Reverorum Ib Malacht – De Mysteriis Dom Christi

Dark ambient and raw black metal have always held a close relationship in shared attempts to create dark, haunting and visceral music experiences. Euronymous once claimed Abruptum were the ultimate perfection of the black metal sound despite the band being more accurately defined as a venture into the mysterious world of dark ambient. This trend continued onwards over the years as we’ve seen black metal musicians venture into dark ambient projects such as Stallagh or Moëvöt.  Yet despite many years of this alliance, no band has ever formulated as perfect a marriage between black metal and dark ambient to create a chilling, epic masterpiece in the way that Reverorum Ib Malacht has on their 2014 work De Mysteriis Dom Christi.  And- much has their title suggests- they did so by boldly defying everything dark music was known for.
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[EXCLUSIVE] TRANS-OCALYPSE HERE: 1ST ALL-TRANS METAL BAND DECLARES WAR ON BLACK METAL

BREAKING:  On the last day of 2017, our editor predicted that a trans-gender wave of metal bands would arrive in 2018.  We are already getting our first dose of this a with “pink metal” pioneers PEOSPHOROS–  the world’s first all-trans metal band (excluding Cradle of Filth).  Destined to become the new face (and genitals) of metal and new heroes of progressive liberal metal scenesters everywhere, Peosphoros have immediately made their presence felt by declaring war on the most dangerous and anti-human genre of all: black metal.  It takes guts to take pioneer a foray into metal, the most masculine of all music genres, but how does Peosphoros’s trap-metal fare musically?

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SHAARIMOTH Temple of the Adversarial Fire

Well crafted and nicely produced, Temple of the Adversarial Fire by Shaarimoth , appears to be a nice mixture of 90s black metal fun.  This is more in the epic vein, rather than underground sounding.  Lets face it: the first two songs are great.  There is a nice mixture of riffs and beats, with short phrasing.  It is a bit heavy on vocals. They can get tiring at points.  Bands I hear as influences here include Emperor, Morbid Angel, early My Dying Bride, and Bal Saggoth. Making my way through the album, song 3 leads with annoying vocals (minus 1 star), over a slower heavier riff.  In song 4, am waiting for the album to get its mojo back. It does, with a European blast beat that has a sick lower grinded guitar counterpart. A fun, evil Samael style rock riff emerges from that. Some of the vocals still are iffy, but the guitar playing is growing on me. Why is the album so choppy though?

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Sin and Despair in Deathcrush

At the truest heart of metal lies a voice embodied, somewhat childishly, somewhat ineptly, but no less clearly and latent with potential, by Mayhem’s Deathcrush. The re-inversion of all values that metal enacts starts with the embracing of what modernity would see as its sickness unto death. The despair and sin of sickness unto death become vital active elements in the morbid minds of those who would vanquish dogmatic preconceptions in the Sky God Religions and their secular humanist counterparts.  Being, in essence a way of connecting back to itself, the ideological blockages set up by this dead-end society had to be faced head on.  Herein lies the relevance and meaning of the present album.  Despair is converted into pure energy, the rules disavowed, the road of sin is tread fanatically as a method of purification —a negative unity of evil towards the beyond, away from human-ness in its modern form, away from mundanity.  For the burgeoning underground, as seen from Mayhem’s perspective, primacy would placed on being and its dark discovery of self, against the presumption of knowing, and the oppressive, futile impositions from above.  All knowing, all value of music, would come from this ‘being’, from a dark exploration of the soul possessed by a cosmic force of destruction.

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The Imperial Reign of Emperor

The most technically and musically gifted band of the Norwegian black metal scene, the legendary Emperor are also the most well known outside of the documentary-level engagement that plagues most who know of Burzum and Mayhem.  Formed in the small rural town of Telemark Norway as a side project to a soon-forgotten death metal band, the group overcame the imprisonment of 75% of it’s lineup to deliver the most grandiose album of early 90s black metal.  Though Emperor’s career was far from perfect, it made a profound impact on the young genre and ultimately proved it’s limitless developmental possibility.
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NIGHTMARE: LORDS OF CHAOS MOVIE COMPLETED, PREMIERED AT SUNDANCE


It’s actually happening.  After decades of “will they” speculation, directors picking up and dropping the project, rumors of Twilight actors playing Varg Vikernes, and a boycott by virtually every member of the original scene the Rory Culkin led bastardization of Norway’s finest Lords of Chaos premiered at Sundance this week.  In the ultimate defeat, death, and burial of Norweigian black metal- a movement opposed to everything commercial, financial, and mainstream- we will soon see a polished Hollywood narrative of this beloved movement pollution theaters across the globe.

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Susperia- The Lyricist

Susperia claim to be a Norwegian black metal that now plays melodic thrash metal.  Most of the members of this band have been involved with some fairly big projects as session players.  As a band they have spent the last 18 years playing some fairly standard commercial metal in the hope of actually breaking out in the way of Dimmu Borgir and Nightwish. But as either metal or a pop album, The Lyricist fails miserably.
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Bring Back The Apocalyptic Raids

Hellhammer is the ultimate symbol of what black metal should be about: a free exploration of dark phrasal music at the hands of a twisted mind.  Typically it was not only the chromatic movements between sections which defined the music of Hellhammer but the linking between them, whose effect was great because individual sections were in fact proper tonal areas.  It was their sensible juxtaposition, which gave the music its unique flavor.  Furthermore, the maniac howling of Tom G. Warrior added the final touches of a music that was to set the example for an enactment that resembled an entrancing ritual more than it did a simple, mundane hedonism and biker metal, which had been the rule until that point.

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