Probably one of the most underappreciated and obscure death metal albums of early 90′s Scandinavia has been recently reissued on Ars Magna Recordings in a luxurious double CD edition containing all Molested recordings (“Blod Draum” even in two versions) with commentary from Øystein G. Brun himself, so it’s time to dig this one up and appreciate the heavy and essential atmospheres contained within. The band was a relative latecomer to the grotesque Norwegian death metal phenomenon and had the stroke of bad luck to be buried under the wave of black metal that stormed markets and record players alike. But I’d go as far as to claim there exists no black or pagan metal band in Norway who is so “advanced” and “elite” that they wouldn’t benefit from listening to tracks like “A Glade of Ingrown Blood” carefully, thinking about what happens there and what makes it profound and disturbing music. Brun went on to create more approachable and patterned viking metal in Borknagar, continuing to craft some of the better melodies of the era but eventually becoming normalized to the mass of well-meaning but irrelevant Norse metal of the new millennium.
Free from expectations, innovative and belligerent, Molested weaves a web of articulate high speed folkloric death metal which despite quotes to Dismember and other classics manages to sound quite like no-one else. Amidst the distorted aggression, mouth harps and fiddles erupt to wild skeletal dances as the spirits of the unborn woods awaken. Low-tuned, resonant rhythm guitar interacts with the blast beat in terms familiar from the drawn out monuments of Immortal and Enslaved classics, painting winter and death through long and beautiful stretches of riffs without losing any of the harshness of primitive death metal. The album seems like a concussion of grindcore with ambitious progressive tendencies, as the tremolo madness intoxicates the listener, multiple layers forming tonal unisons in the spirit of gnarled oak branches entangled in each other, inseparable until cut. The lyrics appropriately deal with Nordic landscapes and the horrific spirits that abound in the restless shadows of Sylvan nights. It’s cosmic irony that this death metal symphony from 1995 captures a stronger blackened possession than the trendmongers who jumped the corpsepainted bandwagon, as is the fact that only a few maniacs bothered to check it out.
This is as wonderful music and the Stormvold EP is even better (Fogflames is zen). I’d recommend this to anyone with a sense of wanderlust
Comment by arsenij — December 2, 2009 @ 13:04
The EP is great also, plus it’s included in the Ars Magna reissue.
Comment by Devamitra — December 2, 2009 @ 14:20
I own the original edition and I bought the Ars Magna reissue only to discover that behind the nice packaging, the music on both discs was sourced from mp3s or something which results in extremely low quality compared to the original and properly produced CDs. I wrote to the label and they replied it was just my opinion, but anyone can check the spectrogram of their release with audio editing tools to come to the facts.
Comment by aurelius — December 4, 2009 @ 11:17
[...] of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ with the blasting, melodic savagery of ‘Blod Draum‘, including the Norwegian Black Metal elements that Molested work into their own sound. In [...]
Pingback by DEATH METAL: Death Metal Music, Death Metal Bands and Death Metal Culture at Deathmetal.org — December 22, 2009 @ 23:42