghosts haunting these songs, Veil Of Light's slippery sheen of black clad digitalia and somber electronics slip between the current crop of electro-mopists (e.g. Tropic Of Cancer, Lust For Youth, and most everything on Posh Isolation) and the whole witch house thing whose sparkle peaked a couple years back. It looks that this is already sold out at the source, we should note.
First release from this Midwest duo (now trio), who traffic in a murky buzzing old school black metal, not all that far removed from classic Darkthrone,�old Ulver or early Emperor, that immediately recognizable Norwegian sound, but with a bit of their own sound mixed in, a definite classic metal vibe in the riffs. Not sure if it's Maiden or Priest, but lots of the riffs don't sound like that same old generic black buzz, they sound classic, like they were plucked straight from the eighties, which is actually a very good thing. Those mid paced riffs slither and grind, occasionally building into furious squalls of buzzing blackness, but no straight up blasts, the music of Velnias�stays pretty midtempo, except on occasion when it slips into slowed down lurching doom, or when the band stretches out into Opeth-y stretches of folky flutter. The production is decidedly lo-fi, but instead of hindering, it only helps to add a grimy kultish sheen to the already grim buzz, making�Pacing The Cyclic Nether sound like it could actually be some lost slab of nineties Norwegian blackness. Cool stuff.
It's weird to realize that RuneEater is only the second full length record in 5 years from this black metal outfit, but not too surprising considering how much time these guys spend on tour. And all that touring has definitely paid off, as record number demonstrates a huge progression from 2008's Sovereign Nocturnal, a record we dug, but one that was more obvious with its influences, but even then demonstrating the haunting folkiness and weird experimental streak that would finally come to the fore on RuneEater. The nearly ten minute opening track here pretty much lays it all out, a weird, drum heavy tribal intro, ritualistic and mysterious, bleating horns, chantlike vocals, throat singing, a bit of spoken word, which all disappears in a cloud of feedback, before the song proper kicks in. Dirgey and murky and super distorted, midtempo, but double kicks pounding away beneath the thick fuzzed out guitars, the whole thing reminding us of obscure Sub Pop outfit Rein Sanction, due in no small part to the guitar tone, but then the vokills come in, ands the song unfurls, revealing a definitely folk underpinning, before exploding into a weird stretch of blasting, that doesn't blast ferociously as much as texturally, if that makes any sense. The sound is truly unique, where before it was post rock infused BM, has now become some weird black metal / blackened doom folk / experimental hybrid that definitely seems like that the band were shooting for all along. There's a definite prog vibe going on too, which is inevitable in long songs with lots of twists and turns, but it suits them for sure, eventually the song winding down into a weird folk flecked doom, all slithery spidery guitar melodies, howled vox, and droned out melodies. It's a gorgeous part, and ends way too soon.
"Reverend Flames Of Antiquity" spends its first three minutes weaving a dark brooding sort of psychedelia, spare and abstract, lush chords drifting through shimmering fields of warm thrum and cymbal shimmer, before launching into a doomy creep, and then a weird tangled black prog churn, a dense chaotic crush, the sound slipping easily between dreamy drift and crashing chaos, and even drifting into some soaring epic slow build heaviness (a la Sovereign Nocturnal), finishing off with a seriously heavy Neurosis style chug heavy outro.
"Reclamation Of Valour" finds the band dabbling in some Barn Owl style twang flecked psychedelic folkiness, before again unleashing their twisted progged out black doom, the band slipping into some cool stripped down, droned out stretches, and adding some very medieval sounding folk melodies, before finally getting down to some seriously black buzz, only to shed the black and the buzz, for a sprawling doom folk outro. Finally, "Iconoclast" finishes things off, easily the most overtly black metal of the bunch, with some of the fiercest buzzing and blasting, but here too, the band mix in lots of melody, more of that medieval sound, the second half transforming the black buzz into a super dynamic black prog folk doom finale.
The packaging is insanely over the top. The cd comes in a gorgeous black on black hardcover book style jacket, complete with fancy gold on black printed inner booklet, and the lp, comes in a similarly book-like jacket, and the gatefold features what has to be one of THEE best band photos ever. Assuming you can even find the band in the photo!
NOW ON VINYL!!
The first proper full length from this Midwestern black metal trio. We missed seeing them live unfortunately when they were here recently, but they did drop off their new record, and it's pretty great.�
Just like the demo we listed way back, these guys traffic in a classic black metal sound, old Emperor, old Ulver, Darkthrone, they're obviously channeling the Norwegian elite, but their take on it is definitely their own. Where before there seemed to be a lot of eighties style riffing mixed in, here the vibe seems to be much doomier, and there's still a definite Opeth vibe with all the more tranquil clean guitar stretches. But they also do some weird, distinctly not very black metal shit. One prime example is the end of the second track (all the songs are 12+ minutes), after a majestic / epic coda, the song devolves into a gloriously abstract drum heavy jam, the guitar ringing out, a single chord, static and droney and hypnotic, while the drums get all chaotic. We sort of wished that it would on like that for another 5 or 6 minutes. Maybe live. And the band definitely get into a sort of trancey thing, which is not that uncommon for black metal, but they manage to make it sound all murky and mysterious instead of just buzzy.
But beyond the various weird bits here and there, those almost-folky interludes, and various textural experiments, the band offer up a pretty solid take on classic raw old school black metal, lacing it heavily with doom, and, perhaps inadvertently, some serious math/post rock, the arrangements, and the riffs betray some Slint or something similar in their past, or it could just be that Slint's guitarists were closet metalheads. Either way, it keeps their sound unique, and has definitely helped keep this record on constant repeat around here.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Originally released as a super limited tour only ep, sold on their most recent US tour, we convinced the band to make another batch, exclusively for aQ, which they agreed to do, so we have the final copies of this, a dozen to be exact, not sure if we're able to get more, but probably safe to assume this could be the last we see of these. I Have Seen The Substance Of Your Earth... It Is Gray And Dying is a single epic 22 minute track, that displays all that we dig about this Midwestern horde, slow build doomy ambience, post rockish atmospheres, clean guitars spread out over an expanse of abstract shimmer, the drums massive, a haunting deathmarch plod for nearly 3 minutes before the song proper begins to coalesce, in a squall of wild drumming and swirling blackened guitars, the song transformed into a slightly more propuslive dirge, the vibe haunting and melancholy, the sound eventually building to a churning midtempo crush, all howled vox, murky blown out riffage, the song never quite exploding into full on blast, but then blasting is not what these guys are about, it's more about mood and atmosphere, tension and release, with the brooding slow builds playing out like a black metal Godspeed, and the heavy parts more Neurosis-y really than strictly black metal, but these guys have always drifted more in that direction anyway. This track is epic, slipping constantly from moody churn, to dreamy drift and back again, injecting plenty of melody to go with the mood, with the last eight minutes or so left for some seriously gorgeous abstract drift, all layered feedback, and slowly decaying buzz, mysterious tones and streaks of feedback, a serious slab of experimental guitarscapery finishing off with a brief folky acoustic guitar coda.
CRAZY LIMITED! As in we only have 12 copies! Housed in wax sealed black sleeves.
It takes a lot to be "controversial" these days, even if you are a black metal band, and it's unlikely at this point that we would have to be the ones to tell you about all the craziness that has shrouded Velvet Cacoon since God knows when, so we're just not going to bother. What we can tell you is this: Atropine actually does exist, we got it, and while it may not be exactly what anyone was prepared for, it is no doubt an intense piece of work, one that cannot be listened to as mere background noise and instead requires lots of focus and patience for the full, um, "experience". The biggest surprise here is the absolute, 100 percent absence of any actual metal, with Velvet Cacoon's droning ambient side taking over for a colossal two hour suite of dissociative, druggy as fuck BLISS. Atropine's subtleties are also its greatest qualities (though to be fair, they are its only qualities), because this is only going to make even the slightest amount of sense if you stick around for the whole trip, and there's no way that will happen if you're blasting it in your car on the way to work. You're probably gonna want to turn off the lights, break out some sort of mind altering substance, close your eyes, let the tones take over, and contemplate your complete nothingness in the universe. It's difficult to imagine what exactly is influencing Velvet Cacoon (other than a whole lot of drugs), because this stuff is clearly coming from somewhere else, and whatever bullshit may or may not be true, at the end of the day it only really makes sense to judge them by their music, which is powerful and evocative in ways so many other bands will never achieve. Then you realize that the mysteries surrounding the duo are pretty much legitimized by the strangeness of their music alone.
"To find out how, insert." With these words printed on disc 1, we did just that, and we were off. Opener "Candlesmoke" kicks off the long journey, beginning with a low rumbling and semi-rhythmic white noise followed by a slowly creeping spectral ambience. Things are calm, but dark, and possibly a bit sinister. Your mind conjures thoughts perfectly captured in Velvet Cacoon's artwork: hazy images of lonely trees in unfathomable wildernesses, bits of nature peering out of grey expanses. It's hard to discern what instruments are actually making the noise, but none of that really matters, because before long it's like your floating in a mountain lake looking up at the stars. The piece is murky and majestic, and just as you begin to detect a pattern resembling an actual "song", things simply fade away into eternity. With "Funeral Noir," we were expecting Velvet Cacoon to rip our faces off like in the good old days, but nope. The song begins to bloom out of the cavernous ambience with static-y background crackles and super slow fuzzed out heaviness way off in the distance. The emphasis, however, is on the blankets of atmosphere, and though the song is pretty much formless, it manages to sound incredibly sad and evoke feelings of loneliness and separation from the world. "Graveside Sonnet," writhes with movement, but definitely not within the traditional methods of songcraft. Rather than trying to control the music and color it with any traces of human personality, the band instead appears to accept the will of its subconscious and let the song simply go where it will. The first disc closes with "Dreaming In A Hemlock Patch," which begins the first moments of its 37 minute (damn!) existence with almost total silence. Then, true to its title, you fall into a trance and journey deep into thought, as stuttering sounds, uh, stutter about, moving you forward and sending you way off into the atmosphere. A barely noticeable pulsing rhythm comes in around the six minute mark, but you are now totally lost and removed from time and location. And guess what? No one else exists. Crackling sounds continue, and a foggy drone takes over everything in its path. The song is a bit reminiscent of the minimalism of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, but even more minimal. Even so, it's scope is massive and sleep inducing, and if for some reason you wanted to stop a 37 minute track, say, 20 minutes in, you can't, you can only accept it. The noises change shape and shift to other directions, and an undefinable but very psychedelic sound takes over, moving like a heartbeat before slipping away. Pretty cosmic stuff. And, holy fuck, that's only disc 1!
The second disc begins with "Nightvines," which perfectly exhibits Velvet Cacoon's ability to establish a sound that would best be described as "nautical." With a vaguely bell like drone and a sound that seems to emerge out of a thick mist, you get the feeling of drifting evenly along in unknown waters. A definite coldness prevails, and the sound has a quality that is almost like breathing. "Nocturnal Carriage" is the sound of being lost, its catatonic drones sounding like a ghostly choir buried deep under layers of fog. It brings to mind Popul Vuh's "Aguirre," only stripped of all its melodic definition with just the ambience intact. It's like that last moment of consciousness before sleep sets in, with that last moment being prolonged for 27 minutes, like walking around in total blackness, and it fades out like a dream that will continue forever. The shortest track, "Earth And Dark Petals," makes you think of forces from within the earth trying to make their way out of the ground and into the world, struggling to define themselves within the overwhelming hugeness of nature, only briefly before the final track, "Autumn Burial Victoria," which seeks to sustain the drones all the way to infinity. At around the 10:30 mark, there is a muted percussive crash, just once, but that's really the only other thing that manages to seep out. The album concludes very softly with sounds that are almost not there. When it ends, maybe you'll wake up, or maybe you won't.
Whew. Listening to Atropine, as in "really" listening to it, takes some dedication, but the results are rewarding enough for anyone up to the task. There will most likely be a serious bitchfest in the works from those expecting the blown out shoegazing fury Velvet Cacoon built their name on. But crying over something like that overlooks just how essential the more subdued sounds of Velvet Cacoon have been since the beginning, and in the event that it's not a total hoax, the band should be delivering an actual "metal" album in the near future. Until then, zone out and give yourself up to the unexplored regions of your mind with Atropine.
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly.
A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated.
Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!)
So here we are a few years down the line, the band is working on a new record, sans dieselharp of course, and while we wait, we have this massive double disc document of the band's early years, the music that started it all.
The first disc begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz.
The second disc is three loooooong tracks, epic black ambience, gorgeous and darkly mysterious. The first a lazy looped low end gurgle, very Marclay or Strotter, an hypnotic muted underwater Oval sort of drift. The second is a cavernous drone, rife with distant buzz and some weird Trollmann like melodies. the final track is a slow burning expanse of soft focus shimmer, warbling and warm, soft and serene, and it wouldn't be VC if they didn't subtly interject some strange guttural demonic vocalizations right near the end...
Our only complaint is the ultra ghetto packaging. A single square of paper in lieu of a booklet, the tray card beneath the hinged double disc tray is blank, the artwork all over is pixelated and blurry, but knowing the band it could be part of the concept, either way, for a record as massive and weird and fucking amazing, the packaging is a bit of a let down. Regardless, once these discs are in your stereo, you'll be in a buzz drenched nacoticized black haze so deep and deadly, shoddy packaging will be the least of your concerns...
Alright, this is a confusing one, but we figured that Velvet Cacoon obsessives, and we know there are lots out there (ourselves included), would definitely be into this. A reissue of the very first Velvet Cacoon record, which was already reissued on Full Moon Productions, with a bonus disc, featuring 70 minutes of extra material, all ambient. BUT, they left two tracks off the record proper. Not sure why, but there you go. So Khrysanthoney has reissued Dextronaut, sans the 'superfluous' ambient bonus disc, but with the original record restored to its proper 10 song length. In addition to that, the new version of Dextronaut is UNmastered, so while it sounds quite similar, it's definitely a bit more raw and brittle, which actually suits VC quite a bit. So yeah, if you missed this the first time around, you NEED this, and if you already have it, and LOVE it, and need those extra tracks, well, hell, $9 for 9 minutes of extra music, not a bad deal really, and the extra songs are pretty kick ass, "Starlit Seas Of Angel Blood" has some of the sickest vokills ever, over frantic buzz and wild drumming, loads of reverb and all sorts of bizarre sounds (most of them vocal we think), while "When The Purest Flesh Is Alive", is super distorted and heavy on the effects, sounding like the bands blasting through a field of glitchy electronics, the sound weirdly melodic, and those vocals, still sick and inhuman and alien, everything dripping with buzz and fuzz. Still no idea why they left them off, but here's your chance to get the 'complete' Dextronaut. But be quick, it's limited to just 150 COPIES!!! Here's what we said about the Full Moon version, which all still pretty much applies, just everything is a tad more brittle and buzzy, and there are those two extra tracks (much of this is background on VC, since it was their first record and everything)...
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly. _A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated. Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!).
The record begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz. How many times can we use 'buzz' and 'fuzz' in a single review. LOTS!
This went out of print way too fast, not long after we listed it and has finally been re-pressed. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
We were sold on this band before we even heard 'em (thanks AQ pal Drucifer for the recommendation). First off, they're called Velvet Cacoon. That's right C A C O O N. WTF? Not sure if it's just a typo that was never corrected, to maybe save face, or if it means something entirely different that we couldn't possibly understand... Second, they're a super reclusive eco-fascist (huh?) black metal horde from Oregon. Yep, OREGON. And finally they invented, designed and built an instrument they call a dieselharp, a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. Wow. So before we even threw this on, we were already pretty into it. And thankfully, the music is every bit as cool and weird and grim and haunting as we could've hoped. Massive slabs of blackened fuzz, and we mean FUZZ. Imagine the buzziest fuzziest Burzum riff, smeared and stretched into a mesmerizing black metal blur. The droning dieselharp is the key, turning what could otherwise be some straight up grim black metal, into a blown out, buzzing black drone. The drums and vocals are barely even there, satisfied to lurk under an oppressive cloak of suffocating heaviness and the seemingly endless, relentlessly hypnotic crush. Fans of the buzzy drone-y end of the black metal spectrum will be blown away. And drone freaks will luxuriate in the absolutely gorgeous final twenty minute track, a slow building lowercase shimmer, worthy of Chalk, Coleclough, Hafler Trio and the like.
We fell in love with this band before we even heard 'em! And the more we find out about this mysterious outfit the more we can't get enough! A while back an aQ customer suggested we check out this bizarre black metal band from Portland called Velvet Cacoon. Supposedly they were super reclusive eco-fascists who built their own instruments, their main home-built instrument was the diesel harp, a huge diesel powered guitar contraption that spit out impossibly fuzzy and Burzumic drones, and when we finally heard the record, we could totally tell! No guitar could sound that heavy and fuzzy! It was that fucking diesel harp! Holy shit. That record (which we still have in stock) was a dense drone-like slab of buzzing black metal like we had naver heard, heavy enough for metal heads but deep, dark and droney enough for folks into stuff like Troum and Lustmord to get into.
Well, a year or so later, another aQ customer pointed us toward a website where they had posted an interview with the band, and guess what? It was all a hoax. Well, not the music obviously, but they were not in fact eco-fascists, there was no diesel harp, they were just a couple dudes from Portland who loved black metal but were intent on pissing off the black metal community. In the interview the band went on to talk about how they had short hair, and listened to Nina Simone, and that one or both of them played music in a local wine bar. Pretty hilarious actually. And then if you went to the Velvet Cacoon website, there was a solitary link, to an Air mp3. Yep, the French electronic group Air. What the fuck? But c'mon, it just made us dig their band even more! They now have a much less mysterious website and Velvet Cacoon now apparently consists of just Josh "and his dreampop muse Angela, two souls mesmerized by chemicals and the after-hours". Woah.
So no more mysterious politics, no more homemade instruments, but the band are indeed working on a second album, but in the meantime, their first two demos have been packed up and released as a single cd. And WOW! It's just as amazing as the first one. The oldest demo, Music For Falling Bulidings, shows the band at the beginning, when they were super raw, super aggressive, total Burzum / Darkthrone worship, fierce and fuzzed out and furious, but even back then, they employed plenty of experimentalism, strange ambient interludes, studio fuckery, found sounds. The later demo, Red Steeples, finds the band much closer to where they would end up with Genevieve. A buzzing droney black metal mixed with suffocating dark ambience. Monstrous drones, rumbling minimalism, fuzzed out soundscapes, above, below, beneath and amidst thick swaths of ultra grim black metal. Considering how much we love Genevieve it's really saying something when we say that this whole disc is AS good as, if not even better, due in no small part to the fact that it's WAY more damaged and freaked out sounding, and you know how much we love that!
Two weeks ago when we made Velvet Cacoon's stellar Atropine one of our Records Of The Week, we mentioned the possibility of yet ANOTHER VC release in the not too distant future. Well here it is, way sooner than we had initially predicted.
While Atropine may have baffled some fans of this already baffling band with its total ambience and a complete absence of the blown out black metal they made their name on, it also managed to perfectly convey the drugged out isolation and dissociative bliss that has always been central to their music. Atropine is an intense piece of work, very rewarding when listened to with patience, BUT... we'd be lying if we said we didn't miss the metal. Thankfully, P aa opal poere pr.33 (good grief, what a title!) arrives right on the heels of Atropine, and more than anything, it seems to be the perfect companion piece to that previous album, delivering almost 40 minutes of murky, blissful as fuck METAL, heavy on the nautical themes that have commonly been part of Velvet Cacoon's M.O. Yet even as we write the word "METAL," we are faced with the already obvious realization that Velvet Cacoon pretty much defies any simple classification. Call it shoegaze, ambient, metal, hell, even pop... their sound is unique, and even though scores of imitators have popped up in recent years, the second we put this on we knew who we were listening to (unless they completely stole these recordings like some of their other albums supposedly...) While it does share some certain sonic similarities to the band's previous work, it would be lazy to write off P aa opal poere pr.33 as merely the successor to the band's now classic Genevieve, and here Velvet Cacoon seem to have arrived at the most realized encapsulation of their sound to date. So yes, it's REALLY fucking good. And thus also a Record Of The Week!
According to the notes, vocals here are handled by one Cain of a band called Snowfall. His style falls into a more traditional style of black metal shrieking, acting as the perfect foil to Velvet Cacoon's melodic fuzzed out dirges, but we are also fairly certain that VC mainman SGL (or "Josh" if you want to demystify things) is handling a lot of the vocal duties here. What the fuck? Whatever. The album opens with "2.", with the trademark Velvet Cacoon "dieselharp" guitar sound accompanied by a lumbering drum machine rhythm and a sound that gains momentum as it appears to bubble up from the bottom of the sea. "Claverie" is huge sounding with a nice lazy groove and a hazy narcotic feel, sort of like sleepwalking. As distant drones swirl about, the riff remains steady until changing at the 6 minute mark, with a guitar that is so sustained it almost sounds like a keyboard. The standout track here is "Marylux", with an awesome and unique riff that pretty much sounds like a psychedelic black metal sea shanty. At the same time, it gives off a sort of a '90s indie vibe. What doesn't make sense on paper, however, KILLS in reality. It's catchy, amazing, and dreamy in the sense that a band like, say, Windy and Carl is dreamy... but also "dreamy" in the way that being fucked out of your mind of psychotropic drugs is dreamy, so you really get the best of all kinds of different worlds with this song. With "Grevona", the melodies lie hidden below layers of murky guitar fuzz, everything is so hazy and distant sounding, like a slow moving ship going nowhere while the vocals float around helplessly. On "Oviamoire," a soothing riff wraps you up in its fuzzy majesty while the abject vocals croak below the surface. There is a certain spectral quality to it, all gauzy and whatnot, with krauty keyboard drones adding even more ambience to the affair. The last song on the album, "Sovarine" sways rhythmically back and forth with the vocals sounding like some sort of nefarious bottom dwelling ocean minion. Or something. While the guitars are all warm and fuzzy, the overall vibe here is of coldness and isolation. Not to belabor the point, but it's kind of like being lost at sea, though no one could have predicted it would sound this awesome. The album closes with a brief piece entitled "Flouvonne," with two voices, one male and the other female, speaking in French as the wind blows amid crackling sounds, a weird and somehow totally appropriate end to the journey.
In a music world where few mysteries truly exist, it's always nice to know that Velvet Cacoon will never be making things easy for us. Whether or not they are "true", some sort of pseudo-intellectual performance art, or maybe even a complete fucking joke, their music is never anything less than amazing. If you hated them before, it's unlikely that this album will change any of that. But for those of us who have patiently waited for the last five years wondering if P aa opal poere pr.33 would ever become a reality, you will find much to look forward to.
So-called metalhead Andee says he never got into Venom 'cause they sounded too much like Bad News. But, Andee loooves Bad News. Sure, they were a joke band (Spinal Tap done by the Young Ones guys, basically) and Venom's a real band, meaning the joke's on them...but I think they had a sense of humor too. How can you not love a metal album with a song called "Aaaaaaarrghh" on it?? They knew what they were doing.
This was their third album, from 1983, and while it's got sturdy Venom compositions like "Rip Ride" and "Women, Leather And Hell", it's really essential for the plethora of bonus tracks alone, seeing as how they include two of Venom's all time best songs, "The Seven Gates Of Hell" and "Manitou" (taken from 12" vinyl eps). In addition, you get Monster Truck racing style TV adverts for the album which are of course hilarious, and a bunch of other great 12" tracks.
"Lay down your soul to the gods rock and roll!" Do it here and now, by buying the reissue of Venom's 1982 sophomore album, the timeless statement known as "Black Metal".
Super raw, heavy, and fast (for the day, anyway, back when Venom were the world's ONLY black metal band). A looser, scarier Motorhead basically. The story goes that they had to record some of these songs twice simply 'cause they got 'em RIGHT the first time... Includes faves "Countess Bathory" and the genre-defining title track, along with the Van Halen-gone-NWOBHM "Teacher's Pet", demonstrating Venom's more frivolous side. And the final track is an "At War With Satan" preview! Yes, a preview of the title track from their next album. Had (has) anyone else ever done that?
Like the other recent Venom cd reissues, the jewel case is packaged inside an embossed cardstock slipcover. The many bonus tracks include four Radio One recordings of songs from the album, some 12" versions of tracks including the classic "Die Hard", and the outtake "Hounds of Hell".
All the Venom you need, pretty much!! And you do need it.
The original black metallers are, again, back, with the follow-up to their "Cast In Stone" comeback from a few years ago. The trio now includes new drummer Antton, because former drummer Abbadon has left to pursue a metallic/industrial solo "career". Anyway, it sounds like a Venom record, with Cronos' characteristic melodic growl and lots of Satanic imagery. With better production, of course, than on their '80s classics, but without the spark of naive genius that they had back then. Still, a good bit of fun, even if they can't really compete with the likes of the Mayhem release described elsewhere on this list.
Because the domestic version is now sadly deleted, we took the trouble to track down a few more of this reasonably-priced import title, a pretty-much essential collection for any true Black Metaller! It's also a pretty ace comedy record, and in saying that I'm not trying to put down Venom. It's just that along with the re-mixes and re-edits of classic Venom tracks like "At War With Satan" and "Manitou", this disc also features over-the-top Venom TV adverts, portentous tour intro tapes, and best of all, seemingly drunken radio station ID's, in which Cronos and Co. sound exactly like the "Gumbies" from Monty Python. There's also four unreleased songs (including one called "Bitch Witch") and other treats. All hail!
"Home taping is killing music...so is Venom" so it says on the sleeve to this much needed newly remastered reissued cd edition of the debut by British black metal pioneers Venom. This was, in fact, truth in advertising, and music today needs killing as much as it did back in 1981, so thanks to Sanctuary for this reissue. Like the other two Venom reissues we now have in stock (their second album "Black Metal" and their third "At War With Satan") this comes packaged in a jewelcase w/ cardstock slipcover, with a cd booklet full of photos and liner notes. Better yet, there's eleven bonus tracks, including demos and outtakes like "Bitch Witch" that were previously available on the long out of print "Skeletons In The Closet" anthology. As debuts go, "Welcome To Hell" was a stunner, establishing Venom as THE most extreme band of their day. They were the rawest, dirtiest, most evil of the celebrated New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bunch, with, say Def Leppard at the opposite end of the spectrum. Today's black metal bands, even if they seem so much more serious and artistic than Venom, still owe these guys big time, however cartoonish Venom's Satanism seems now.
We've been meaning to list this record for ages, the second release from mysterious German horde Verdunkeln, a huge favorite around these parts. And while these guys are often compared to mid period Burzum, they are so much more than that.
Just take the first song, with its weird gothy into, processed Joy Division bassline, over plodding simple drum line, chanted monk like vocals, as far as we're concerned, the track could have continued on like that, a weird minimal stripped down goth doom jam, vibes of early 4AD, old militaristic industrial, but instead, the chorus offers up a thick slab of crunchy superdistorted guitar, and howled, effected shrieks, before slither back into the same gothy crawl, until it finished off with a furious freak out, all pounding drums, blown out guitars, wild leads and huge chunks of throbbing bass.
And that sort of defines their sound. It's almost like some eighties goth band, like Christian Death, the Abecedarians, or Kommunity FX, were transported to some grim black forest, where they continued to play basically the same music, but with the surroundings seeping into every note, the starlit sky, the dense canopy of trees overhead, the whipping wind, the snow capped mountains, turning them into something basically undefinable. Sure it's black metal. Sort of. And yeah, it's some kind of weird dark gothwave, but the way those two elements are incorporated transform Verdunkeln into something so bizarre, and so unique, that it's hard to really describe.
Each song begins as a lurching midtempo bass heavy crawl, the bass heavily reverbed and effected, the vocals haunting and deep, when the guitars do come in, they are massive, chugging away at one moment, soaring majestically the next.
Our favorite song might be the second track, "Im Zwiespalt", beginning with that haunting reverbed twang, the sound of rainfall, cracks of thunder, the guitars finally come in, and the song lurches into motion, some sort of lumbering downtuned blackdoom behemoth, that plods along until a sudden break, when a delay drenched guitar offers up a strummed minor key melody, and the song explodes into a weird majestic cinematic blow out, the chords and notes soaring, until that delayed guitar break comes back in briefly, and the song resumes it's dense plod, but this time the riffing following the clean guitar, a weird post rocky, mournful vibe. Bleak and harrowing, and super epic and emotional. Midway through the track, the tempo picks up and the band begins to rock seriously for the first time, replete with tangled leads, haunting melodies, still strangely melancholy and emotional, before fading out into a drifting drone-y shimmer, peppered with huge bursts of crumbling downtuned chug, beneath a washed out smear of lonely synths, only to finish with a strange mathy outro.
And even though for right now, that might be our favorite song, this is one of those discs, that whatever song you happen to be listening to is your favorite. Next song, "oh wait, THIS one is the best song". Next song. "Actually, THIS one is way better. And so it goes. The whole record is just this impossible black metal goth, downtuned post rock doom, majestic cinematic post metal, avant metallic rock, who the fuck knows, and really who cares. There are definitely some Burzumic elements, some distinctly black metal tropes, but Verdunkeln are one of the very few, incredibly rare BM bands around who absolutely and completely sound like nothing you've ever heard.
Another unsurprisingly excellent release courtesy of San Francisco's very own Flenser Records (could we be a little biased??), this time a vinyl only split between Washington DC's Vestiges and Louisville's insanely prolific one-man band Panopticon - two artists operating within their own unique brands of crusty atmospheric post-rock tinged black metal.
Vestiges lead off the proceedings with two tracks, although it would be more accurate to describe them as one 18 minute long connected piece, with the first one serving as more of a 5 minute intro. And not a second of that 18 minutes is wasted. For the first two minutes or so you'd be forgiven for thinking someone might have swapped out that new black metal split you've been so excited about hearing with a dusty old Godspeed! You Black Emperor record, as we're first greeted with a serene warming drone cascading under the minimal pluck of gentle guitars. But then the peacefulness is sullied somewhat by a crackling distorted bass dirge - a real calm before the storm moment that wouldn't sound at all out of place on a latter day Neurosis album. Then a wash of cymbals, an almost martial military snare, then the hoarse cry of distant growls, some reverb drenched guitar wail... And finally everything boils over into a furious eruption of blast beats and gorgeous mournful melodies. It's easy to casually toss the word "epic" around these days, but the following 13 minutes more than warrant it. Within their remaining running time Vestiges flirt with the aforementioned post-rock and black metal influences - but also the melodic hardcore/screamo of Rites of Springs, monolithic funeral doom, and the droning hypnotic doom dirge of bands like Hyatari. But Vestiges are still black metal at their core, and when they're going full bore they invoke a stately and rousing melancholic grandeur usually reserved for bands like Winterfylleth or Vatnett Viskar.
Panopticon's contribution is an equally melodic and atmospheric affair, but altogether more unrefined and unrestrained - a welcome detail that has always set them apart from their more overly-polished post black metal peers. "A Letter" is classic Panopticon, showcasing everything that makes this project so great, and is a fantastic introduction for anyone uninitiated. Beautiful lamenting folk melodies are everywhere, but contrasted with some of the most hectic free-form off-kilter drum work you'll ever here. It's an effect not unlike Japanese screamo legends Envy at their best, but obviously much more black metal. The songs best moment comes 7 minutes in when the song explodes into a flurry of minimal tragic guitar harmonies airily floating over dizzying blastbeats and pummeling drum fills. Hypnotic and exhilarating! The following track "Eulogy" is an interesting contrast to this. Clocking in at a (comparatively) modest 6 minutes, it's more like mid-paced shoegazey dream pop filtered through a harsh black metal spectrum, its catchy head bobbing bassline fascinatingly at odds with the barked black metal vocals. Although after a few minutes of course, the drums can't resist bursting into center stage again as the frenzied blasts re-emerge, all the while with shiny tremolo harmonies fluttering atop with the echoey reverb drenched vocals adding a genuinely surreal dream like quality. Panopticon's side is closed out with a cover of a track by Arizona's short-lived late '90s crusty HC/black metal group Suicide Nation's "Collapse and Die" - a frenzy of whiplash hyper blasts and trampling double bass, but with moments of banjo and twangy acoustic guitar that harken back to Panopticon's recent heavily bluegrass influenced lp Kentucky (also essential listening if you haven't heard it!)
It's a rare instance indeed when a split can genuinely be called more satisfying and immersive than most proper lps out there, but this is certainly one of those exceptions. An absolute must for any open minded black metal aficionado!
How many metal black metal bands can you name from the Faroe Islands? How many of you even know where the Faroe Islands are?
Well, the answer to the first one as far as we can tell is exactly one. The answer to the second is somewhere between Iceland and Norway. Ehich sort of makes sense when you hear Vhernen. You can almost imagine them as the perfect mix of grim frosty Norwegian black metal (Gorgoroth, Immortal, Satryricon), and Icelandic cinematic blissrock (Sigur Ros). Although Vhernen definitely lean toward the metallic....
Self described as funeral black metal, and counting among their influences, Bethlehem, Skepticism, Deinonychus and Nortt we were expecting something a lot slower and dirgier, but Vhernen definitely have some fierce fury in them, often buzzing and blasting like a band possessed. But even when they're blasting away, the riffs sometimes smear into dense clouds of mournful guitar, barely obscuring strange super epic melodies, and thick swaths of moody ambience.
A lot of that ambience comes from the use of some distinctly un-black metal instruments, namely, the electric cello, and the orchestral harp, which add a lot of haunting texture and an extra bit of low end shimmer to the fuzzed out buzz.
In addition to the odd instrumentation, there's some seriously strange arrangements and bizarre bits of production fuckery that help this ep fall squarely into the amazing fucked up black metal category. Each track tends to break down or bliss out into strange abstract soundscapes or haunting chamber pieces. The opening track, about halfway through. suddenly switches gears, almost like someone flipped a switch, and what was moments before a thick, LOUD buzzing blackness, immediately becomes a murky subterranean drone, like some weird black metal Basinski, all muted and roiling and droning and buzzing. Track three is a long slow burning rumble, thick with slowed down guitars and moaning cello melodies over the top. The final track breaks into a super intense minor key string section, sweeping and epic, before launching back into a pounding funeral black buzz trudge.
Weird and heavy and fucking awesome!
Record number two from very probably the only band you've ever heard that hails from the Faroe Islands, which as we discovered reviewing their first record, are right between Iceland and Norway. And as we mentioned in that review, stylistically, they did seem to fit somewhere between the grim buzz of Norwegian black metal, and the soaring bliss of Icelandic rock.
But neither of those really encapsulate the strange sound of Vhernen. Definitely more on the doom side of the black spectrum, Vhernen augment the typical guitar, bass and drums with electric cello and harp, which definitely adds a super haunting vibe to the proceedings. Just take the opening track, a relentless buzzing riff, a pounding blast beat, howled vocals, but over the top a moaning mournful melody, WAY louder than any of the other instruments. The harp joins in as well, sprinkling the grim buzz with pizzicato plinks and plonks, on first listen one might chalk up the weirdness to poor mixing, a 4-track experiment gone awry, but keep listening, and the record seems to blossom, the moodiness and intensity grows and grows. After all, who decided that guitar and drums are meant to be the lead instruments, or meant to be highest in the mix. After all, most of the photos we've seen of Vhernen feature someone playing the electric cello. Which might lead one to believe that the cello is in fact the instrument that defines Vhernen's sound, and quite frankly it pretty much does.
Every song has a thick swath of blackened buzz running through it, but that sounds ends up being washed out a and blurred into almost dronelike smears, while the cello weaves lush mournful melodies over the top.
Many of the tracks end up blurring the blackness so completely that they becomes hazy greyed ambience, like the second half of "Insolstice", that sounds like a Tim Hecker track, or the 15 minute closer "Lopransfjordur-Ende" which spends most of its time as a gorgeously minimal whir, before spreading out into an almost classical sounding shimmer. In fact for what is ostensibly a black metal record, Vhernen spends much of it's time drifting and whirring, glistening and glimmering, buzzing and blurring, which helps turn simple buzz and blast into a gorgeously dreamy and blissy slab of blackness.
We've gone on at great length about our love of French black metal, the more grim and gnarled and fucked up and fierce the better. And it doesn't get a whole lot better than VI, a record we got a while back, but not enough to list properly, instead, the few copies we had sat lurking in the shadows...
But since it looks like we won't actually get more, we figured at least a few of you would love to get your blackened little paws on this sonic sickness, and sick it is. About as heavy and punishing and furious as French black metal gets, definitely on par with say Deathspell Omega, maybe not quite as weird and progressive, bur easily as intense and evil, the sound supremely black and utterly grim, but the vibe, and the atmosphere... so oppressive and so so evil. The guitars are massive, and so fast and buzzy, they almost blur into trancelike drones, the whole band a blasting black beast, careening wildly, only occasionally slowing down to something less than lightning speed, mixing in haunting melodies, strange angelic voices, but focusing mostly on the sheer brutality and black ferocity of their sound. Kind of shocked actually that these guys aren't huge. Anyone into orthodox French blackness, should definitely bow down.
More from the label: "In their first gospel, French black metal devil worshipping misanthropes VI launch a ceremonious attack on the sheep-like practices of God-fearing man. Armed with dark fervor, diabolic discipline, devilish devotion, frenzied insectoid riffing and apocalyptic blasting, the deviant duo unleash their profane scriptures amid a rapturous cataclysm of scorn and disgust. Abiding by an alternate set of tenets, VI dutifully exercise their (anti-)faith, whilst exorcising the belief system of the virtuous. Espousing hedonism, individualism and overt Satanism, these prayers are composed (in the native tongue) with reverence and respect, venerating all things vile and vicious. Consecration of the depraved; sanctification of the obscene; emancipation of the human spirit. Bless them, father, for they have sinned..."
Indeed!
We got this disc a while back, but like many things around here, it got overlooked in the day to day hustle and bustle, and we only just rediscovered them a couple days ago, and figured we should get it reviewed and up on the list. Cuz it's from a year or two ago, and cuz you know we gotta represent, this horde of black metal warriors is from right here in the Bay Area, Oakland to be exact, and have been playing around town like crazy.
This demo is super raw, practice space style, lo-fi for sure, with loud drums, loud vocals, and the guitars murky and muddy and a little lost in the mix, but the various parts tend to bleed into one another, making for a fuzzy blown out bit of blasting blackness. Chaotic and primal, noisy and almost punky at times, and weirdly enough, there seems to be some super melodic poppy elements creeping in here and there. Which gives the sound (especially the opening track) a really strange vibe.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It turns out that Phil "Anton Crowley" Anselmo of Pantera's primitive black metal project Viking Crown wasn't just a one-off thing, because now in addition to the "Unorthodox Steps of Ritual" cdep of material recorded in '94 that was finally released last year, comes this, Viking Crown's newly recorded debut full-length. You may remember us raving about how incredibly fucked up and amazing the ep was. Well, this album is a bit more produced, a bit less fucked up, but still an admirable effort of evil musical intent. With Killjoy (from one of Phil's other, other bands, Necrophagia) on vocals, this is also more of a real 'band' effort, not just a lone, drunk Darkthrone maniac with a home studio. The raw, blasting black metal tracks segue into spooky drone-scapes, giving dimension to Phil's true black metal art...definitely superior to anything Pantera has released in recent years.
Yet another warehouse find, dug up just a few of these, pretty sure these will be the last copies we can get�
We had never paid much attention to Swiss (via Germany, or is it German via Switzerland) one man ambient black metal outfit Vinterriket. Partially because he had SO many releases, we count close to SIXTY since 2000, and the ones we did hear, were more sort of swooshy ambience, and did little to distinguish them from the throngs of black ambient groups out there. Somehow we ended up with a handful of these, and we finally gave it a listen and it's actually pretty great. There's still plenty of ambience, but it's woven into long stretches of wintery black buzz (Vinterriket is after all Swedish and Norwegian for 'the winter realm'), and heck he did share a split with aQ beloved Paysage D'Hiver!!
Fans of washed out black ambience, or maybe more accurately ambient black metal will dig this for sure. It's been growing on us too, making us think we should maybe check out some of those 59 other releases. Cuz really, who doesn't love blustery, wintery black metal buzz, although here the buzz is almost entirely overtaken by the synths, which definitely makes for a strange listen, sounding more symphonic really than anything, but when the synths are dialed back, you can finally hear the guitar although it's like a low level hum, the vocals are buried in the mix as well, almost like someone playing along to some black metal turned way down on their boombox, while blasting their synths through a cranked amp. The sound does get buzzy and black in places, but it does seem like overall Vinterriket is more about the ambience than the black buzz, and while the first few tracks do offer plenty of buzz and blast with the swoosh and swirl, the last half of the record is all ambient, even a Burzum cover, all rendered in shimmery synths, and wintery blackened ambience. Good stuff though for sure. And recommended for fans of synth heavy blackness, blackened ambiences, and black wintery grimness...
Remember how excited we were a few months back about the reissue of the album Written In Waters by 'post-black-metal' weirdos Ved Buens Ende?? VBE were one of our favorite Norwegian bands EVER, all avantgarde and sorta-metal and proggy and just plain strange. Well, at long last VBE have finally made a new record! Well, not exactly. The name is different, the lineup too -- only Carl-Michael Eide (aka Czral) remains, with we think new guys rounding out the trio, though we can't be sure 'cause they all use pseudonyms anyway. But, despite all that and some further experimentation with electronics and even pop, this really does still sound like ol' Ved Buens Ende! Oh happy day.
Their math-metal songwriting definitely will still draw comparisons to Voivod, and despite reports that there's a Talking Heads influence you'll still hear more echoes of Ulver and Satyricon than you will of David Byrne, though it's certainly art rock, of a sort. Some parts remind us of Swans, or even This Heat's Charles Hayward's solo records! Other possible comparisons: Arcturus, Don Caballero, Dodheimsgard, Guapo, Enslaved, Codeine, Ulver, Solefald... All very 'different', just like Virus, who are capable of being powerfully complex or lullingly pretty, always creating a sense of unease and disquiet. It's dismal, it's distorted, it's as sad and beautiful as a dead white swan floating on a misty lake. Carheart has perhaps added more sampling and electronics to the VBE equation, but it's still got all the stuff we liked about Written In Waters. Hectic drumming, twisting, atonal guitars, psychedelic drone, rubbery bass, swooning, dramatic vocals, monk-chant vocals, atmospheric, uh, atmosphere...including field recordings of wind and water that suggest the mysterious lake we spoke of above. Lyrically, it's equally as cryptic, and the cd graphics only spawn further confusion. Carheart? Cars? Dog-headed men? What's going on? Can't figure it out and really we don't necessarily want to. It's enough that VBE are back in the guise of Virus. It IS different (Carl's playing guitar instead of drums, though it's still his vocals and vision) enough to be considered a new band, but VBE fans will not be disappointed! Recommended.
Carl-Michael Eide, aka Czral, of the illustrious Ved Buens Ende is back, with a 2nd Virus album, the band which continues the eccentric, eerily dissonant, darkly psychedelic sound once unique to VBE. And being back is pretty big deal, 'cause Carl-Michael very nearly died three years ago from a 4-story fall! Thankfully, he's recovered enough to mastermind this excellent Virus disc and also participate (under his guise of Aggressor) in the making of a new Aura Noir album too (also reviewed this list).
The late great VBE actually only made one proper album (1995's Written In Waters, sadly again out of print) plus a demos disc. At the time, we compared 'em to Slint, Don Caballero and Voivod - but somehow also black metal. Taking up where VBE left off, Virus in 2003 released the even quirkier Carheart album, that added extra electronic elements and a more prominent role for the bass, leading some to cite Talking Heads (!) and The Birthday Party as further-from-black-metal influences on their sound. And there's no denying that this ISN'T your usual black metal, or maybe black metal at all. With 'jazzy' bits, deep voiced vocal speak-singing, no wave grooves, and some vaguely techno-ish drum beats. But we'd say this one sounds more like old VBE than Carheart did, maybe 'cause some of these songs were originally written for an abortive VBE reunion attempt, heavier and less "pop", the guitars "smeary-er".
Regardless, even if VBE means nothing to you (yet), this new Virus is highly recommended for adventurous metal and non-metal listeners both, who'll appreciate its sonic similarities to Ulver and Arcturus, This Heat and the Swans... can you imagine a mathrock Amesoeurs perhaps, with Garm or Gira on vocals? It's dark metallic art rock with weird atmospheres, redolent of claustophobia and vertigo. Twisting, seasick and sinuous - not for everyone at all - but utterly compelling if you've caught the Virus.
Finally someone has seen fit to re-press and re-release all the amazing early French black metal, precursors to everything we now hold grim and true and cult. Mutiilation, Belketre, Togeist, Vlad Tepes and more. Vlad Tepes, might be the most legendary (outside of Mutiilation who seem to be the only one of those bands to still be playing / recording) perhaps due to the scarcity of recordings or maybe the ridiculous monies fetched by originals on eBay. But the music is as vital and brutal as ever, even a cursory listen reveals plenty of sonic similarities to current BM bigwigs Xasthur, Leviathan, Nachtmystium and the like. Thick swaths of blackened buzz abound, but all wrapped around mournful minor key riffing and all sorts of fingerpicked melancholy melodies. There's also some serious eighties true metal worship going on, with some almost NWOBHM sounding riffs and LEADS, you sure won't here most modern black metal bands letting loose way up on the fret board. But it suits the shound, a sloppy, ultra distorted, buzz drenched blurry black metal, recorded white hot, loud vocals (that's sometimes seriously freaked out, swerving from growl to rasp to falsetto screech and back again), loud drums, all wrapped in thick distorto guitar, oozing the sort of evil that most bands spend their entire careers trying to manufacture. As it says in the liner notes: "This is Cletic and Barbarian Black Metal ruled by the voice of the Black Legions Spirits."
This reissue includes the ultra rare War Funeral March ep as well as an even more rare 1993 rehearsal tape.
Finally someone has seen fit to re-press and re-release all the amazing early French black metal, precursors to everything we now hold grim and true and cult. Mutiilation, Belketre, Togeist, Vlad Tepes and more.
This is a reissue of an ultra rare split released originally in 1995. The is definitely the best sounding Vlad Tepes recording we've heard, nice and thick and heavy, a buzzing swarm of black metal fury, but there still are plenty of lo-fi-isms and some weird mixing (really loud drums), but here the strange mix actually works in the band's favor, with the guitars at the forefront, huge serpentine riffs, sometimes churning out an almost NWOBHM sound, but more often buzzing and twisting and giving the whole thing a very drone-y washed out feel, definitely looking forward to modern black metal outifts who would stretch their riffs into extended, near drone-like hypno-BM.
Vlad Tepes are teamed up here with their way more obscure black metal countrymen Belketre, who are so buzz soaked and so fast and so blown out that their blazing buzzing black metal becomes a superdistorted white hot smear of prickly fuzz guitar, lightning fast blasts, and a thick fog of low end rumble, all tangled up in a swirling streak of chaotic mayhem. Ther are brief stretches of midtempo swoon, with seasick rhythms and clean guitar melodies, but they are quickly subsumed and obliterated by burts of face melting blackend blur. Belketre are quite possibly our favorite new (old) black metal discovery.
We just got in a whole batch of new releases from Starlight Temple Society, home to Velvet Cacoon, Clair Cassis, Lonesummer and others, and Canadian one man black metal horde Void Of Reveries sounds right at home, an epic slab of blasting depressive atmospheric blackness, the sound murky and washed out and heavily reverbed, the drums simple and solid, the guitars a blurred black mass, the vocals, anguished and dripping with effects. The end result is something less grim and buzz, than sort of shoegazey and drifty and softly smeared, give it a moodier less metal vibe, which is not at all a bad thing. Our pals at the Chronic Youth blog posit that VoR sounds like a nineties screamo band gone black metal. Which makes sense, it's got the same sort of depressive, super emotional, gut wrenching urgency, but to these ears if that's true, it sound more like an Orchid 7" slowed way down, to a doomy blackened crawl, and then when the band does crank the tempo, they somehow manage to speed that Orchid record back up, but without shifting the pitch, so it becomes a gloriously blurred sprawl of black blur and super emotional buzz and blast.
Raw and minimal, lots of frantic distorted buzz, but also plenty of spidery clean guitars, and hushed ambient interludes, the perfect balance between grim miserable buzz, and dark contemplative shimmer. We dig!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!
Debut from this French black metal supergroup, featuring members of Ataraxie, Hyadningar, Funeralium, Mhonos and others, who here have come together to conjure up a heady strain of avant psychedelic blackness. Present are the usual BM tropes of course - blasting beats, buzzing insectoid riffing, harsh demonic vokills - but all of that stuff is reimagined and recontextualized into something much more abstract, a swirling, psychedelic blackened mesmer, those blasting relentless beats suspended in field of crystalline minor key guitar melodies and black ambient swirls, everything wreathed in a smeary black buzz. And even in full on blast/buzz mode, instead of sounding blown out and super distorted, the sound is more smeary and indistinct, washed out and weirdly hazy, the vibe much more droned out and trancelike than brutal and black, transforming here and there into Voivod like black prog, and often slipping into distinctly un-black-metal-like sprawls of clean guitar shimmer, mesmerizing Slint like post rock lope. The group do occasionally explode into a more punkish pound, but the bulk of the record is spent drifting through strangely ethereal black clouds of blurred buzz, minimal post metal Ved Buens Ende style dirgery, and hauntingly atmopsheric psychedelic black minimalism, culminating in the stunningly gorgeous ambient closer, all whirling processed murk, muted melancholic melodies, lush layered shimmer, and chiming bell like melodies. So good!
Another ritual from the Black Twilight Circle, the mysterious and prolific cult of Southern California black metallers. Volahn is the work of Eduardo Ramirez, who does everything except for the drumming, and plays in (at least) two other BTC projects.
There are certainly "traditional" black metal elements present here - nods to classic '80s, first wave Norwegian, Ulver-esque folk, and the more twisted elements of French black metal abound. The French connection is especially relevant here, given the Black Twilight Circle's clear structural similarity to the infamous Les Legions Noires. However, comparisons to other bands and scenes shouldn't be taken too seriously - Ramirez's riffing, song structure, and lyrics stand out as some of the most unique in black metal today, especially in the U.S.
Aq'Ab'Al works as a sort of black metal lingua franca to communicate Volahn's spiritual and esoteric message: genocide of Central American native peoples, anti-colonialism, pre-Hispanic gods, and, of course, evil and death. Where one might normally find endless references to Satan, Ramirez instead directs his hails towards vengeful and violent Mayan gods - a refreshing change of pace in the otherwise predictable and stale world of black metal lyrics. The production, too, is a refreshing change of pace, a crystal clear and organic sounding recording that brings the whole record to life.
The context and thematic elements of the record is important, sure, but at the end of the day, this is just a great black metal record. It has riffs, it has atmosphere, and and it's evil. What more do you want? Both cd and lp come in a beautiful packaging that houses the lyrics in both Spanish and translated to English, and the lp comes in a nice gatefold sleeve and poster.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's been long enough since we've had anything new from this mysterious one man black metal band, that probably most of you out there have no idea who VO are, and thus, would very likely appreciate the Voltaic Omen origin story, so here it is, one more time...
It all began with two unidentified mp3's sent via email, no message, no anything, just two HUGE files. We were wondering if there was something wrong with our email, and then POW. Two songs, identified only by title, but nothing about what they were, the name of the band, where they came from. Our first impulse was to just trash 'em, but we thought what the heck? And holy shit were we immediately floored. Exactly the sort of buzzing warped blackness we love around these parts, lo-fi, tripped out, druggy, heavy, space-y, we had to figure out who the heck this band was and how to get MORE!! After a few emails back and forth, we discovered this filthy black chaos was the work of a one man band from the Northwest called Voltaic Omen, a little more digging revealed than not only did that one man have the most bad ass corpse paint, but his corpsepainted visage was an integral part of one of the VO logos, one of the best black metal logos ever by the way. So we were smitten, if one can be smitten by something as grim and fucked up and blown out as Voltaic Omen, and thus, ever since, we've done our best to track down every single goddamn thing we could get our hands on, which so far, has been a handful of tapes and cd-r's. To which we can now add this one, another chunk of twisted WTF outsider blackness, which if it's even possible, might be the weirdest thing we've heard from him yet.
Opening with a weird sort of orchestral fanfare, all bells and horns, and strings, weirdly warbly, and growing more and more atonal as it goes, speeding up too, before disappearing beneath a blast of weird mid-tempo lo-fi black buzz, lurching rhythm, belched vokills, wild shredding leads, stumbling and chaotic, the vocals echo drenched and WAY up in the mix, especially the weird goat grunts, which get all dubbed out and black out all the other sounds, before fading right back into the churning chug. The leads too, sore over the top, it's the twisted mix, that makes this as weird as it is. Dizzying and druggy and seriously demented, the two relatively short sides here delivering more than enough to overload your feeble brain, from galloping punked out blackness, beneath bellowed monster vox, wreathed in relentless metallic shred, to murky almost D-beat sounding pound, muddy and washed out, blurry and black, to weird soundscapes of samples and sinister pitch shifted laughter, chugging downtuned riffage, and more squiggly leads, to wild grinding over the top black buzz dementia, crooned demon vocals, over insectoid guitars, and loping drum pound, the whole thing twisted all up into some of the weirdest black metal you'll ever hear. WAY recommended for fans of twisted, outsider black metal, including such WTF geniuses as Benighted Leams, Goat Thrower, Furze, Necrofrost, Vondur, etc...
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! As in 20 or 25 copies maybe, which means these are likely the last copies ever...
We told the story of Volataic Omen when we reviewed the Supreme Satanic Substorm cd-r a while back, but it definitely bears repeating:
It all began with two unidentified mp3's sent via email, no message, no anything, just to HUGE files. We were wondering if there was something wrong with our email, and then POW. Two songs, identified only by title, but nothing about what they were, the name of the band, where they came from. Our first impulse was to just trash em, but we thought what the heck? And holy shit were we immediately floored. Exactly the sort of buzzing warped blackness we love around these parts, lo-fi, tripped out, druggy, heavy, space-y, we had to figure out who the heck this band was and how to get MORE!! After a few emails back and forth, we discovered this filthy black chaos was the work of a one man band from the Northwest called Voltaic Omen, a little more digging revealed than not only did that one man have the most bad ass corpse paint, but his corpsepainted visage was an integral part of one of the VO logos, one of the best black metal logos ever by the way.
So we were smitten, if one can be smitten by something as grim and fucked up and blown out as Voltaic Omen, there is a tUMULt release in the works, and at the rate this guys kicks out tracks, there's bound to be an avalanche of grim blackness down the line, but for now, you gotta grab one of these filthy little gems while you can, this one is LIMITED TO 25 COPIES, and we got them ALL, but these are gonna fly outta here, so grimlords be quick.
Oh right, what's the fuss about this Voltaic Omen stuff anyway? More of that fractured fucked up lo-fi stumbling buzzy black weirdness we can't ever seem to get enough of. Damaged drum machines blast over woozy washed out black buzz, the vocals are insane, moaning and screeching, even though the drums are blasting, the music is slow and sludgey and lurching and lumbering, a weird, dizzyingly off kilter sonic squall. One of the tracks here begins all punk rock, but then gets all oompah, still shrieky and buzzy and bizarre, but wrapped around a weird 1-2-1-2-1-2 sort of rhythm, but flip it over, and things get all doomy and filthy and abject and blown the fuck out. So goddamn good. You like Furze, Striborg, Lonesummer, Amocoma, Anwech, Wrnlrd, Jabladav, Xasthur, Draugar, Vorak, Necrofrost? You probably like Volatic Omen. Way recommended and WAY LIMITED.
And for those folks who want to get WAY into VO, we have a couple other releases, 2 tapes and a 3"cd-r, which we only got a very few copies of, but they're cheap if you want em, just ask, cuz as far as we're concerned you should get as much Voltaic Omen as you can handle...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ok, weirdo black metal obsessives, this is about as KVLT as it gets. Two songs, exclusive to this release, from reclusive, outsider black metal one man band Voltaic Omen, whose past releases we've gone nuts for in the past, not to mention a rumored eventual release on tUMULt, wrapped in textured linen like cloth, held together with a wax seal, the VO logo hand drawn on the cover, and LIMITED TO TEN COPIES. ONLY TEN COPIES!! Each one hand numbered. We've already sold a couple, still time to snag one of these, but trust us, if you want one, you better be quick...
It all began with two unidentified mp3's sent via email, no message, no anything, just to HUGE files. We were wondering if there was something wrong with our email, and then POW. Two songs, identified only by title, but nothing about what they were, the name of the band, where they came from. Our first impulse was to just trash em, but we thought what the heck? And holy shit were we immediately floored. Exactly the sort of buzzing warped blackness we love around these parts, lo-fi, tripped out, druggy, heavy, space-y, we had to figure out who the heck this band was and how to get MORE!!
After a few emails back and forth, we discovered this filthy black chaos was the work of a one man band from the Northwest called Voltaic Omen, a little more digging revealed than not only did that one man have the most bad ass corpse paint, but his corpsepainted visage was an integral part of one of the VO logos, one of the best black metal logos ever by the way. VO was only too happy to send us more, the result being several weeks of mp3's and downloads and demos and cassettes and 3"cd-r's and often a new track every few days as they were hatched. It's almost like we won the fucked up demented lo-fi black metal lottery! But now it's time to share our good fortune with you. Not only will there hopefully be a compilation coming soon on Andee's own tUMULt label, but we have a brand new proper cd-r demo, called Supreme Satanic Substorm, and crammed with the swirling, stumbling, off kilter, fucked up and freaky black metal weirdness that had us so smitten in the first place.
SSS starts out appropriately enough with Carl Sagan from Cosmos, his voice drenched in reverb, before the record stumbles into motion, a lugubrious tarpit blast, under some oozing riffage and bizarre echoey vocals, which suddenly switch gears into what sounds like some lo-fi noise pop jam gone black metal. And it only gets weirder from there, lumbering doomic blurred buzzscapes wrap around woozy minor key guitars, heaving strangled vokills drift over programmed beats, the vibe shifting from washed out Burzumy dirge, to total psychedelic outer space blackened skree, the third track "Blood Bound" is all growled vocals, over tinny high end swirls of guitar, and splattery blast beats, a sound less metal, and more sort of washed out grim bliss, then the low end kicks in and the track seems to ooze and sprawl and slip into even more chaos. Elsewhere, tracks drift into weird muted skitter, or are laced with dizzyingly out of tune synths, funhouse melodies, even some weirdly poppy jangle, but it always seems to collapse inward, into a swirling black cloud of gloriously outsider whatthefuck. This is not the sort of stuff for folks looking for super tight blazing black metal, or even Burzumic depressive blackness, no, Voltaic Omen is for the freaks, the folks who like their black metal as demented as it is black, who want their black metal records to sound like they were left on the dashboard of the car in a heatwave, the grooves all melting into one another, the result a warped, woozy, warbly weird as fuck ambient black space blow out. And even when it seems like he's going for classic black metal, a frenzied riff, flurries of double kick drum, soaring epic melodies, it only lasts for a few seconds, before it gets pulled apart, wrapped in a vocal that sounds like a dying foghorn, or sent tumbling through some spaced out stretch of demonic vox and whirring amp buzz, or pelted with off kilter D-beat drumming, or splintered into thick swirls of intense (but still twisted) black ambience, often slipping into abstract, almost funereal doom or even indescribable bursts of total blackspacepsychdrone freakout.
As the above review demonstrates, this stuff is super hard to describe. But think Abruptum, Lugubrum, Vondur, Striborg, Necrofrost, that's the sort of damaged delirium Voltaic Omen explores. So now all of you loyal aQ weirdo black metal obsessives can add Voltaic Omen to your fucked up freaked out damaged and demented outsider lo-fi space drone black metal pantheon!
It's been a while since we've heard from mysterious one man band Voltaic Omen, who we first discovered via a barrage of unlabeled emails packed with mp3's, and who, once tracked down, was more than happy to send us each new release as it was spawned, usually JUST for us, and in numbers that make most other limited releases seem bountiful. Well that definitely hasn't changed with this one, an email showed up saying "just sent you a box of the new tape, 23 copies, it's fucked, in fact it's called "You're Fucked". Needless to say we were pretty thrilled, especially considering the fact that when someone whose music is ALREADY totally fucked, proclaims a record to be 'totally fucked', well, it's gotta be good. And seriously fucked. which You're Fucked most definitely is. Another barrage of tripped out low fidelity buzz, wreathed in epic melodic swirl and druggy spaced out atmosphere, the songs lurching from epic majestic drum machine driven pound, to blurred flurries of tangled black buzz and garbled grunted gurgles, from almost punkish chunks of d-beat pound to dirgey psychedelic industrial dirgery, with all sorts of sonic weirdness, gloomy spidery melodies, hissy whispered vox, machinelike clatter, clouds of swirling black crunch, clean almost folky psych guitar, and dig even deeper, and it's easy to see VO has definitely progressed, with some of these tracks bordering on epic black prog, the drum programming (or maybe real drumming, hard to tell now), way more weirdly mathy, the arrangements too constantly shifting and transforming, and if that wasn't already rad enough, two covers this time around, Melvins and Nirvana. Hell yeah.
LIMITED TO 23 COPIES!!!! Might be the only copies we can ever get so act fast...
Ahhhh, yes, more Voltaic Omen, the one man black metal weirdo from the Pacific Northwest, who has been blowing us away with recording after recording of fucked up and fractured lo-fi what-the-fuck blackness. And it just keeps getting better, and weirder!
This time around Mr. VO is teamed up with a noisemaker called Fire Island, AK, who we'll get to in a second, but first, VO begins proceedings with a super creepy stretch of processed ambience, all haunting minor key melodies, backwards cymbals, fractured loops, mumbly speaking in tongues vocals, it may be black metal, but it also sounds a bit like some of the super far out Teenage Filmstars stuff. Then all of a sudden, the track kicks in, and it sounds like it's being broadcast from a speaker atop a pole, down the street, murky and muddy and lo-fi, but with a strange clattery, almost Muslimgauze sounding rhythm laid over the top, before slowing down and tripping out, and transforming into some sort of doomic black ritual, slow pounding percussion, groaned vocals, distant tarpit riffing, haunting minor key melody, super hypnotic.
Fire Island, AK, who we'd never heard before, are way more of an experimental free noise outfit, exploring textures and tempos, patterns and layers, reverbed electronic squiggles wrap around bits of scrape and glitch, looped and repeating, gradually growing more dense and frantic, never quite attaining total Merzbowian overload, which is a good thing, even at its most impenetrable and chaotic, there still lurks some texture and rhythm, giving form and propulsion to could otherwise become pure noise. Cool stuff for sure. Buy this for the Voltaic Omen, stick around for the Fire Island. Definitely recommended.
Cool full color inserts, photocopied insert, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, each one stickered and hand numbered!!
The latest project from the mighty Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Sunroof!, etc.) is not all that far removed from more recent Skullflower records in several ways. The first is the lineup, Voltigeurs is a duo of Bower and one of his newer SF bandmates, Samantha Davies, the second is the sound, which once again finds Bower exploring his own little dark corner of black metal, an admitted recent obsession for him. Much like the SF "black metal" discs (including the most recent, Malediction, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), Bower's black metal is a whole 'nother twisted noise slathered beast than what we're used to. Sure the sound is raw and grim and buzzy and heavy, but this blackness is more concerned with texture and tension, with drone and density, than proper riffage, no drums, so the songs don't blast or pound, even at their heaviest, they still drift, the guitars, possibly the thickest and crunchiest we've heard from Bower in ages, do seem to be unfurling some sort of black riffage, but here the blur and smear into thick clouds of FX drenched buzz, of howling feedback and string strangling crunch, Davies, who plays cello in Skullflower, must be doing terrible things to her cello here (assuming she hasn't switched to guitar), because it's nearly impossible to differentiate who's who and who's playing what in Voltigeurs' big glorious tangle of heaving fractured heaviness.
It almost sounds like a symphony of black metal cassettes unspooling in zero gravity, a swirling mass of a million mobius strips of sound. The strange thing is, for being one of the heavies things we've heard from Bower, it also seems to be one of the loveliest, and most melodic. Not always mind you, but here and there, the furious fug clears, and reveals some woozy mournful soaring bit of melodic doominess, the opening of "Pearlescent Abyss" sounds like some lost early doom jam, slathered in noise and tape hiss and amp buzz, but still, the sound oozes with emotion and anguish. And those moments do surface throughout the record, giving Voltigeurs' noisiness a definite black doom vibe.
There's also a distinctly dronedoomdirge feel to a lot of the songs, Bower's guitar more obviously a guitar, the sounds he's conjuring up more obviously riff based, SUNNO))), Fear Falls Burning, Vulture Club, it's like that sound but more feral, more fierce, less composed, more loose, more instinctual, and somehow more alive, a constantly expanding ball of buzzing smoldering abstract riffage, the sound organic and lush, while remaining fuzzy and abrasive and intensely heavy.
The record finishes off with another bit of melodic mystery, the 9 minute "Condor", is a slow buzz drenched crawl, the guitars crumbling, wrapped around a lurching slow motion pulse, a dense blackened throb, but swirling throughout and within that main guitardrone, spidery tendrils of melody burn white hot, shards and streaks of warm shimmer, a lugubrious bit of glacial downtuned beauty.
Voltigeurs debut full length seems like the perfect foil for the new Skullflower (maybe it was intended to be just that), it's like that other record's shadow, its less evil twin, where the other is noxious and corrosive, this one is effulgent and luminous, where the other is blackened and chaotic, this one seems to glow with some long buried beauty, it almost sounds like the two could be played simultaneously, to create some intense multi part, blacknoise dronedirge epic, but each, on its own, is fantastic, each one in its own way psychedelic and heavy, blackened and buzzy, but Voltigeurs might be the slightly prettier of the two, but still somehow manages to remain as heavy and as intense as any guitardrone record we've heard. WAY WAY recommended (As is the Skullflower!)!!
We had never heard of these experimental German black metallers before, and even though this, their double disc debut comes from the same label that brought us recent records from Echtra and Fyrnask (you can read about both elsewhere on the site), unlike those bands, the sound of VFDU harkens back to the sort of nineties Moonfog sound, when bands were first beginning to push past the traditional tropes of true grim black metal, getting weirder and proggier and way more experimental, strands of post rock and other distinctly non-black metal musics woven into the band's blast and buzz, and in the case of FVDU pretty much taking over entirely. Cuz the music of VFDU is definitely all of those things. A dizzying and twisted progged out epic, the tracks long and multi-parted, the band flitting from twisted post rock lope, to grinding black blast, and from doomic creep to gnarled Deathspell-ish avant blackness. Just check out the first song, "Filterlose Trunkenheit", right out of the gate, it sounds more nineties noise rock than black metal, although the weird lurching pound and skree is underpinned by a furious blast beat, and soon explodes into a woozy cloud of swirling psychedelia, before lurching into some mathy blackness, only to immediately switch gears again, and get all clean guitar and almost fusiony and proggy, and then back again. and this is all within the first minute. As the song progresses, the sound expands, the band seemingly setting themselves no boundaries, and when they do settle into some more 'traditional' blackness, the band add in some weird yelped/shrieked vokills which seem like they would sound more at home on an Urfaust record, which of course suits their constantly shifting, totally off kilter sound.
And the band give themselves plenty of room to work, two discs, sixteen songs, nearly two hours, the tracks epic and complex, with the band exploring pretty much every sonic variation they can conjure up, the sound shifting constantly often settling into long droned out psychedelic blasts, but just as often into blissed out ambience, peppering the proceedings with shorter blasts of experimental synthscapery, tripped out electronics, hushed haunting drones, in fact almost the whole of the second disc ditches the metal completely, building a strange sonic world of collaged soundscapes, fracture rhythms, programmed beats, bizarre processed voices, with many of the track slipping into industrial pound or weird electro skitter. It's pretty far out stuff, and when combined with the more buzzing blackness and experimental heaviness of the first disc, it makes for a seriously twisted listen.
Gorgeously packaged, in an beautifully designed and laid out A5 hardcover book, packed with lyrics, and disturbing images and photos. The first hundred copies actually came with a "jar of rat preparation", sadly, these come without. SUPER LIMITED!! We get these direct from China strangely enough, so when we run out, it might take us a little while to get more.
Blurrggghhh... Vomit!!! Believe it. That band name is perfect for these guys, who flourished (or should we say festered) in Norway for a short while at the end of the '80s, never putting out a proper album, but recorded several tape-traded demo/practice cassettes, all of 'em collected here on this archival cd release. Imagine a teenage Venom, recording in a dank basement, trying to outdo themselves at both the extremes of low-fidelity and vile Satanic shock. Some typical song titles include "Armies Of Hell", "Boiling Puke", "Orgie Of Piss", and "Rotting Flesh"...
Apparently two of the Vomit dudes were briefly members of the legendary Mayhem, early on, thus accounting in part for the cult of Vomit (being called Vomit is also probably a factor... not to mention the wretched appeal of their music). So the Lyderhorn label has rounded up Vomit's Rot In Hell demo and four even rarer rehearsal tapes, circa 1986-'87, had 'em remastered by James Plotkin, and put this out for us to enjoy today. There was also previously a vinyl version, now sold out. But this cd has more tracks than the LP anyway: twenty two vomitous cuts in all, of some truly underground late '80s metal of death.
Vomit's crude and hellish bludgeonings are captured in the raw, complete with the feedbacky plug-in-the-guitar, turn-on-the-boombox-recorder bits in between songs. Which we like! Good stuff of its ilk, easy to see why Mayhem's Euronymous hung with these dudes and why Fenriz of Darkthrone considers 'em an influence! None more Vomit-y.
