Death Metal Album Of The Week: Carbonized – Disharmonization

The convoluted and nigh-on surreal saga of Christofer Johnsson is one that is ruefully chronicled by old-school death metallers and ignorantly neglected by slavering neophytes. The abridged version: young Christofer made a name for himself by composing some of the finest death metal to have ever graced Sweden, then 20 years later he’s famous for cranking out gothic metal that sounds like Orff locked in HIV-positive symbiosis with Queen. But somewhere along the rough yet creatively fertile beginnings of that timeline — while fronting SweDeath-celebrity grindcore outfit Carbonized — Christofer Johnsson went completely crazy in a manner not unlike the vehement Swedish author August Strindberg, with the same paranoid-schizoid fits and necromantic visions of shadowed beings and Faustian conjurations. Perhaps he was starting to keel under the crushing burden of his own talent. Perhaps he was bewitched by the anti-music of deranged saxophonist John Zorn. Or, perhaps he simply discovered drugs. Whatever the case, it resulted in this moonstruck chestnut that’s still so inscrutable that only a Russian label presses copies of it nowadays.

At the most essential level, ‘Disharmonization’ (the title in itself a bald-faced reference to Disharmonic Orchestra) is still classifiable as a grindcore album, largely for its alternations between blast-beats and other rigid drum patterns to drive forth structurally disembodied, resolutely narrative riffs. Aesthetically, though, the album is strikingly protean, and bears much in common with other early examples of progressive death metal. Immediately noticeable are the production values — courtesy of a surprisingly adventurous Tomas Skogsberg — which are echoic, membranous, and at times even emollient, as if the walls of Sunlight Studios had been transformed into the fleshy, aqueous confines of a giant extraterrestrial uterus, straight out of Away Langevin’s over[re]active imagination. Songs follow a typically grindcore ethos in that they demand to be understood in the context of the whole album, but the growing influence of Johnsson’s neoclassical tendencies pushed this to artistic heights, such that ‘Disharmonization’ could be described as a sort of Swedegrind Suite held together only by a common theme of absurdity; this is certainly the brand of avant-garde that Tom G. Warrior had attempted with ‘Into The Pandemonium’, but where that album had its self-conscious falterings, ‘Disharmonization’ overcomes. A wide gamut of textures (harsh distortion; pristine resonance), styles (jazz-lounge slink; Iberian folk), and moods (madness, exuberance, and everything in between) are fearlessly explored, reflecting more of a musical lineage to the bizarro-wave of Die Kreuzen’s ‘October File’ rather than, say, the aforementioned Disharmonic Orchestra’s ‘Expositionsprophylaxe’ (which served as the template for the debut, ‘For The Security’).

Simultaneously alienating and captivating for its unabashed disregard to conventions, ‘Disharmonization’ dared to probe the outermost boundaries of a genre commonly dismissed as being limited in its expressional capabilities. For its unorthodoxies it may never emerge from its preceding album’s shadow — much less be accepted into the pantheon of grind — but for those whose brainwaves follow frequencies of a deviant pitch, this is a necessary listening experience.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Evisceration – Hymn to the Monstrous

The time-honoured, warm and fertile nation of Portugal, once the ruler of the Southern seas, never gave death and black metal movements any immense impact but has nothing to be ashamed of in comparison to its vastly larger neighbour, Spain, which probably boasts an even more scant number of memorable little releases from the golden age of grindcore and death metal. While the country’s major global success story, gothic satanists Moonspell, shared thrash and grindcore roots with countless marginal demo level bands, mostly only to be found archaeologically from the pages of dust covered zines, the fruition of the style in the shade of Sintra forests’ timeless sylvan spell was conceived by Setubal’s Evisceration – who successfully, if unpretentiously, combined lurching doom with Carcass-inspired corpse-shredding chaos much like Blood did a thousand miles away in Germany, creating a devastating, desolate atmosphere by manipulating space and tempo across an album formed of short, intercutting scenes of violence.

Effectively a counterpart to the promiscuously eclectic and baroque sound of the earlier covered fusion band Disaffected from the same lands, Evisceration brings simplicity but tenderness to the face of the listener in morbid delight which united early grindcore in a heavy substance of evil, far from the trash entertainment jokes and putrid politics that later on caused a major collapse of interest in the phenomenon, alongside a tendency to musically overemphasize elements such as fast blastbeats and radically rhythmic growls, that used to serve as sensible pieces of an overall emotional, psychological and philosophical architecture. Simply put, this means that while there are no obtrusely “progressive” parts, Evisceration are alike agile in utilizing moody synthesizer akin to early black metal bands in “Consumed Act”, as a quasi-classical acoustic guitar in the intro piece “Farewell to Earth, Heaven and Sun”, not to forget short but gripping Slayer-esque leadwork in “Dead Foetus”. This 35-minute collection of short but easily differentiable songs doesn’t overuse any of its ideas, and this disciplined compactness is, as previously mentioned in regards to Blood‘s “O Agios Pethane”, a testament to the theoretically endless possibilities of grindcore which are rarely heard in action.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Blood – O Agios Pethane

In the forgotten backwoods, abandoned cellars and dimly lit city alleys of this devastated remnant of social collapse prowl psychotic minds that rule their victims with fear and torture and traumatic pain shall be their legacy on earth. Serial killers have left their bloody trail on our culture because of their mechanical insistency of treating people as objects, as useless organic spawn of a world that offers little appeasement for neurotic, frustrated impulse or desire. As if to prospect a visceral counterpart to the psychoanalytical surgery of many previous albums of the week, such as “Changes” and “Hallucinations” (both appropriately originating from Central Europe), this ritual of Blood alongside the recent Autopsy review lunge into gore and swarming maggots, while entrails burst and bodyparts are severed by brutal bludgeoning weapons.

Readers of our zine archives have noticed the tremendous impact of Napalm Death and Carcass pioneered social but spirited grindcore upon the entire scene, as well as how quickly the failure to invent surprising music within the boundaries of the style evaporated the desire of bands and audiences alike to keep to the principles of grind as something sacred. While countless German demo bands were cranking out noisy, self-indulgent and hectic odes to fun and horror movies, Blood’s economical but poetic hallucinations spanned the philosophical (“Linear Logical Intelligence”), the mythological (“Kadath”) and twisted black humor (“Sodomize the Weak”), building into an entire self-consistent worldview on par with the anguished, outwardly more serious output of contemporaries Morgoth and Atrocity.

The tuneless, stumbling, roaring moments recall Canada barbarians Blasphemy and early Voivod, while the drawn out, precise clarity glimpsed like sun behind the clouds when the band regroups and reformulates its attack through moments of slow, traditional metal riffs are akin to Finnish death metal moments (hardly surprising as this band was widely heard in early 90′s Finland despite being almost forgotten nowadays). The truncated track lengths (3 minutes maximum) reveal an ascetic, rigorously disciplined plan to build albums from sheer musical force of expressionism, cut into bits as in a Burroughsian tapestry of absurd and horrifying moments trapped inside the madness of civilization and natural lifecycles. Nothing could be farther from the haphazard, elongated drone rock-outs that characterize trendy metal of the new millennium, so it is perfect time to taste the Blood.

May 1st 2010 – Bolt Thrower, Benediction, Rotting Christ – The Next Offensive

Awakened in remorse
To rebuild from destruction
Recreate life’s evolution

Returning from the brutality of a Bolt Thrower show to recollect the events that defined it brings to mind the task of Ernst Junger, depicting the graphic scenes of martial violence and destruction in his soldier’s memoirs, ‘Storm of Steel’. Not merely the sounds of war and chaos, but the philosophy of death is what one has to confront on such a stage, and this sums up the depth of the Bolt Thrower experience. The great elemental gods of Britannia fired the opening salvo of the evening, unleashing a torrential downpour on the troops to be in attendance once conscripted into the dismal but still functional ULU venue, around the University College London site and home of the un-elite Utilitarian philosophy. A single flash of lightning, probably striking the Cenotaph for the war dead a few minutes away in Whitehall, would indicate that this night belonged to only one elite group, and the slowly multiplying hordes as if signalled to the venue by this storm omen, proved that the headliners were in everybody’s iron sights.

In the meantime, some fairly well-known bands would run through comparitively uninteresting sets in order to plug new albums or just an association with Bolt Thrower on this Next Offensive European tour. For the one unknown band, clearly grateful to the Coventry squadron for being able to provide opening infantry support, Ancient Ascendant took to the stage with some confidence and raged through their set infront of the minimal crowd at this time. The sound was not good and the technical setup of the venue’s sonic equipment would be a recurring issue throughout the night, usually leaving bands with an unbalanced sound. Even less impressive was Ancient Ascendant’s music, which was practically educated by the newer schools of Death Metal exclusively, sounding like a more frivolously melodic version of Bloodbath. A lot of generic rhythmic business with some predictably inserted flourishes of lead guitar lines and none of the compositional sense that at the very least ripping-off the old school Death Metal formula would have imbued the songs with by default. Even the next band, The Rotted’s only listenable song was from the older generic Gorerotted project, which is not much less moronic than The Rotted who are really damn retarded in this incarnation, with their stripped down songs consisting of one riff from a later Cryptopsy song played out as blasting Punk music. It’s also quite strange and not recommended to watch old, drugged up men performing breakdowns.

Considered by many as nothing more than a brief distraction, this was soon forgotten as the once powerful entity of Promethean Greek Black Metal took to the stage and the floor swelled with eager hordes. For someone that reveres the older fraction of their catalogue as highly as the Nordic classics, the Rotting Christ set provided both frustrating disappointment but also possibly the biggest surprise of the evening (not the appearance of Diamanda Galas). The transition from ancient Heavy Metal-inflected compositions of blackened mysticism to a boring and cheap form of fast and extreme Rock music with pseudo-cultural embellishments that would make Vangelis either laugh hysterically or summon the wrath of Mars upon Sakis and company, was made quite some time ago when the band sold out to Century Media and although the recent jump to Season of Mist has only marginally improved the quality of their music, the bulk of their songs is blockheaded rhythmic work that wouldn’t sound out of place on a System of a Down joke and disembodied keyboards typical of mainstream Black Metal bands to accompany the minute flickerings of nostalgia that is the signature Rotting Christ melodic style, the same tactic used by fellow Greeks, Septicflesh. Within this disastrous but obviously crowd-pleasing selection of tracks was something quite unexpected given the current direction of the band and their most recent live performances. Almost as though the old spirit of Necromayhem broke free from his sealed confines, the band launched mercilessly into ‘Sign of Evil Existence’, flooding the crowd with a sea of beautiful, extended phrasal work, causing an absolute frenzy and evoking the first old school invocations of the night. Not content with such a brief introduction to arguably the pinnacle of their early discography, ‘Fgmenth, Thy Gift’ continued the magic of ‘Thy Mighty Contract’ with the folky but regal opening riff surging into those magestic, ascendant patterns of guitar. The higher register key of these older songs manipulated the flatness of the sound setup brilliantly, with every note perfectly audible and a memorable contender for song of the entire show.

Benediction were next on stage, an aging group of Death Metal punks fronted by Dave Hunt of Anaal Nathrakh, Mistress and Never Mind the Buzzcocks fame, who nearly talks as much shit on stage as Barney Greenway, including an embarrassing appeasement of some girl’s sob story about a now deceased Benediction fan, thankfully met with a shout of ‘Only death is real’ from the front of the crowd. The set itself was a typically reliable collection of songs spanning most of their discography, better suiting the live environment than on CD, inducing as much violence from the crowd as their primitive, bouncy Death Metal can, like ‘Harmony Corruption’-era Napalm Death meeting ‘Tower of Spite’ by Cerebral Fix. It wasn’t much of a loss to have a guitar cut out during their stint, as the rest of the band seemed to push onwards, building up as much aggression as possible and justifying their placement on the bill, though it was huge relief to hear the end of Benediction at long last, for the lights to dim and the next offensive to commence proper.

Anticipation was immense for the legendary Grindcore/Death Metal ensemble and the battle hordes pushed forward like a scene from Braveheart, rivalling the force of a 90,000 strong audience gravitating towards the celebrity status of Metallica. Faint sounds of approaching war lingered from the amps over the field as Bolt Thrower finally took to the stage and launched straight into the sombre yet mammoth opening riff to ‘IVth Crusade’. The deliberate, sinister pacing of the double bass began to roll through and the crowd imploded into deadly chaos and aggressive force. As bodies began raining from the skies like mortar fire, crushing necks and leaving temporary indents of fallen victims, the atmosphere became thick with the smell of blood, sweat and the disturbing fragrances of shampoo. A large bulk of the set consisted of tracks from the last album but these were all delivered with enough power and rousing, anthemic vigour to blend seamlessly with the more skillful dynamics and evocative melodies of the older songs, from the brilliant rendition of ‘World Eater’ into ‘Cenotaph’ to the unforgettable lead guitars of ‘…For Victory’. Bolt Thrower commanded the crowd, Karl Willets looked like a war-torn veteran but still yet to be tamed as the ferocity of his vocals didn’t let up for an instant. Jo-Anne Bench is undoubtedly the most menacing female presence in the entire Metal scene, and the poorly balanced sound worked well to render the songs with more bassy fury than can be heard on record. The subtle rhythmic variations of Baz’s guitars on the other hand were not as discernable, but for a seemingly undiscerning crowd, this did nothing to quell the primal violence that tore bones asunder in a ritual of combat replication. The signature riffs were also fairly muted but managed to somehow shine through like the sun between Afghan mountain peaks, and as the band returned for an encore, the perfect choice of songs scorched the stage like a vast napalm attack, with the ominous theme of ‘War’ transforming into ‘Remembrance’ as though the sorrows of Arjuna had been cast aside as he takes to the empty plains of Kurukshetra, seeing the world as it is.

Even as the band exited, the feelings of confrontation and pugilism reigned as brawls ensued and battered humans walked out to count their wounds. The show proved how bands such as Bolt Thrower who retain their integrity, remain possessed by this same eternal process of nature’s evolution and deliver like a well-trained soldier, with precision and consistency will rule for the longest time. We will remember them.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Cadaver – …In Pains

The progressive death metal of Cadaver fulfils itself here in an aesthetically compact, streamlined form that is the best of the style. American styles are clearly a strong influence, with the structural and compositional narrative having the same quality of Death’s ‘Spiritual Healing‘, with phrasings and modes highly reminiscent of the dissonant, staccato heavy riffwork of Prong‘s ‘Beg To Differ’. Occasional basswork that is reminiscent of light, lounge jazz music enhances the eclectic appeal of ’In Pains…’, giving an insight into what ‘Symphonies Of Sickness‘ or ‘Severed Survival‘ could have resembled given David Lynch‘s or David Cronenberg‘s taste for absurd, psychological and physical horror, albeit transferred into a less visual format, or what Cronenburg himself would term as music “from the point of view of the disease”. Much like the early work of fellow Germanics At The Gates and Atrocity, the lyrical and musical concepts concern themes of psychological, emotional distress that bring the most chaotic, despairing moments of Knut Hamsun’s ‘Hunger‘ or Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime And Punishment‘, translated into a modern soundtrack, an opus for the darker recesses of the human condition.

An ennead of terrifying visions – classic EP’s of Death Metal

This series of reviews shows the infectious potential of condensing the multidimensional texture of darkness and mythology into a carefully trimmed brief explosion with no room for filler or long, meaningless passages of droning, experimentation or interludes. Those who mastered the art of the metal EP or mini-LP are rare, but deserve all the more credit for their achievements. The fact that you can listen to everything we have here easily within the space of one evening does not mean that the unlocked experiences won’t stay with you forever.

Slayer – Haunting The Chapel

Showing a strong advancement in technique and an evolution towards a darker style that would be the staple of records to come by the band, Slayer throw off the camp shackles of their excellent first album, and give a more progressive approach to songcraft yet give more emphasis on repetition within individual riffs. The violent droning guitar timbre of Discharge makes itself ever more present whilst the musical language of Judas Priest and Angel Witch works itself within those patterns. The dissonant twin soloing of King and Hanneman is more suitable to this new direction also, whilst Lombardo’s aggressive battery finds more cohesion in using less variation and being more of an ambient backdrop than before, with Araya’s unmistakable rasp encoding itself sadistically within the depths. A bleak affair that summed up the apocalyptic meanderings of the speed metal movement and the embryonic beginnings of the death metal that was yet to manifest. -Pearson

Napalm Death – Mentally Murdered

This work is like a convergence of Napalm Death and Carcass, having left ‘From Enslavement to Obliteration’ and ‘Reek or Putrefaction’ behind in order to expand on their styles, towards ‘Harmony Corruption’ and ‘Symphonies of Sickness’ respectively. By Napalm’s standards, at this point in their discography, these songs are quite lengthy and structured with an attention to detail that recaptures the subtle shifts in mechanical motion of the earliest side to ‘Scum’. This technique is re-invigorated by the cleaner production, relegating the extremity of fuzzy bass for the sake of a twin-guitar assault that creates an hypnotic and delusional sensation, and shows the input of Jesse Pintado who would go on to record another highly influential work of Grindcore – Terrorizer’s ‘World Downfall’. Composition is practically freed at very the earliest moments of songs onwards, unlike previous Napalm Death albums where these parts were used to establish exactly which single riff will become immersed in a barely discernable anarchic explosion for the rest of the 30 seconds of music. Instead, it’s given a more Death Metal treatment, e.g. in ‘The Missing Link’, the opening riff seems to degrade over time into smaller grinding patterns until the fragments are juggled like sacks of meat by morbid Death Metal riffs. This is where some of the tremelo melodies that would tear through the rotten wall of sound of Carcass finds its place, accompanied by the mocking lead guitars of Bill Steer. The human tornado, Mick Harris is even more precise than his previous effort, but doesn’t lose any of his epithet’s justification. Lee Dorrian’s vocals become more guttural and undecypherable, conceding to the futility of mainstream political discussion. The seeds of an approach closer in line with the burgeoning interest in Death Metal were sown here, simultaneously taking Grindcore one step further away from reaching the dead-end of short and simplistic outbursts of truncated riffs and hollow statements. -ObscuraHessian

Rotting Christ – Passage to Arcturo

Warm, playful and overflowing with the abundance of inspiration in the rediscovery of ancient shamanic techniques of mystical metal creation, the Greek pioneers of Rotting Christ forsook the aggravated modern noise of grindcore in time to ride the wave of blackness that usurped the European metal underground. Remnants and glimpses of 80’s fast modern metal (Slayer) give way to an astral, luminous intensity of synthesizers and slowly picked melodies that suspend the themes for a moment to enable the mind to stop wandering and relish the unholy moment of concentration, in a yogic gesture of blackness. Few have ever used the crushing sonic world of black and death metal to so fully immerse in ethereal ritual, and such rare examples as “Drawing Down the Moon” preserve plenty of subtle reminders to this widely heard classic of European black metal. As their chaotic exhortations in countless zines of the period conclude, Rotting Christ’s hybrid of gothic and black metal aimed for an architecture of the infinite, regal sunsets of lost kingdoms whose landscapes are not for the eyes of mortals, except in dreams and in death. As “Forest of N’Gai” aptly proves, black metal was at its height when not contorted to fit the schemes of a political ideology or an orthodox Satanist movement, but like the great works of literature a realm of fantasy of its own whose symbols are rooted in our deepest unconscious fears and desires. This sub-space can then be used by the analytical mind to figure the patterns of generation for a multitude of creative, even lunatic, concepts. -Devamitra

At the Gates – Gardens of Grief

The original Gothenburg gloomy melody cult made one of their strongest statements on this early EP, pressed from demo to vinyl on the first year of the band’s existence. Fresh from life disrespecting bands such as Infestation and Grotesque, these Swedes nail the most desperate guitar harmonies since Candlemass, but infect them with the viral sensibility of a flux of death current. As if plugging the Sunlight Studios into your brains in direct interface, Svensson’s tremolos rip and rend mercilessly apart the soul of the beast that dared expose its true feelings of living in a world of hypocrisy and uncertainty. The band has preserved the most fragile moment of the Swedish death metal underground, the precarious balance between the catatonic psychosis of headbanging under alcoholic influence and the deep, burning, thoughtful soul of an encrypted Romantic in a world of pain and disguised memories. It all takes such tangible form in Tomas Lindberg’s cracking, maddened scream: “I am at the gates – Lord of Chaos – Let me sleep”. The fear and anger of At the Gates’ most revered albums will always remain something that divides audiences according to their response to such emotional cues, but “Gardens of Grief” is the un-terrorized, exuberant sound of youth that realizes the presence of death and dives into it headlong, appropriate to the Per Ohlin dedication in the liner notes. -Devamitra

Wings – Thorns On Thy Oaken Throne

An all too brief EP from Finnish gloomophiliacs Wings, as ephemeral as the tortured existence that is enshrouded in these twisted sounds of darkness-raped melody. Almost like the missing tracks from Cartilage’s cult classic ‘The Fragile Concept of Affection’, this continuation goes further to explore the sombre moods of songs like ‘Why Do I Watch The Dawn?’, in their Replicant-like reflections upon the transience of a human existence placed between the crushing, vice-grip of nothingness. Wings don’t peturb the balance of pace of slower, more expansive lakes of hypnotic melody that made up Cartilage’s contribution to their split with Altar, but there is greater focus on creating a doomier atmosphere, leaving no space for the grinding riffs of the past incarnation – a technique that parrelleled the Swedish Unleashed on their first album. Instead, an older treatment is given to the bouncier riffs, which could be heard as Punkier passages, but as this EP comes together as a whole to reveal, these bridge the narrative that seems to span across both songs with a mid-pace tempo in which the drawn out melodies pass through towards an expressive, quite neoclassical riff of totality – encompassing all the hopes that are weighed down by all the sorrows in the journey towards death. This poem in two parts is a valuable recording of Death Metal history, as a valid direction for these Finnish musicians to have taken following the demise of Cartilage, with all their weird melodic knowledge as baggage. -ObscuraHessian

Sacramentum – Finis Malorum

A true gem, Sacramentum’s first EP showcases a style that is melodic and emotive in a manner not unlike countrymen Dissection and Unanimated. Epic, catchy and well crafted compositions are multi-layered not unlike Emperor minus keyboards, the rush of guitar notes being vibrant and lively, with little emphasis towards a rhythmic expectation, as one would expect with most heavy metal and hard rock music. Simultaneously moody yet without being whiny, this early release by Sacramentum showcases a band who are able to master quality control and bring the best out of all the elements that define their music. Alongside At The Gates, artistically the finest Swedish metal act of the 1990′s. -Pearson

Zyklon-B – Blood Must Be Shed

Fast, raging black metal with the fury of early Deicide and the sharp harmonizing typical of Mayhem and Immortal’s ‘Pure Holocaust’ come head to head, in the guise of technically precise, abrupt songs. Shouty hardcore vocals, warm synth overlaps, a near constant blastbeat and anti-humanist lyrical concepts indicate a desire by known Norwegian musicians to advance the aggression of the black metal style and shift it’s idealogical focus away from romantic nostalgia. This brief E.P. lacks the spark of Norway’s foundational acts, but remains an influential statement of the subgenre. -Pearson

Vulpecula – Fons Immortalis

Who would have expected Chuck Keller to open the gates to very Orion itself after the folding of the aggressor squad par excellence Order from Chaos? As if a continuation of the promise of the astrological and alchemistic symbolism of the former bands’ lyrics, Vulpecula slows it down and strums soothing, yet vigorous melodies while the vocals multiple into wraith-like dimensions of rhythmic rasps and Keller’s leads occasionally burst into the aggressive, spasmous flight of an eagle amidst a thunderstorm. “Phoenix of the Creation” delves into exercises in authentic space synth, while “The First Point of Aries” harkens to the mid-paced woodland meditations that the Norwegians used to record at Grieghallen. Occasionally slightly hindered by the band’s eagerness to cram all the influences from Schulze to black metal into one short EP, the mere richness of it invites the ears to take their pleasure at will from the Babylonian garden of ponderous and prestigious movements that are achingly attractive and acceptable in their innocent refusal to complicate things with dissonance. Credit also goes for the lead guitar efforts of Keller on their traditional melodious injection which easily avoids the neutrality of more pop oriented bands trying to do the same. Almost like envisioning a “new age” approach to the genre, Vulpecula is an alien saucer amidst the orbit bound technologies of “progressive” death metal. -Devamitra

Divine Eve – Vengeful and Obstinate

The first new release that’s being reviewed for 2010 and it’s already giving distinct impressions of the kind of quality that made 1993′s ‘As the Angels Weep’ a genuinely classic EP. Divine Eve keeps the form of this new material far simpler, stripping away the Death Metal-infected sludginess for a more rudimentary homage to early brutal music like Celtic Frost. ‘Vengeful and Obstinate’ makes its own unique statement by honing in on the nihilistic and warlike spirit of the Swiss legend’s ‘To Mega Therion’ magnum opus, even invoking the same battle-horns on ‘Ravages of Heathen Men’ that bring focus to the beauty of conflict and strife in a meaningless universe. The varied tempo of grinding riffs set to a dirty bass guitar adds to the atmosphere of struggle as an outlet for this primitive, instinctual response to the world. ‘Whispers of Fire’ being the exception on this EP for the constantly up-tempo pace, it’s a pleasure to hear such slow and sludgy music churning visions of the darker universe beyond our lives of comfort and languish. The final and most devastating touch of ‘Vengeful and Obstinate’ is how Divine Eve makes extensive use of the piercing tone that Xan’s grating guitar setup produces, highlighting the spiral passage of powerchords by revealing their hidden, melodic architecture, ingenuiously managing to explain and enhance this rugged approach of legendary lineage. It’s about time the band produced a full-length and they’ve proved that they possess more than enough knowledge of unholy riffcraft to do so. -ObscuraHessian

Morgue Supplier – Constant Negative

If you visualize the modern death metal genre as a knightly tournament with splendid banners adorning the tents of the contestants on an ancient Briton field, you can’t escape the prominence of the progressive camp espoused by Necrophagist and the obscure evil camp belonging to hairy South Americans and occult woodland Finns. Then there are the loved and the hated “brutals”. The unfortunate Morgue Supplier goes all the way to the leaden territory of mechanized grindcore, brutal blastbeat and convulsive gore that is best epitomized by Cryptopsy’s and Cannibal Corpse’s groundbreaking albums “Blasphemy Made Flesh” and “The Bleeding” (or your favorite other pick from that mostly dubious discography). The speed is astounding, the songs careen through slashes of riffs like the beak of a vulture on the prowl, injecting pinch harmonics into mono chord chug while vocals are the dual growl-and-shriek statement we have heard enough times in this beaten substyle. A couple of minor gems arise though. The cover version of Metallica’s “Fight Fire By Fire” is an entertaining lecture on the genealogy of early speed metal and how it almost by itself mutates to something close to Possessed or Sepultura if played with intensity, distortion and malevolent speeds. On the side, the title track “Constant Negative” has a smudged enough texture to operate as a chasm of interlocking layers similar to Gorguts’ fusionesque work on the mighty “Obscura”. Perhaps a hint where brutal death metal might develop if given enough care and attention? I personally could do without the mosh parts, but those who were disappointed by the wimping out of Cryptopsy should perhaps check this release out.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Amorphis – The Karelian Isthmus

From the frozen battlefields of southeastern Finland to the misty moors where Britons quested for the secrets of war and mystic revelation, Amorphis have reaped imagery and values of better times to update their EP’s grooving Carcass influenced style to something epic and everlasting in scope. In its blue-eyed skepticism towards modern values, replacing social democracy with sons of kings scouring the nightly landscape by torchlight, I envision it as the soundtrack to the fortress island of Sveaborg, the domain of drunken death metal teenagers much like Tunnelbana subway tunnels were in Stockholm. Mostly paced like a battle march, the similarities to our previous album of the week, “War Master”, are more than co-incidental. Overall heaviness is somewhat sacrificed on behalf of a somber mood of wanderlust, but the simpler folk oriented pieces are well balanced by tracks borrowed from the band’s earliest releases and even the former incarnation Abhorrence, which could receive the credit for being the first Finnish death metal band pressed to black vinyl. Familiar, even comfortable, Swedish production, courtesy of Mr. Skogsberg, encases “The Karelian Isthmus” in a growling precision of steel, where leads and riffs neither screech nor howl but form symmetrical patterns like Celtic decoration. Iron Maiden influences abound in heroic themes showing the precision and excitement of nowadays-semi-guitar-hero Esa Holopainen in discovering the magic of abyssal neoclassicism.

Despite being an introductory, essential piece of death metal for many of my generation and ethnicity, the album has since been forgotten in the shadows of the more mainstream releases by this band, that despite unleashing a torrent of “progressive” melodies, forgot how to create the militant spells of heavy guitars and impeccable pacing, which contributed much more to the evocation of “Kalevalan” atmospheres than borrowing the poetry itself for lyrics and using mundane beauty in pop cliches as an attractor of business and popularity. The only minor gripe would be that this work does contain traces of the lightweight, subdued and escapist tendency to fill gaps with cute melodies and make friends through heavy metal influences; something that leads to the massively popular but somehow, irritatingly inconsequential, series of absolutely alike discs from Amon Amarth and Hypocrisy when not executed as elegantly as herein. Like Unleashed‘s early work, it creates “pagan metal” before the idea was called such, before it was possible to “do” pagan metal and it consequently became just another clique. It bestows an earthen heaviness reminiscent of life in tribal early civilizations.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Pathologist – Grinding Opus of Forensic Medical Problems

The memory of early 90′s underground Metal from the Czech Republic is dominated by an elite who channelled a uniquely primitive Black Metal style, best represented by bands such as Törr, Root, Master’s Hammer and later, Maniac Butcher. Other than the mighty Krabathor, not as many Death Metal bands were able to leave such a distinct impression upon the Czech soil as it turned from red to velvet. Spending some time in Prague recently was a great opportunity for listening to one of those forgotten death-cults, Pathologist – who reformed not too long ago. Although this band is easily identifiable as the spawn of Carcass, with ‘Grinding Opus of Forensic Medical Problems’, they offer a unique insight into this strand of Death Metal. If their first album can be placed between the style of ‘Reek of Putrefaction’ and ‘Symphonies of Sickness’, this second offering is more like a surgically-repaired synthesis of ‘Symphonies…’ and ‘Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious’. What’s interesting is not how Pathologist bear all the hallmarks of these highly influential albums faithfully and before it was quite as trendy to do so, but in the fine-tuning of these elements to convey a more philosophical approach than the immanent implications of Carcass’ humourous fixation on death and gore, and their twisted riffwork, now well established in the Death Metal musical language. As a result, this album resumes the course of Carcass’ early albums, taking them to their logical conclusion: expressing a Zen-like acceptance of death.

Guitars and bass combine to re-create that deep and muddy exhumation of distorted sound, yet each riff is crisply executed like a detached, Buddhist monk methodically dismembering decomposing corpses. Transitions between riffs are also more clear-cut, borrowing from the bouncier pacing of ‘Necroticism…’, but discarding all the novelty of trying to fit in with demand for a cleaner way of playing Death Metal. Instead, the processes of disease and post-mortis are illustrated with aural space – almost brief silence – for contemplating the mutations of brutal, recursive, grinding themes unfolding into complex and virulent riffs of decay. Infact, none of this is at all typical for such a Grind-heavy album, complete with obligatory cymbal-veiled blastbeats and inhumanly low, gargled vocals closer to Demilich’s Boman than any other Death Metal recording of the time. But for a band who have managed to grasp these inherited intricacies in such a way, this is an ultimate statement of death as our destiny, which must be accepted rather than distracted from.

October 22th & 24th, 2009 – Calling of the Satanachian Storms

Hellfires were set loose in Helsinki, Finland last weekend by a horde of black metal maniacs from all over the Earth. Profanation, an intangible feeling of myth, alignment of spirits, pervaded the atmosphere. Let me remind you that while the gig situation concerning underground black and death metal in Finland is rich and fertile, every so-called cult band appearing on stage is no longer going to change anyone’s life to something more mysterious and powerful. Maybe the younger audience sees the matter differently, but I believe they are becoming jaded also. This weekend was something different however. The main event was the 2-day Black Flames of Blasphemy fest, on 23rd and 24th, the Friday night featuring Taake and Horna, among others, but I wasn’t attending, on one hand because of a lack of interest regarding the bands, on the other because I could use one spare night between the “pre-party” on 22th (aptly called “Unholy Night to Remember”) and the Saturday explosion featuring bands of the caliber of Blasphemy and Revenge from Canada.

The dark side of Finland
So, it all started on a rainy and windy Thursday night, in a small Helsinki pub called Darkside which I had only visited once before, when it was empty. No-one was expecting a large crowd because normal people would have jobs and studies to attend to, but the place was crowded and intense. Demonos of Barathrum, the drunken bastard, was shouting at the doorman and people were consuming beer like it was the eve of ragnarók. In that one room of a few hundred cubic meters had been compressed all the dreams and neuroses of Finnish black metal since its very beginning. Even Pete Helmkamp came around to see for himself what the fuck was going on. Ofdoom, a Blasphemy clone from Hamina whose members are barely 18 years old, played a reasonably aggressive set of uncannily familiar sounding songs. I am thankful that at least the cover song choice was “Christ’s Death” by Sarcofago instead of something from the war metal scene. Many of the old school maniacs I met applauded the energy and sincerity these young guys brought to the evening. However, I was more thrilled by the Goatmoon set that saw the audience become a rioting mass of fists and headbanging. The garage punks of Finnish black metal, Goatmoon unleashed a set of familiar songs from their albums mostly resembling a triumphantly melodic cross of Dimmu Borgir demos and Absurd, not to mention an enormously provocative cover from Finnish RAC band Mistreat.

But the real reason why everybody was there that night, the crux of all the anticipation and nervous violence was the return of the infamous Azazel on stage, an early Finnish black metal coven lost to annals of history but fondly remembered by everyone who breathed the air of 90′s Finland, when worship of darkness was still pure and cold… clad in spikes. Stories about Azazel and their infamous frontman Lord Satanachia are equivalent to an inverted saga, one of madness and devotion. For a decade the band was forgotten until suddenly it seemed to have reformed in alliance with some members from young occult metal band Charnel Winds. It all seemed unbelievable and to see it with one’s own eyes… triumph!

It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that an Azazel gig might prove to be a disaster, in normal sense. Enveloped in the mists and throes of an ancient curse, the guitarist’s malfunctioning equipment threw the disorganized band from the brink of a metaphorical cliff into the abyss, to be carried upon the wings of Death. While Demonos threw himself from the audience into the stage in an alcoholic spasm, wires were torn, microphones were ripped and fists started flying. Part of the equipment was mute, the rhythm section was confused and Satanachia’s croaks were barely audible chants and incantations of demonic names. A morbid pall descended upon Helsinki. In anti-arranged structures of primitive, broken black metal, Azazel mocked everything and everyone. Brilliant and beautiful riffs, performed at variable and confused speeds, interlocked with rhythms and blasts whose randomness remained cryptically problematic. No-one knew if the songs are actually like this or have all the members gone insane. The most sensitive part of the crowd was devastated and ultimately impressed. Others were bored and drunk. Enough said about that evening except that I doubted even Saturday can give a more authentic black metal experience, because for the rest of the night and the next day, Azazel’s psychosis was still deeply within my heart.

The church of blasphemy
Saturday night was again cloaked in the weather of Jack the Ripper’s London. Through the rain we approached the ominously titled Dante’s Highlight, converted from an old church on whose steps Mannerheim and Hitler had shaken hands in a pact of war. It served as a normal nightclub until a few years ago it became one of the prominent metal bars of Helsinki. We have no knowledge how much blasphemous intent influenced its current use, but it was something to see candles and torches lighting the altar (stage), bestowing a comforting, cavernous gleam upon the high ceiling and reflecting from the chain-wrapped wooden posts adorned with gasmasks. The gig organizers par excellence Kold Reso Kvlt had taken lots of care in making this event perfect, as it was also the destination of a veritable exodus of German, French, Italian and other foreign black and death metal fans.

Proclamation from Spain launched into formally perfect, yet somehow vague and heartless Blasphemy aping primitive death metallic sounds and while the gig was technically the dream of your standard NWN forum fan, it raised apprehension that this is going to be an evening where every band sounds the same and everyone plays a Blasphemy cover! There was still some space to move around the building but despite three floors, it was rapidly becoming claustrophobic and difficult to breathe. The gig had been sold out ages ago. Black Witchery from Florida, USA, specialized in repetitive high speed exercise of redundant riffs, which despite its great marketing value to black metal consumers lacks the spiritual depth and intellectual convolution of the high masters of the genre. To anyone who has heard a Black Witchery album or two it was easy to guess what the gig is all about and for their fans, they probably did deliver the goods. I liked a few of the atonal, destructive, confusional parts that reminded me of the greatness of the Australian disbanded legend Bestial Warlust.

By the time the third band, Archgoat from Turku, Finland, commenced their set, the full force of the Finnish metal scene had already coalesced upon the building and for anyone who knows people or is known himself, much time and attention had to be spent on greetings, handshakes, throwing the horns, mock fighting and the like. However, the atmosphere was also rapidly gaining a more intense, expectant and noxious odour. Screams, blood and bursts of madness spattered the overcrowded club. Between pockets of peace, chaos reigned, the passing of souls from one layer of Hell to another, brother and enemy united in prayers of profanation. While for some people the grinding, organic and physical malevolence of Archgoat marked their best gig ever, I say the 2005 comeback gig after a decade of silence still holds the scepter. Heavily influenced by VON and Sarcofago, Archgoat was the first band of the evening to capture a cold, theatrical melody and frame the counterpoints of primitive death metal riffs with heavy, well placed doom. It was the only performance of the evening whose spine was not hardened by monotonous speed. Instead, it slithered up the walls like a serpent of abomination.

Nature’s revenge
Amidst beer, guts and blood, headbanging Italians and Finns going mad over the controversies and abstractions of the night’s leading band (“Are Blasphemy real, do they really exist?” “Is that negro over there Caller of the Storms?”) everyone who was ever famous in Finnish black metal walked entranced amidst the crowd, as one with the spiritually dead. Black metal skinheads went out for a smoke and traded with kebab and banana merchants around the corner. Someone’s face was fisted and another got a kiss from a new girl.

Revenge, the Canadian commando force, was for some members of the audience the main event to witness here and for a good reason. By the unholy candles’ light, between the walls built to serve God, James Read attacked the drumkit like a voodoo priest releasing magick vapours of steaming ether, in a sharp and fluid tribute to grindcore percussion masters. In a battle position, in the attire of a right wing street fighter, Helmkamp’s fingers tore thrash influenced phrases from the trusty bass guitar as he used to do already decades ago in Order from Chaos, while his sharp intonation revealed the lyrics be less a narration, more a ritual chant of words whose meaning and connotation have been obvious to warriors for millennia: “traitor”, “victory”, “blood”, “conquest”, “force”, “survival”. The robotic, inhumanly precise ability of the three musicians to control chaos resulted in the most impressive technical display of the evening. It caused uncertainty and fear. What can even the mighty Blasphemy do after this 100-percent martial art display of perfect war metal kata forms?

Luckily we didn’t need to wait very long until Black Winds and co. gave us the answer. As a storm of the angels of apocalypse and doom, this noisy but influential group of Canadians were far from any kind of perfection in their music. They appeared as in constant battle, a crackling terror of violent audial force, ripping and rending the soundscape of world without end. Dramatic and physical, it seemed as if the walls are about to collapse. Black Winds seemed at times lost, at others frenzied and focused. Strong war screams arose from his throat in defiance to heavens. Caller of the Storms didn’t play his guitar, he molested its corpse. A gargantuan sized session bassist filled the forefront and provided background vocals. Ryan Förster of Conqueror played second guitar wearing a gasmask. Original drummer 3 Black Hearts of Damnation and Impurity pulsed, leaped and attacked with his beats as lightning that strikes amidst a raging storm. It wouldn’t be correct to say the band was in top form, or something. The band was a force of nature, a mission of war that happened on stage. It didn’t compete with the musical precision and finesse of Revenge. It maimed the listeners with its droning and anti-sacred frequencies into submission, obeisance and ultimately an intuitive sense of the laws of nature. Cosmos, life, nature is about war. That’s what war metal and Blasphemy is about. The order of things, as it is, revealed in chaos. The highest principle of art, which is truth. Rarely, in years of seeing the finest of the bands perform on stage, have I been filled with such a calm, inspired joy as in the midst of this night’s rendition of “War Command”.

Thus, I have witnessed two of the finest evenings of black metal this year. I give my highest and sincere thanks to individuals who year after year, day after day, spend their attention and hard work to organize cultural events of the highest magnitude, even while they will never be as celebrated for their work as even mediocre bands are. Flyers and ads already promise interesting happenings for next year, so for now, I still very much enjoy living in this Northern land of bloody lakes and corpse-strewn woods!