First and only offical release from the mighty VON, a legendary black metal band from right here in the Bay Area. Never heard of 'em? Not surprising. Not only did they never release an actual album, but they were spurned by the scene at the time for playing sloppy fucked up, super simple and repetitive metal, unlike the technical thrash that was popular at the time. Von took their sound from
Hellhammer, Bathory and Venom, playing very simple trance-like riffs, over and over, with barked, super-affected gutteral vocals, and very little melody. Simple and raw and way more Satanic than most bands of the time. This droning grimness would become the blueprint for modern primitve black metal, but at the time, Von were pretty much it. Certainly around these parts. This disc collects everything, the Satanic Blood demo, the Satanic Angel demo, and a live show at the Stone in San Francisco from 1991. Wow.
What more do you really need to know? Goat, frontman for legendary Bay Area black metal horde Von, teamed up with Wrest of Leviathan, recorded by John Gossard of Weakling, Asunder and Dispirit. That's some serious black metal firepower for sure. Von Goat is not merely the sum of its constituent parts though, nor is it simply some sort of Von rehash, no, this is something completely different, and plenty twisted.
A murky muddy raw primitive blackness, shot through with all sorts of woozy guitar damage, rumbling growling gurgling vokills, pounding blasting drumming, all wound into lurching lumbering outsider black brutality. Just take album opener "The Gathering", which on the surface sounds like some old school blasting black metal, but it's weirdly melodic, not obviously so, and then there's this constant extra guitar laying these warped keening high end sort-of-leads over the top, that make everything sound detuned, or like the instruments are slowly melting in the hellish heat, the effect is odd, but it's that oddness that makes this stuff so compelling and fucking genius.
"Poison Bottle" is a fantastic dizzying dirge, a murky slow motion death metal churn, all tightly wound riffage, lurching start/stop tempos, more guttural bellows, convoluted and mathy, the whole track oozing blackness, a chugging black creep with brief streaks of minor key melody, and occasional bursts of grinding crunch. "Thru Your Skull" is another muddy blur of deconstructed black riffage, pounding jackhammer beats and monstrous demonic grunts, not to mention another head spinning squall of detuned lead guitar that ends up sounding seriously psychedelic. As does the whole record. This stuff is so dark and twisted and out there, some sort of seriously damaged psychedelic blackness, that should definitely appeal to both the true grim hordes, and folks who like their black metal as fucked up and far our as possible.
As for us, we might just have us another contender for black metal record of the year...
C.M. von Hausswolff ventured to Chicago in 2003 at the behest of the arts organizations Lampo and Whitehalls, who had commissioned the Swedish conceptualist for several pieces. There Are No Crows Flying Around The Hancock Building was one of the commissions and, as one should ascertain from the title, was inspired by the lack of avian activity found at the observatory deck of one of Chicago's highest buildings. For Hausswolff, the lack of crows was unacceptable as a building of such grandeur must have some kind of bird population; and he composed this album to remedy this lack. Given that crows and ravens enjoy a mixed bag of cultural references as harbingers of death, mischieveous pranksters, and creatures of profound intellect, Hausswolff's fictional birds are quite grim in nature. Working with recordings of electrical field disturbances, wind, and the tourists wandering around that very same obervation deck, Hausswolff extracts a churning oscillation of electric sound whose slow-motion spikes and pulsations recall some of Pan Sonic's rhythmic experiments with raw electricity. Gradaully, the rhythmic motion flattens into a flatlined drone of saw-tooth noises occasionally broken by electrical chirpings. It's impossible not to anthropomorphize Hausswolff's sounds into a cacophony of vocalizations and flapping wings. Even so, Hausswolff doesn't entirely make it clear whether his ghost birds are guardians of the Hancock Building in their vigilant surveillance or if they are forecasting something dreadful on the horizon. Hausswolff has always done well in realizing his conceptual strategies, and this album is no different.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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This is by no means a new record, but it seemed appropriate to let Jim share with you, his new found understanding of the absolute brilliance of the evil dwarf IT, and his ode to the dark side of 'the Force'. -A. + A.
Vondur's first (and much better) album is a more enigmatic black metal record than their second venture into conceptual absurdity, which was a crudely performed joke complete with wretched covers of Motley Crue, Judas Priest, and Elvis. Vondur is the duo of All and It - the chainmail donned / jaundice corpse painted midget who is also in Abruptum, War, and Opthalamia. Jagged drum machine blast beats, deeply buried in the mix Burzum-esque guitar fuzz, and All's sulfuric acid gargle for vocals make up the primitive almost anti-rock sound of Vondur. "Stridsyfirlysing" - with its "Star Wars" cover art - is a tribute to the dark side of the force, complete with lyrics mostly sung in Icelandic. All of the metaphors on the album seem to be pointing in entirely different directions, yet somehow "Stridsyfirlysing" works... well at least on the day when AQ's non-metaller Jim passed up Nurse With Wound's "Alice The Goon" for this.
Hard to tell what's more ridiculous here--the album graphics (featuring the corpse-painted faces of Vondur members It and All morphed onto the bodies of Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue) or the wretched cover tunes included (of songs by the Crue, Judas Priest, and Elvis) or Vondur's super-primitive & raw black metal originals (such as "The Raven's Eyes Are As Mirrors On The Bottom Of Satan's Black Halls" and "Panzer Legions of Vondur"). Now, it's difficult to believe that the same guys responsible for the absurd Vondur are also involved with the much more serious, epic, doomy black metal of Opthalamia, but they are. The Vondur and Opthalamia albums also represent It's last efforts in black metal, as he recently quit all his bands (these two plus War and Abruptum), sold all his black metal paraphernalia (midget-sized chainmail anyone?) and moved away from Sweden...
Finally!!! It's taken us years (literally) but we finally managed to track down the second record (in a quantity enough to review and list) from one of our all time favorite outsider weirdo whatthefuck metal bands, VORAK! If you're a regular reader of the list, you know how much we love the damaged and demented, the fucked up and freaked out metal, so believe us when we tell you Vorak just might be the weirdest and most fucked up EVER. When we reviewed the first Vorak years and years ago, we summed it up suggesting that Lord Vorak, the man behind one man classical nihilist black metal commando unit Vorak "either must be joking or is totally out of his mind" and record number two only furthers that sentiment.
The first record was a dizzying logic defying head spinning blur of spastic drum machines, sped up vocals, garbled metal guitar and snatches of piano, all tossed in a blender and spewed out in a confusional froth. Well if anything, record number two, Rhetoric Of The Supermen, demonstrates a little bit more song structure, but manages to sound not one whit more sane. In fact Vorak's sound is almost even weirder when applied to actual sort-of-actual-song arrangements.
But let's start from the top. Vorak. Aka Lord Vorak, a man we're led to believe must be a classically trained pianist, whose record covers are covered in metallic gold busts, flaming eagles, and barbed wire, who's partial to song titles like "Dies Irae: Kruel And Glorious Purgation Of The Untermenschen", "Synthetic Nepenthe", "Australyan Uber-Volkslieder 1", there seems to be some sort of obsession with fascism, inside the booklet, it mentions that "All aspects of this supreme music of the future production emanate from the mind of Lord Vorak entirely for his own amusement and gratification"... and heck, we haven't even gotten to the music yet.
An ultra fucked up and completely fractured assemblage of super distorted classical piano, screeching metallic buzz, damaged chipmunk vocals, stumbling chaotic drum programming, interspersed with some straight classical piano, some soaring strings, all tangled and convoluted, every track rife with new head scratching (and head banging) moments...
The record opens with some wild tangled harpsichord sounding piano, dense flurries of notes, strangely recorded, but distinctly classical, until the super distorted metal riffing takes over at the beginning of track two, laid over a series of struggling stumbling drum machine rhythms, and super high pitched vocals, sounding a bit like that girl at the beginning of Kiss's "God Of Thunder" but more maniacal... The guitar is furious, the riffing relentless, with wild squiggly leads everywhere, huge swells of string like synths, and the vocals squawking and bleating all over the place, the drums a head spinning splatter... The next track slows things down a little bit, a thick sheet of blurred distorted guitar laid over some gorgeous minor key piano, the vocals sporadic and drenched in reverb, creepy more than weird, the whole thing super emotional and dark, but still completely unhinged.
Then comes "Blood-Reich 2000", with its relentless metallic onslaught, that gives way to strange piano / helium vocals / sputtering drum machine interludes, always returning to that furious minor key riffing. Several tracks are just piano, and those are quite stunning, atonal and modern, but still melodic and emotional, also strangely recorded so the lower notes are super distorted and at times sounding like a harpsichord. And there's one long track of blown out ambience, fuzzy and blurry, and strangely cinematic, thick swaths of buzz over strings all arranged into sweeping movements. But those tracks are surrounded on all sides by mind melting flurries of manic metal and furious freaked out metallic damage.
The disc includes two bonus tracks, both solo piano, both pieces by Richard Wagner, a strangely lovely and sedate finish to a record that most definitely ranks as one of the weirdest, and absolutely one of our all time favorites.
Totally recommended. And absolutely essential for all lovers of damaged, demented, fucked up, freaked out, outsider metal weirdness.
Is it a screeching petrodactyl attacking a piano? Wagner gone mad with a drum machine?? Actually this is a Nietzsche-obsessed multi-instrumentalist manaic from Austrialia. Vorak is his one-man "black metal" band, and he's either got to be joking or he is
So totally demented, so totally retarded, Vorak's 1996 debut "Triumph Of The Will" might even edge out Benighted Leams' "Astral Tenebrion" as the most retarded black metal album ever -- which means it's so amazing you'll die. Among other things, Vorak plays fretless bass and vibraphone, but it all comes out as utterly nonsensical noise. Perhaps the only "metal" thing we've heard that's more fucked than Vorak are the mp3's by Exhumed Narcissist Paleontologist (http://www.reckankomplex.com/enp) but that's definitely a joke (being Keith "Hrvatski" Whitman's death metal band).
Why did a label even release this?? We don't know, but we're glad they did. We've been dying to share this with y'all ever since we discovered it a while ago, but only just recently managed to get a few copies of this disc, cheap. (Unbelievably, there's a second Vorak album from 1998 that's equally insane, but perhaps not surprisingly it doesn't seem that anyone we deal with stocks it!).
More tripped out avant blackness from Santa Cruz, and yet another twisted project from the drummer of Fell Voices. His last solo outing was as Sleepwalker, who released a couple demos a few years back that we LOVED, and now he's on his own again with Vorde, and like Sleepwalker, in a way, it's a reimagining of Fell Voices' sweeping, epic black buzz, recast as something much more warped and melodic, psychedelic and strange. Just check out the first few minutes of the opener "Hatewave", which sounds like some sort of lysergic funhouse ambience, all roiling clouds of warble whir, and woozy shimmer, washed out and ethereal, honestly we would have dug it if the whole record was just this weird atmospheric drift, but fear not, in swoops the blast and the buzz, but instead of being a furious buzz, it's more loping and hypnotic, the guitars swirling and almost cinematic, the vocals a raspy bellow, drenched in echo and delay, the track exploding at one point into something much more dramatic, the vocals following suit, a heaving, galloping heaviness underpinning over the top, dramatic crooning, a sort of black buzz cabaret, but imbuing the whole thing with a gothy, depressive vibe, all the while, the black buzz in the background gets more and more frantic and chaotic.
But Vorde is no one trick pony, check out "Transformations Of the Vessel", which begins with some super melodic, almost power metal sounding guitar swirl, before the track explodes into wild dense swirls of cosmic buzz, or the cave-ish creep of "Blood Moon", which drapes spidery clean guitar and moaned vocal incantations over a bed of furious drumming, and swaths of black ambience. That doomy creepy-crawly dirgery extends into the sprawling "Crown Of Black Flame", which again, oozes malevolently, at least in the beginning, before blossoming into another blown out cloud of cosmic black buzz, the vocals this time buried in the mix, but twisted into a strange melodic mewling, again, the vibe more akin to some buzz drenched gloom that straight up black metal, those ominous, over the top vocals defining the sound, with even the grimmest, buzziest blast, when paired with that croaked demonic torch song croon, transformed into something darkly dramatic, moody and mesmerizing, all the while remaining buzzy and blackened. Especially the super melodic closer, which almost sounds like Iceage or the Holograms playing black metal, right down to the stretches of bothy guitar shimmer, and almost Joy Divisiony sounding outro.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! On 180 gram vinyl (with random copies on purple wax, don't ask, it's RANDOM), housed in a super striking black and purple sleeve, matte finish with spot gloss printing.
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It used to be that Japan seemed to do everything better than the US. Cute things were way cuter, bizarre things were way more bizarre, music, art, comics, it's like that whole infinity plus one thing, anything the US could come up with, Japan could just make it ONE more.
We're beginning to think the same thing about Finland, specifically in regards to music. It's like magic. Black metal. Ho hum. From Finland. WHAT THE FUCK! WOAH! And it's not some weird fetish thing, there is definitely something going on. We're in no position to figure out what it is, but whatever it is, we're grateful for it.
This is record number three (but the first one we've ever listed) from Vordr, a mysterious Finnish trio that just happens to count one of the Circle Of Ouroborus guys as a member, which would normally be enough for us, but don't be expecting CoO style fractured folk flecked stumbling black weirdness, no this is way at the other end of the spectrum, super raw primitive harsh buzzing blackness, a la Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ancestors, and like those bands, this is almost as much a punk record or a noise rock record as a metal one. There are moments where you can hear a little Darkthrone or Hellhammer, but it's way more rough and furious than that, lo-fi and murky and muddy and noisy, the riffs usually midtempo, but sometimes lurching into a furious blast. The songs end by falling apart, and sort of stumble into motion, the guitars are brittle and buzzy, the drums so low in the mix they're often just another layer of hiss and buzz, there's even some cowbell here and there (!) but it's the vocals that make or break, and as far as we're concerned it's MAKE. Big time. Hysterical falsetto shrieking, punkish howling, on the verge of cracking, super intense and emotional and over the top, but low enough in the mix so it's not distracting, but it somehow perfectly balances the churning old school black metal noise rock buzz beneath it.
Definitely fit perfectly on your shelf between your Nuit Noire, Circle Of Ouroborus, Akitsa and Bone Awl records�
Needless to say SO UTTERLY RECOMMENDED.
The return of these Finnish freaks, and another awesome disc of blown out, ultra raw, ultra grim black metal buzz. Vordr may feature a member of aQ faves Circle Of Ouroborus, but as we mentioned in our review of the last Vordr, you won't find any stumbling folk, or abstract black ambience, or bizarre fractured WTF here, the domain of Vordr is reserved for tweeter destroying high end brittle lo-fi blast and pound, a swirling melee of chaotic skree drenched buzz, D-beat death pounding drums and sharp slivers of buzzing insectoid riffage, unfurling in long blurred streaks beneath anguished tortured wails and teeth gnashing demonic shrieks.
There is most definitely plenty of melody lurking below the surface, but those bits of melody are well protected, only the blackest of souls can withstand the constantly churning sea of fucked up sound that surrounds them, billious bursts of abject fury, in-the-red shards of buzz drenched rrroooaaar, festering gouts of sonic virulence, this is sick, ugly, gloriously noxious black grimnity, a series of musical ice picks to the inner ear, a tinnitus inducing swarm of beautiful blackness, which will most definitely warm the cold dead hearts of all who worship at the altars of Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Akitsa Vegas Martyrs and the like.
Another warehouse find, this one the 2007 full length from these Hungarian (!) black metallers, named for a remote Siberian city that was the location for an infamous wartime gulag, Into The Chasms of Lunacy is an appropriately, grim and depressive slab of harsh blackness, that blackness of course is at its core made up of: howled vokills, pounding drums (way up in the mix) and plenty of brittle buzz, but these sounds are wreathed in a haunting atmosphere, thick swaths of mournful melancholia, be it spidery minor key guitar melodies, or creeping droned out ambience, even the blasting black buzz seems to constantly be pulled toward something more lumbering and hauntingly melodic, with the bass a surprisingly strong presence, adding even more melody and a dark low slung slither, not to mention the hazy swirls of washed out synth. In fact, that drift and shimmer makes up most of the disc, with the group spending more time weaving lush atmospheric landscapes, hushed minimal ambience and sprawling droned out drifts, only occasionally peppering that minimal moodiness with some surprisingly raw and constantly shifting buzz and crunch. Not sure how we missed writing this up this first time around...
Debut ep from this Scottish one man depressive doom laden black metal band and it's a good 'un, mixing lumbering downtuned riffage, howling chaotic blackness, and some serious melody, all wrapped up in a blown out, low fidelity production, that only serves to add a cool creepy vibe to the already grim proceedings.
After a short-ish intro, all sprawling chords, spare drumming and some cool layered super distorted minor key melodies, in come clean, melancholic finger picked clean guitars, weaving a haunting miserable atmosphere, before the song explodes into a murky pound, a stumbling blurred blackness, everything washed out and muddy, the vocals a demonic mush mouthed yowl, tortured and anguished, while the blurred smeared blackness underneath swirls darkly, the loping drumming anchoring the otherwise amorphous black sonic cloud. About 4 minutes in, the blackness flakes away, leaving spidery, distorted melodies, electronic sounding drum plod, all woozy and depressive, and as the track progresses, the sound grows slower and sicker and more dour, finishing off with several minutes of weirdly melodic ultra doom plod.
The vocals are super twisted, reminding us of Shining or even Abruptum, adding a seriously ominous fucked up vibe to what might otherwise me more traditionally depressive blackness. The record that transforms into some trudging spaced out doomic crunch, before slipping into some weirdly clean jangly post rock lope, reminiscent of later Hypothermia, before exploding into some seriously intense, yet still melodic black howling buzz, with those pounding drums, more gloriously inhuman screeching, the result trancelike and weirdly epic. Finally the record finishes off with a short stretch of woozy lilting doom, more pretty and washed out than heavy, thick minor key chords, simple percussion, a gorgeously miserable crawl, that grows more and more anguished, with the chords fragmenting into upper register skree, and the vocals growing more and more hysterical, still beautiful, but also beautifully harrowing.
SUPER LIMITED, and in super swank, hand made packaging...
Archival recordings from the late great Vulpecula, an American black metal band (featuring members of Order From Chaos) who strove to combine 'space music' a la Steve Roach and Vangelis with black metal. The result might not live up to what one might hope for when faced with the possibility of some sort of ambient space black metal, but it's still pretty awesome. The "spaciness" comes mostly in the form of the track intros and outros, long swirling swaths of spaced out FX and whirring synths, as well as the occasional interlude of ambient shimmer, sometimes laced with wandering minor key guitar lines or weird samples and sound snippets. The core of their sound though was a more classic nineties blackened death metal, buzzing guitars, killer riffing, demonic vocals, but unlike a lot of those bands, Vulpecula had a definite prog vibe, strange extended song structures, lots of meandering melodies, extended melodic instrumental passages, strange sonic tangles and dense bursts of busy drumming, definitely shades of Opeth and Samael as well as some other distinctly less metal influences.
Probably the weirdest part of In Dusk Apparition is the cover of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom", beginning with that immediately memorable buzzing synth melody, before it's swallowed by thick growling chugging guitars, the vocals a whispery demonic ghostly rasp, draped over the strangely melancholy dirge. Lots of reverb, and a lot less melody, make Vulpecula's version sound more like a black shadow of the original, but within the rest of the disc it sounds perfect, more like an original referencing some classic melody, than an actual cover.
For folks who miss the sprawling death flecked blackness of the late nineties, a kick ass spaced out swirl of ambient black metal prog...
We may proclaim our love of French black metal practically every list, but if there was a single country who threatened the blackened supremacy, it would be Finland. And yeah, we know we're already pretty obsessed with Finnish music in general, and how could we not be, it's so amazing and weird and demented and over the top and unlike almost anything we've ever heard. So of course that weird/unique/whatthefuck vibe spills over into the real of the buzz and the black. Off the top of our heads: Ride For Revenge, Aanal Beehemoth, Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine, Jumalhamara, Behexen, Clandestine Blaze, Beherit, Azaghal, Horna, Diaboli, Sargeist, Trollheim's Grott, Barathrum, Satanic Warmaster, Ajattara, Torturium well, you get the drift. So you can now add the oddly monikered W.A.I.L. to the list. W.A.I.L. of course standing for Wisdom through Agony into Illumination and Lunacy, and while we weren't able to discover too much about the band, other than that they were indeed from Finland, it hardly matters, this is some creepy and blackly doomy heaviness, which we're digging big time.
After a repetitive trancelike intro, all chanted vox, weird glitches, and looped melody, the band unwind some dirgey low slung bass, before slipping into some classic sounding doom, downtuned and lumbering, a lurching plod, that soon explodes into chugging, pounding stretch of murky metallic heaviness, equal parts classic metal, twisted death metal, and black buzz, the vox a sinister croak, the song flitting from murk dirge to thrashing churn, before a cool droned out stretch of horn laden hypnorock, sorta wish that part would never end, totally creepy and mesmerizingly weird, before returning to the blackened metal fray.
The record continues on its black path, slipping from martial drumming laced old school doom, with deep moaned clean vox, to tripped out mathy post black metal, sounding almost like a way more minimal Deathspell, to some woozy double kick driven creepy crawly dirgery, to some classic metal worship, before returning to another creeping chunk of ambient blackness, with the churning doom backed off, now beneath more moaning horns and plinking piano. The final track is a 12 minute monster, with a killer main riff, some stretches of serious thrashery, but with a gorgeous middle section that explodes from a flurry of eighties metal shredding, only to settle into a weird bit of gypsy strum, muted and minimal, before finishing off with a frenzy of lightning fast blackness, peppered with brief bits of doomy lope, it's a dizzying tripped out, kick ass finish, to a record that definitely has us hankering for more...
Three notorious Chicago musicians, led by Flying Luttenbachers drummer Weasel Walter (also of Hatewave, Lake of Dracula, To Live And Shave In LA, etc. infamy), decide to record their tribute to the late legendary Japanese free jazz guitarist Masayuki Takayangi. Dunno if Masayuji would entirely have enjoyed this, as while his music was definitely noisy (noisier than what's on here, sometimes!) there was also a beauty and restraint that's not explored on this disc. Nor would we imagine that such song titles as "Endless Corridor Of Roasted Babies", "Give Me head 'Til You're Dead", or "Slitted Tit" would appeal to him. And the Masayuki Takayanagi connection/concept here seems to have become secondary to a black metal derived aesthetic, anyway: the three musicians are pictured in corpsepaint, with evil-sounding stage names (Jim O'Rourke is dubbed "Lycanthrovampyr"), and the last track, "Triumph of Death", is a Weasel semi-ambient solo piece that sounds more influenced by Burzum than Mr. Takayanagi. Regardless, fans of over-the-top drums/cello/guitar skree (or "infernal improvised music", as these guys put it) should dig this immensely. After the first 30 minutes of "For Jojo/Freebasing Styrofoam" some will be exhausted, but that's a mere warm-up for the rest of the disc. The back-cover motto "play loud and die" sums it up.
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We've been trying to get enough copies of anything on the amazing Sylvan Screams Analog label to review and list, but previous releases were so limited, that we were only able to get a couple. And while they're just as limited, we did now manage to get a handful of the two most recent releases, this one is super raw, primitive old school black metal, the label references Blazebirth Hall and Les Legions Noires, and it most definitely has that feel, the guitars swarm insect like, the drums skeletal, the bass inaudible, the vokills a buried rasp, like a lot of that stuff it's about emotion and energy, the feel and the vibe, and the vibe here is definitely grim and frostbitten, even though these guys (this guy?) hail from Georgia. They somehow manage to channel France and Scandinavia, into something equally kvlt, blown out and brittle, sounding like it was recorded in practice space, a forest, or a cave, the second track is a weird creepy dirge, all stumbling lumber, and frosty black buzz, the vocals in-the-red, the whole sound blurring into blacknoize before settling back into that death march creep, only to eventually explode into another blast of galloping black buzz.
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Debut cd from this Boston doom metal band (which we have been waiting for ever since we reviewed their "Priestess" 12" on list #99, which we still have in stock). In a word: heavy!! Devastatingly so. Compares well to very early Cathedral and Electric Wizard in that department. Indeed, they're going on tour with the Wizard! But their heaviness is moderated with occasional quiet parts -- piano, acoustic guitar, jazz bass interludes, all nice moves giving them an original sound, enhancing the heaviness when the electric guitars crush back to the fore, while also giving "As Heaven Turns To Ash" a bit of a psychedelic, '70s cosmic vibe. Highly recommended to those in the mood for doom!
Our good customer John Botz liked the record so much that he emailed us this mini-essay about it, which we asked him if we could print since it expands nicely (and enthusiastically) upon the points made above: "Let me say up front that of all of the retro movements in recent memory, this stoner/doom metal thing has me scratching my head the most. Yes, I admit that I really enjoy some of this "new"/old stoner metal myself, esp. bands like Eternal Elysium, but as great as old Sabbath was, I think that even Ozzy, Tony, Bill, and Geezer themselves, have to shrugging a bit to the degree in which their sludgy sound has been deified at the turn of the millenium. The other thing about this "movement" that amazes me is how little resemblance a lot of this new doom bears to the original (but, then again, I guess every retro movement only resembles that which spawned it by no more than half, since anything taken out of time by a generation or more is bound to be somewhat removed from the times from whence it came), for example, the "original" retro Sabbathy tribute stoner band was Saint Vitus, which was already quite a bit slower than most vintage Sabbath. Also, many of these new doom bands use gravelly, deathmetalesque vocals (i.e. Burning Witch, who to me, suck beyond being good, if you know what I mean) which bear little resemblance to any circa 1970 vocals, let alone Ozzy's plaintive wail which, in addition to the sludgy guitars and bass heavy sound is what I associate with stoner/doom metal. All of that said, the new Warhorse is damn good, and may actually live up to most of the pre-release publicity! Warhorse's website claims that this apocalyptic doom metal includes some of the "most vicious (I originally typed "viscous," but I suppose you could say that, too) sounds ever put to vinyl...Crushing Bass with Obscenely Overdriven Guitar (yes, they capitalized those words) melted with intense psychedelic effects...bludgeoning doom mixed with soothing, trance-inducing interludes...(sounds like) death metal on quaaludes..." blah blah blah...you've heard it all before, only this album may deliver the goods better than any other that's tried to make such cocksure claims...no, really! Most of the myriad albums that try to emulate the dynamics of "Master of Reality" come off sounding weak to me, but all of the quiet "flowers and beads" interludes on this album are quite effective, and authentic-sounding, with an eastern flavor, like you really are walking into a c.1970 drug den with beads hanging in the doorway. And you gotta love titles like "Lysergic Communion." The vocals? Well, they're of the gravelly kind, but they're effectively recessed into the sound stage so that they are not obtrusive. Anyway, you guys may already know all of this stuff, but I just thought I'd let you know that this collection of doomy dirges may very well be the best I've heard in this new retro stoner/doom metal craze -- in fact (throat clear), okay, here I go (drum roll, please) giving hostages to fortune by making a hyperbolic claim: this could be the stoner/doom metal album to end all such albums."--John Botz
As it says in the cd booklet, Pure Unholy Black Metal! Indeed. Some seriously grim and frosty blackness from these legendary / infamous Finnish black metallers, totally kvlt, primitive and raw, recorded way back in 1998, murky and blown out, the production fucked and ever fluctuating, the drums way louder than everything, the guitars blurred and black and so buzzy they almost become black drones, but the atmosphere, fuck, this stuff is so dark and haunting and mesmerizing and mysterious, they seriously don't make music like this anymore, even the grimmest of the grim these days, can't conjure up the same sort of blackness, the same sort of hellish hateful ambience, and for all it's lo-fi-ness and sonic shortcomings, the 'sound' is untouchable, it's the sort of blackness we can never get enough of, total trance inducing drone drenched heaviness, that more than a decade later pretty much puts the rest of the black metal scene to shame...
Another reissue from this legendary Finnish black metal horde, Womb Of Pestilence was their second and final record, and is another frosty blast of buzzing black malevolence, sonically similar to The First Possession, in that it's murky and muddy and the drums are way too loud, and the riffs bleed into one another, but it's actually a bit more melodic, while remaining seriously necro. Warloghe are one of the few non French bands that truly sounds like they could have been a member of the Black Legions, think Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, Belketre, Torgeist, the same sort of atmosphere, the same sort of raw primitive vibe, the feral lo-fi fury, the hellish ambience, in fact, unlike the relentless blasting of their debut, things get weird and creepy and downright experimental once in a while, like on the freaky creepy "Monolith Clad In Fog", a twisted drift of guitar harmonics, black drones, pulsing rhythms and raspy incantations, or the strange crooned almost operatic vocals on "Corpse-Altar-Light", but those moments are indeed brief, only serving to enhance the already grim atmosphere of Warloghe's "Pure Unholy Black Metal".
Brand new ultra limited full length from Warmth, who really couldn't have chosen a more appropriate monicker, as the sounds here are indeed warm, dark, swirly, humid, shimmery, a drifting blackened dronescape of elongated tones, blurred melody, and smoldering low end. Not really dense or heavy or blown out, instead, the sounds are hushed, muted, dense and deep, barely there, a whirring whispery smear of sound, industrial but only slightly, machinelike, but simultaneously organic, a haunting otherworld of looped rumbles and layered clouds and swirls of melodic fragments, and constantly shifting textures, a warm, lush, soft noise, rife with what sound like field recordings, but could also be mechanical detritus, creaks, groans, clicks, even those sounds dialed way back, just another bit of hazy grit added to the already washed out sprawl of dreamlike ambient dronedrift.
Privacy From God is a strange hybrid of sounds that in other hands would be cranked up, doused in distortion and spewed from massive speakers, but Warmth take those same sounds and pull them apart into microscopic clusters of dreamy ambient minutae, soothing, surreal, softly undulating, hushed and looped expanses of near static, frozen in time, dreamdrone minimalism. So nice.
Packaged in a clear plastic oversized clam shell case, with silver offset printing on black vellum paper. Hi-bias chrome tapes with silver labels. And... LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
AT LAST, back in print. We haven't had this crucial black metal album for a couple years now, the original Drakkar version (reviewed on list #203) is out of print. But now Seaon Of Mist has licensed it for a domestic reissue WITH A BONUS TRACK - so if you missed it before, get it now! They just were through here on tour, bloody tour, and hopefully you didn't miss that either... (we did, we were working, it was a list night!). Here's what we said about this Satanic masterpiece originally:
Like Anaal Nathrakh's debut The Codex Necro, we first saw this release reviewed (and awarded Album of the Month honors) in the UK's monthly extreme metal bible Terrorizer, long before we were actually able to track down copies to sell. Our suppliers either didn't know what it was, or had already sold out of the few copies they possessed. But now, we have finally gotten a hold of a few and thought we ought to let you know... Basically, Sweden's Watain are a blazing raw blackened metal monster, thrashing and buzzing and blasting. Sinister melodies bleed from behind cracks in the band's armored exterior. We're strongly reminded of Immortal and especially Dissection, with "Where Dead Angels Lie" haunting these proceedings for sure. At first our reaction was, yeah, this IS pretty good...but then, an undefinable X-factor started to emerge, as the album progressed and Watain's sounds sunk in and we realized that this was more than just pretty good. There's a constantly complex and subtle "shifting" going on Watain's songwriting, a layering of riffs amid the band's blur of speed that just takes it to another level. It's fierce and exquisite black metal mastery on display here. Maybe it's easy to go a certain distance with the black metal thing, y'know initially all you need is the right distorted guitar sound and raspy vocals and occult lyrics, the image and the musical basics. But once those black metal "signifiers" are in place, and a certain standard of competence is achieved, the playing field is level. Going the extra league (with Satan) as Watain do here is rare and impressive. Nicely done (as is the packaging!).
PS there's a picture disc vinyl reissue supposedly coming too, but we haven't gotten ours yet... fingers crossed...
Here's the thing with Swedish black metaller Watain. Such a big deal is made out of their EVILness, their Satanism, their philosophy, their filthy, smelly live shows, rife with rotting animal heads and lots and lots of blood, all that stuff, there's really no way the music could live up to the hype, especially considering these guys, for as heavy and blasting and black they are, they are writing super melodic black metal, that is way too listenable and catchy really to be doused in blood and adorned with pentagrams and upsidedown crosses. If you had only seen pictures of the band, and heard about them, read interviews, you would undoubtedly expect something WAY noisier and WAY more brutal, insanely filthy and lo-fi and, well, frankly, more evil. There's been a huge backlash with this record, which seems weird to us, cuz it's not that far removed from Sworn To The Dark or Casus Luciferi, if anything it's the logical progression from those records, the sound is incredible, killer production, the guitars chaotic and crushing, everything sounds massive, the songs are a bit more complex and proggy, more parts, lots of weird tangly bits and strange time signatures, but the things is, these songs have a definite pop core, that no amount of buzz and blast can disguise. Which no doubt bugs the fuck out of the orthodox true grim kult hordes, but hell, for us, we're loving it, it's almost like these guys are taking up where Dissection's Storm Of The Light's Bane left off, total old school metal melodies mixed in with classic Scandinavian blackness, the songs epic and majestic and heavy, but hooky as fuck, crazy melodic, and WAY catchier than black metal was probably ever meant to be. What more do you need to know? If you can ignore the grim posturing and just dig into the music, this is definitely some seriously awesome shit, plus, as if to further distance themselves from the troo and grim traditionalists, they do a killer cover of "Chains Of Death" by Italian horror metallers Death SS!!!
While they last, we have the super deluxe digipaks, that are fucking amazing, all designed to look like an old woodcut, but with a diecut front panel with the third panel visible through the hole...
We saw Watain in the last issue of Oaken Throne 'zine complaining about how this, their first cd, was put out in such a limited edition that no-one could get it anymore except on eBay, and how sucky that was so they were gonna make sure that their new album (Casus Luciferi, reviewed on AQ list #203) wouldn't be at all limited. Well guess what? We actually DO have Rabid Death's Curse in stock, but haven't been able to get more Casus Luciferis for some time now. Huh, can't make sense of it. But we'd recommend you get this now, if you want one, 'cause they'll probably be gone again soon too! And you should want one if you're a true black metal fiend, Watain being one of the best bands (along with, for instance, Funeral Mist and Leviathan) truly dedicated to keeping the flickering flame of black metal burning black. Utterly cult and underground yet undeniably skilled and intelligent. And religiously Satanic.
So how does Rabid Death's Curse compare to the masterful Casus Luciferi? Watain's debut album is pretty great, and definitely an indication of even greater greatness to come. It's feral, fast, frenzied and ferocious. FFFF! Not the sound of a band you'd want to mess with. Look at 'em wrong and you can bet they'd pound the love of God out of you, literally.
You've fallen victim to Rabid Death's Curse (2000). Casus Luciferi (2004) gripped your soul. After three years, now it's time to become Sworn To The Dark, with the return of Uppsala, Sweden's mighty "black metal milita", Watain. True underground black metal KINGS. One of the few "new" (they started in '98) bands to achieve (and deserve) the same respect lent to this Nordic scene's originators, bands like Immortal, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Emperor, and Satyricon. Watain belong in such illustrious company there's no doubt, but there's one band with which they're most closely linked: Dissection. Still hugely influenced by Dissection in their prime (this is in fact dedicated to the memory of the late Jon Nodrveidt), Watain continue to earn our amazed respect with cold fierce dark riff after riff here on this headbanging storm of an album. They've upped the ante on old school art. Notorious for their blood drenched stage show, Watain's new album brings that blood to your home, spitting from your stereo speakers in an occultic frenzy. Needless to say, recommended to all Watain worshippers... and if you aren't already into Watain, but call yourself a black metal fan, you should waste no time buying this and then bowing down, as you shall.
Dust off the fine china and pop open that economy sized barrel of cow's blood you've been saving for a special occasion, because there's a strange nauseating scent arising from the gloomy forests of Uppsala, and it can only mean one thing� Watain have returned! That's right, it's been a full three years since last these odoriferous Swedes disgraced us with their presence, and The Wild Hunt shows them further honing their razor sharp brand of accessibly grandiose black metal. Watain aren't reinventing the wheel here, simply smoothing it out, and that's by no means meant as an insult. In fact, its Watain's greatest strength. It's not until you pop The Wild Hunt into your stereo that you realize just how refreshing it is to hear a band playing old fashioned melodic black metal without any frills or gimmicky genre tags, and playing it really well to boot. There's nothing "post" about this, nothing avant garde, nothing "shoegaze". There's no drum machines. It wasn't recorded on a 4 track in someone's bedroom. There are just tons of well produced, catchy tunes. Fist pumping blackened thrash riffs grind away under Erik Danielsson's commanding authoritative vocals. Frantic manic guitar leads swirl on top of punishing double bass, recalling Slayer's glory days. There's a strong lineage of Swedish extreme metal coursing through Watain's music too. The mournful yet furious melodic sense of golden age Swedish black metal bands like Dawn and especially Dissection is clearly present, while elsewhere (mostly notably on the epically plodding "They Rode On") Viking era Bathory gets a look-in. There's even some Quorthorn-esque clean singing on that track! The album is cold, calculated and pristine in a similar way to latter day Satyricon or Immortal. The band sounds like a tightly wound killing machine. Nowhere is there a moment of hesitation or remorse. And like those aforementioned bands it's infinitely accessible, but without giving into the saccharine gothic impulses of other mainstream black metal bands like Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth. Sure, there are moments of slight experimentation: there's a bit of ballady clean singing like we said before (Allan here thinks they've been listening to R.E.M. or something), some more ambient clean guitar passages, even a bit of classical guitar! But for the most part it's flawlessly played, mercilessly executed metal through and through. And would you have it any other way??
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) San Francisco's most cult black metal act, Weakling. Despite their local, non-forested, non-wintry origins, Weakling was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when Weakling had the honor of opening the San Francisco shows by Norwegians Mayhem and Enslaved, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! Weakling were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. Weakling draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, Weakling also transcends genre. In some ways, "Dead as Dreams" possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring Josh from The (Fucking) Champs as well as drummer Lil' Sunshine from local death metallers Sangre Amado. And of course, John Gossard of...well, John Gossard. (And The Gault / Asunder / Iron Vegan.) Local black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. Weakling is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Seriously. Essential.
We were initially intrigued by this Canadian black metal horde after discovering that they recorded their first few records in Bangladesh, of all places, before band leader Vetis Monarch returned to Canada, and the band went on to create this blackened monster, Drakonian Paradigm, which is interesting for several reasons. Besides the strange Bangladeshi angle, the fact that this was released on Ajna might have you imagining something much more buzzing and black, and while some buzz and black is definitely present, Weapon's sound is way more classic metal, a little thrash, a little death, a little NWOBHM, killer riffs, loads of melody, harmonized leads, the vocals are guttural and growly, and the band do offer up brief bursts of blast beats here and there, but just as often, the band will lock into some super melodic, but still super heavy chug fest, the drums locked in with the guitars, while over the top, leads soar and squeal, in fact guitar solos are everywhere, and they're awesome, adding all sorts of wild frenetic melody to the proceedings, and the vocals are just not grunts, there are weird chanted bits, strange almost falsetto parts, the vocals are often stereo panned super hard too, so they seem to swoop from speaker to speaker.
But when the band do decide to get all black metal, they offer up some seriously intense blasting and buzzing, the riffs gnarled and frenzied, the drums chaotic and on the verge of collapse, which only adds to the classic metal feel, no triggers or sampled drum bullshit, these guys sound like a rock band rocking out, and rocking out hard, and even at its fiercest, the band will infuse some particularly grim segment with some serious minor key melody, or they'll slow things down and get all woozy and psychedelic, adding synths, underpinning the slow building crunch, sometimes they even ditch the metal all together and weave together some almost noise rock sounding heaviness, again held together by awesomely melodic guitar leads, and some unlikely harmonies, or they might slip into some fluttery, folky psychedelia, all dreamy and acoustic, but before too long, the sound transforms into something mower power metal or Iron Maiden than Darkthrone or Beherit. At first we were a bit thrown off by Drakonian Paradigms, maybe we were expecting something more Nightbringer-y, something more overtly black, perhaps based on the Ajna connection, but after a couple listens, we forgot all about that, and just dug this more and more, for what it is, not black, not thrash, not death, just METAL, and this is in fact, fast becoming one of our new favorite metal records.
Full length number three from this black metal horde (from Canada, via Bangladesh), whose black metal is more of a sort of blackened death/classic metal, and whose sound gets more and more polished with every release, not just production wise, but songwriting too, the opening track here pretty much lays it all out, beginning with a moody atmospheric intro, before some blackened riffing rolls in, midtempo tribal drumming, some almost death metal vokills, a loping tranced out churn, and then some chugging harmonics-laced crunch, before a totally classic metal guitar melody swoops in, a gloomy almost death rocky bassline, then the song splinters into a murky sprawl of pounding furious blackened death metal, slipping from roiling murk to soaring majesty and back again, progged out and intricate, with little Eastern flourishes here and there. As always, we're reminded of Absu, Melechesh, Bathory, old Morbid Angel, the sound simultaneously modern and totally retro, some of the tracks impossibly catchy (like the bridge on "Vanguard Of The Morning Star") sounding almost like some At The Gates part, which leads to a second bridge that's even still more epic and hook heavy, others are weirdly chuggy and churny, like the awesomely titled "Crepuscular Swamp, Unhinged Swine", which unfurls like some weird swaggery slo-mo death metal stomp, and still others, like "Disavowing Each In Aum" and "Shahehshah" are super layered, and ultra melodic, the group's downtuned death metal churn, wreathed in all sorts of near psychedelia, lush textures, and impossibly lovely melodies, which are all somehow deftly fused to Weapon's classic sounding DM, creating a twisted hybrid that manages to reinvigorate the tired tropes while pushing all our classic blackened death metal buttons!
Latest blast of classic/black/death metal from this Canadian-by-way-of-Bangladesh metal horde, and as much as we loved their debut, Drakonian Paradigms, From The Devil's Tomb is even better. Heavier, better riffs, better production, more epic and intense and intricate songwriting, and most importantly, at least to us, WAY weirder. Not as in twisted damaged weird, just way more creative and strange, riffs, arrangements, the whole thing. The first song along should make things perfectly clear, after some strange tinkling chimes and swirling backwards FX, the guitars come in, filthy and distorted, and then the song proper kicks in, and the guitars are huge, a lurching, lumbering doomy plod, laced with some strange little super distorted high end squalls, until finally, the frantic black riffing swoops in, and the band explode into a blast of murky, muddy, downtuned death metal churn, that SLAYS. The song plays out, flitting back and forth between classic metal riffage, complete with squiggly leads, doomy crush, and blackened blast. The second song is just as gloriously twisted, with a super dynamic mathy start/stop opening, that leads into a woozy post rocky drift, with gorgeous harmonized guitars, the sound moody and minor key, before again spitting out more DM fury. And that's basically what makes Weapon so interesting is how they infuse their blackened blasting and DM grind with classic melody, old school riffage, wah guitars, leads, Eastern melodies, sitar, organ, whatever the fuck they feel like tossing in, it all somehow works, and serves the greater good, that good being pure evil, evil attained via furious fucked up blackened heaviness. Probably our favorite track though would have to be the final jam, "Towards The Uncreated", which mixes some galloping blackness, with some surprisingly melodic midtempo post rockisms, not to mention some super emotional, melancholic leads, creating a strangely moody metallic bit of doom flecked mystery, bookended of course by blasts of gnarled black crush.
Recommended for anyone who digs Absu, Bathory, Melechesh, Mayhem, Morbid Angel and the like, or any sort of blackened death metal / deathlike black metal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is actually the first we've heard from LA black metal trio Welter In Thy Blood, and what an introduction. A super limited, and insanely elaborate lp, three songs, two sides, nearly 30 minutes of creeping, harsh, hellish, doom-ed blackness. WITB are often classified as black metal, but sonically they definitely fall more in line with ultra doom outfits like moss or Khanate, but with a distinctly black streak.
The Transference Of Misery begins with slow sprawl of black ambience, all deep cavernous rumbles, groans and creaks, drips and whirs, distant industrial clatter, barely there tones, all blurred into a swirling sonic abyss. Eventually the second songs surfaces from the murk, even more drones, a particularly hellish blackdrone, that sprawls and oozes, sinister and malevolent, before a strange voice speaks and the song proper kicks in, a spaced out, abstract bit of ultra doom, hellish vocals shrieking over black squalls of crunch and buzz, lots of space in between, ultimately, the various parts coalesce and the song transforms and becomes a black doom plod, the guitars blown out and blurred into streaks of crumbling buzz, the vocals even more harsh and processed, the band lumber along, a hellish sonic death march, slipping occasionally back into dreamy black drift, before returning to the crushing black dirge that dominates the side.
The flipside offers up another sidelong sprawl of creeping black doom, the drums a skeletal framework for more shrieked demonic vokills, moaning gnarled riffage, all detuned and angular, in fact, the B-side sounds quite a bit like a black metal Black Flag at 16rpm. An endless doomic plod, that while plenty hellish and black, is sonically way more Moss or Monument Of Urns or Bunkur, than Deathspell Omega or Funeral Mist. Fucking incredible. Essential listening for the doomlords, the black hordes, and the deathdoomdronedirgedrift obsessed...
Incredibly elaborate and beautiful packaging. Pressed on thick black vinyl, housed in a black inner sleeve with a printed red obi style insert. That sleeve is then housed in a second sleeve, printed black on black, with printed red blood splatters, everything is then wrapped in a thick, gorgeously printed outer slipcover / sleeve. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Full length number three from this LA blackened ultradoom trio, whose M.O. has thankfully not changed too much since their debut, which was a stunning mix of Khanate style arty abject sludge creep, Habsyll like downtuned minimal crush, harrowing black ambient dronemusic, and suicidal slo-mo grim buzz, all tangled up into a heaving, churning sprawl of multiple o'd funereal doooooooooom. This new one definitely pushes the envelope even further, the opening track displaying the group at their twisted, outsider best, fusing loose clattery percussion, and No-Neck / Sunburned style free form skitter, to harsh, hateful vokills and keening arcs of downtuned guitar moan, the vibe almost more Jandek or Derek Bailey via Bunkur or Moss than anything more traditionally doom, the group's secret weapon, bassist Darea Plantin, who in addition to providing the black hole low end, also wields an unlikely but super distinctive arsenal of not traditionally metal noises, including drone machines, circuit bent instruments, Moog and field recordings, all of which are featured prominently, defining much of the music here, if not the band as a whole, and not just arty filigree, the ambience and atmospherics smoldering and sinister, long stretches of strange haunting drifts and murky pulsations, distant pipe fights and free jazz percussive splatter. Even when the sound does coalesce into some proper chug and churn, it's still so far removed from actual doom, as to be some new genre entirely, tranced out and minimal, but dense and layered and heavy as fuck.
"Blood Stained Hope" might be one of the more traditionally doom tracks here, but it's really all relative, cuz it's still spaced out and warped, the rhythms lurching from doomic pound, to super loose and off kilter, at one point locking into a rhythm that seems to be totally at odds with the rest of the music, creating a woozy tension, that transforms what might otherwise be a knuckle dragging crawl, into something wild and warped, damaged and demented, those more 'rocking' parts balanced by long stretches of hushed, haunting thrum, of softly crumbling ambience, and distant rumbling drones, the whole thing an ever shifting, at times skeletal, at other times strangely psychedelic, and at others still, abject and utterly depressive, avant experimental doom epic. Two shorter tracks find the group's sound coalescing into some warm washed out almost dreamy doominess, before again splintering into a weird sprawl of brittle high end plod, all buried murky guitar melodies, simple drumming, anguished vox, all wreathed in a cloud of swirling psychedelic noise, hissing and buzzing, swaths of crackle and blurred melody, all woven into woozy billows of abstract soft noise atmosphere, through which, the band trudges along, a lo-fi doom death march. Until we reach the closer, a near 11 minute epic, that begins with simple minor key clean guitar strum, super effected vokills, that sound almost like guitar feedback, swaths of field recordings, eventually erupting into full on doomnoise, but never getting totally doomy, instead, it's a glorious cacophony, the guitars tangled and detuned, the vocals hissy and hateful, the drums more like rattling chains and big sheets of metal smashing into each other, eventually, for the last few minutes, building to a gorgeous, thickly layered sonic fugue, super dense and tranced out, an ultra intense, and weirdly tranquil coda.
As always, amazing stuff. Very likely WAY too arty for the true doom set, but very recommended for all you doomlords into Bunkur, Khanate, Habsyll, SUNNO))), Monarch, Fleshpress, Nihill, Otesanek and the like, as well as folks into tripped out arty free form psych, who maybe never imagined that stuff like that could be utterly crushing and tarpit heavy!
Werewolf are a mysterious Polish horde who specialize in murky, brittle, lo fi grimness a la their countrymen Graveland. Huge guitars swirl and buzz, the rhythms veer from seasick waltzes to buzzing blackened blasts, thick walls of guitarfuzz and swirls of chaotic ambience create a dense foresty murk, where drums pulse and throb way down in the mix, like tribal war chants barely heard drifting like the stench of death on the wind. The vocals are a growling gargle, another layer of buzz in Werewolf's chaotic sonic squall, the cymbals splash and shimmer like acid rain eating away at everything it touches. This is more of that glorious loping buzzy droning black metal we can never seem to get enough of. The mix is so thick and overblown that the riffs eventually blur and smear, the whole record becoming a super buzzy trancelike drone. Awesome.
Wheels Within Wheels is the curiously monikered project of a man called Crow (one half of the black doom duo Seidr, whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and is a fantastically brutal and blown out collection of isolationist blacknoise buzz, each track a suffocating black hole of sound, the buzz so intense it seems to define the sound, reminding us of Wrath Of The Weak or Paysage D'Hiver, and other sonically like minded bands, in that the BUZZ IS ALL. WWW definitely tempers his black metal buzz with plenty of industrial drone and abstract noise, the opening track in fact is more noise than black metal, but still, there's the buzz, thick swaths of static guitarbuzz, sprawling and tangled into heaving black swells. It's a bit like black metal with the drums removed, and the riffs slowed way down, the distortion cranked way up, although about 6 minutes in, the buzz seems to coalesce into actual riffing, and it's a glorious buzzy crawl, the sound so hot and in-the-red it seems to be constantly peaking, making the sound even more distorted and fractured sounding. And once the sound gathers momentum, it's the perfect black metal, washed out, blurred and blown out, almost like a Merzbow / Tim Hecker / Pyha mash up, and if that doesn't sound fucking bad ass. Weird that when the buzz finally abates it reveals an acoustic guitar strumming away underneath, which has us wondering what else is going on beneath the surface.
The next track, "Galvanzied Astral Corpses" is even more distorted, if that's even possible, but instead of sounding heavier or more black, it somehow sounds dreamier, almost shoegazey, like a blackened Nadja or something, the main melody lilting and lovely, but buried beneath layer after layer of heavily distorted riffage. There also seems to be some sort of echo drenched sampled vocals, very haunting and mysterious, but this is totally the sort of stuff that hits the spot, simultaneously heavy and buzzy, but also dreamy and droney and hypnotic, this is not the sort of black metal that induces headbanging, it's the sound that brings on deep trance, this is drifting off tripping out heaviness of the highest order.
And the whole record is equally entrancing, impossibly dense and oozing with black buzz, this is the rare black metal record, that while grim and bleak and black and seriously punishingly heavy, it's also droney, and abstract, and weirdly blissed out and dreamy, there's even bass, a rarity in black metal, but it adds to the weight of these jams, and even gives a few of the tracks a sort of groove, but as mentioned above, it's all about the buzz, and metalheads and dronelords can all agree on the power of the buzz, and Wheels Within Wheels is one of the few bands who seem to be creating blackdrone rituals for both.
VERY VERY LIMITED. We got our copies (in)directly from the band, but as this came out last year, these could very well be our last copies ever...
Super limited cassette featuring two one man black metal bands from Kentucky, the first, the oddly named Wheels Within Wheels we've raved about before, it's the solo project of Crow from doomlords Seidr, and even though the label describes his 20 minute track as some sort of industrial blackened sickness along the lines of Gnaw Their Tongues, to our ears, WWW continues to push his peculiar brand of blackness into ever more blissed out shoegaze territory, the sound here definitely veers into some noisier and grimmer territory here and there, but it remains epic and majestic, melodic and lovely, warm and fuzzy and washed out, especially the opening movement, way more psychedelic and dreamy than heavy, a pounding lumbering bliss pop dirge that should have folks into Nadja and Jesu and the like suddenly realizing that maybe they do in fact like (some) black metal, and once they're hooked, WWW gradually drags them somewhere much much darker.
Merkaba, a before now unknown to us atmospheric black metal outfit counters with his own bit of melodic blackness, a sound the label likens to Fell Voices meets Neil Young which we have to say doesn't sound that far off. There's a definite Crazy Horse vibe, the sound psychedelic and drenched in feedback, long slow smoldering sprawls of rumble and buzz, that build to explosive squalls of heaviness, eventually erupting into dense blurs of black buzz, while still retaining the melancholia of the slower more psychedelic parts. Gorgeous stuff for sure, heavy and heady, a tripped out black buzz that is definitely recommended for fans of WWW and that sort of melodic shoegaze heaviness, although Merkaba sound, at least in places, definitely hews closer to traditional blackness. Great stuff from both bands. And of course, SUPER LIMITED.
Two aQ black metal faves join forces for this killer split, Kentucky pagan anarcho vegan one man band Panopticon, and isolationist blackbuzz outfit Wheels Within Wheels (a side project of epic metal outfit Seidr), both offering up some of their best, and strangest material. Up first is Wheels Within Wheels, who unleashes two epic tracks of droned out blissy buzz, the first, "A Burial Of The Mother Of Orion", is downright shoegazey, the riffs so blurry and blown out, they seem to smear into a washed out dronescape of layered buzz, the drums buried in the mix, a murky distant throb, the guitars occasionally coalescing into a monstrous crumbling chug, but then just as quickly blissing back out into total blackbuzzdrone, before peeling back the buzz completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed skeletal guitarscapery, a haunting bit of shimmery drift over a deem ominous low end thrum, which leads directly into "A Splinter Of Hope In The Blackest Of Hearts", which is almost like a continuation of "A Burial", but more melodic, the guitars soaring majestically, but still wreathed in a haze of blurred buzz, growing gradually prettier as the track progresses, it's hard to describe, but it's a weird warm bit of blackbuzz shimmer, and when the vocals finally join in, a mournful croon, the sound is transformed again into a strange buzzy lament. Gorgeous and haunting, and a lot prettier and more washed out than the other WWW record.
And it's as if Panopticon decided to follow suit, opening with "The Road To Bergen", which might be the prettiest thing we've heard from him, a mournful, melancholy dirge, dreamy and washed out and super melodic, hazy and almost sun dappled sounding, it's a bit like listening to M83 at 16rpm, a gorgeous blurry, buzzy, dreamy slow build to a soaring super melodic almost Nadja like chorus. So great. And then there's the next track, "From Bergen To Jotunheim Forest" which retains the same lilting dreamy melody, but sets it amidst a much harsher landscape, all buzzing blackened riffage and blasting beats, but the melody drives everything transforming a grim black buzz into something weirdly emotional and strangely pretty, and when the guitars let loose with some wild melodic leads, and some killer harmonies, all over a background of blackbuzz and frantic beats, it's seriously mindblowing, and even 11 minutes of that is not enough. And the record finishes with another strangely pretty sonic missive, this one all clean guitar jangle, woozy chant like vocals, and glistening glimmering melodies, the sound almost liturgical, hazy and gauzy and washed out and impossibly dreamy, peppered with brief blasts of furious black buzz, bit for the most part, strangely lovely.
This just might be one of the least grim and black, black metal splits ever, but somehow it also just might be one of our favorites.
Strange project, this. The lastest album by Norwegian experimental musican Lars Pedersen, who has garnered praise from the black metal elite (including a profile in Nordic Vision magazine a while back), and has collaborated with Chris Cutler in the past. '...Wunderbaum' features lyrics from texts by not one but *two* Great Beasts: Aleister Crowley and Tom Wolfe! That, plus the fact that it's released on a label run by the guy from Ulver, and the aforementioned praise in black metal circles, means that there must be something distinctly sinister lurking within, although on the surface the music appears as very theatrical electronica referencing hyperdelic cartoon music. Ulver playing Raymond Scott? Another bizarre Jester release that we can only quizzically ponder and recommended.
When is the (mostly) one man project of one Lars Pederson, who has been recording as When for almost 20 years now. This two disc collection (released on Garm from Ulver's Jester label) gathers songs and pieces and parts spanning When's entire existence. From
Black metal records with nature sounds are a dime a dozen, in fact it might be easier to come up with a list of black metal records that DON'T have dubbed in sounds, wolves, wind, goats, whatever grim picture the band is trying to paint, whether it's some pagan ritual with goat sacrifice, or some grim corpsepainted horde playing in the middle of a black forest communing with wolves, a sound effects record makes it all that much more impressive. Or so bands seem to think. There have been bands who supposedly went out into the snowy forest and recorded there, most notably Ulver's Nattens Madrigal, but we're pretty sure that's just a rumor, most likely spread by the band to make the record seem cooler (and probably to explain the impossibly tinny sound), and then there's the fact that even if it WAS true, you can't really -hear- it. Which brings us to When Bitter Spring Sleeps, a black metal horde who hail from the grim frosty abyss known as Cedar Rapids, Idaho, and whose whole identity, nay existence, is based on musically communing with nature. This entire record was performed and recorded in a nature preserve! So all the sounds, all the dripping water, chirping insects, rustling leaves, all of that stuff is captured along side the bands drone-y buzz. We do have to wonder how the band manage to blast and buzz without disrupting the sounds of nature, you know how a field full of frogs and crickets immediately go silent when you walk amongst them. We like to think the band set up, and then just stood there, motionless, for minutes, maybe hours, until the insects and other forest creatures decided the coast was clear, and the band slowly began to play.
The result is pretty compelling, the songs start out all minimal and hushed, usually just guitar, the sound of cicadas and dripping water, croaking frogs, practically drowning out the band, and when the band do kick in, the sound is super raw and tinny (a la Nattens Madrigal, there is a reason bands record in studios after all), the drums are a tiny pound, buried in the mix, the vocals a barely audible croak, the guitars a blurry shimmery cloud of sound. The tracks are epic too, with tons of parts and lots of interludes, where the band drops out, leaving just a single spidery guitar line, and the symphony of insects and creatures.
Super cool, the metal itself is not hugely distinctive, but in this context it works in the record's favor, as the sounds of the instruments are equally balanced by the sounds of nature, almost as if an act of supplication, a musical acknowledgment of out tenuous position here on earth.
Obviously, folks into fucked up far out black metal are gonna NEED this, but if you're into weird Jewelled Antler sort of musical / field recording hybrids, odds are this might be the only black metal record that fits the bill.
SUPER LIMITED. Gorgeous packaging, each one hand made, the printed covers, burned around the edges and scorched all over. The smell a heady mix of flowers and fire. So cool.
