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Death Metal Album of the Week: Immolation – Unholy Cult

For most death metallers, evil is not spread at the behest of a paranormal entity lurking beyond the horizon, demonic possession or a tempter, but instead there is a devious core of man’s unawareness, parasitic tendency and “blind leading the blind”, leading society to a vicious circle of uncaring mutants annihilating each other through various games and contrivances of modern culture, seen as necessities. Immolation, one of the most skillful yet direct conjurers of death metal art, organized “Unholy Cult” as a series of statements in man’s capacity to evil and the existentialist oblivion in realizing God’s falsehood, because despite the possible existence of transcendental unity the hypocrite “cults” of man wreck the vision into a disturbed dualism. Rarely has death metal sounded as subtle and smooth, yet nerve tingling, as the best line-up the band ever had utilizes its effortless sense of dynamics to “groove in” an approaching storm of apocalypse with subdued counter-rhythm of Hernandez against the dissonant riff, something their obvious modern copycats Deathspell Omega often fail to do because of flawed pacing. Distinct from “Close to a World Below” in fist-pumping doom and black metallic blastbeats interjecting the symphony of diminished intervals, making this probably the first step in the gradual descent of Immolation to “meet their audience”; however here the impression is not pandering at all but perfectly persuasive slithering of a mind-virus that awakens the listener to a moment of tumult realizing retroactively about five minutes of mental build-up having led to an indescribably intense resolution of themes akin to a musical Nibbāna where the tenets of both light and dark are annihilated in a moment of musical nihilism. As is shockingly customary for Dolan, Vigna and company, the songs are riddles and glyphs requiring a reasonable effort from the part of the listener to decipher and actually recombine the parts of the song in one’s mind and through the puzzle man is led to realize an impossible paradox of nature: evil as part of, yet beyond, theology. If blasphemous metal was ever made into a mental exercise, “Unholy Cult” is the crystallized moment of it.

Three faces of Satan seen over Texas – Sermons of obliquity and madness

Black Funeral – Vukolak

Keeping it true to its Luciferian chameleon nature, this ancient Texan conceptual black metal band has toiled its share in obscurity, being denigrated in the eyes of music-minded people while being praised by unhallowed souls who seek an ever more frightening vision of darkness inside this elusive style prone to normalization. The heavy shades of musical history, conservationist mindset and appraisal of beauty that characterize Texan metal such as Absu is hardly in line with the distorted, belligerent and insensitive provocations of Houston’s Black Funeral. Key moments from the sadistic noise of “Vukolak” are hardly recognizable as black metal, instead taking the most psychotic element of the lo-fi ethos to unparalleled heights, directed only by the quest to unveil another mythical night creature (the Eastern European merciless forest beast vukolak), one of the mutations in a long series of albums dedicated to beings from the nether, shut out from the conscious mind of man but existing in dreams and irrational impulses. As a practical magician, Nachtoter is fully aware of the potency of a wedding between symbolic sound and a haunting tale that has tortured the minds of a people of a hundred generations. While doing this, he is sure to alienate a good ninety percent of even black metal devotees, unless the constantly maiming and shifting abstraction he calls composition at this point is attractive to attention seekers; at surface it would seem only murderers and madmen dare listen to his insane conjuration, despite moments of traditional medieval beauty in the well-placed interludes “Sanctum Wamphyri” and “Wolfskin Essence”. Mr. Ford remains a master, not so much in musical skill (which sometimes seems to deteriorate over time) or literate esotericism (where he is convoluted and counterintuitive), but of bringing alive an ancient dark myth framed in subtle psychic terror.

Hod – Serpent

Remembering the true-as-fuck black metal violence of Thornspawn demo from more than one decade ago, likewise the pulsating anti-music corruption of satirical Rehtaf Ruo, it was with some excitement that I picked up this promo from San Antonio’s supergroup, expecting a manifestation of the infamous “Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child” fest before my eyes in the form of fire-breathing succubi and inverted cross timpani encased in malevolent crystalline forcefields, but instead I got this slab of adequate, grooving, hate-filled black metal somewhere between the rhythmic energy of Averse Sefira and the easy solutions used by Satyricon to nauseating effects. The emphasis is on constructing the song out of simple, fiery riffs which are memetic enough to adapt themselves alike to a blastbeat or a churning Hellhammer pound, but the deceit comes across in the fact that the album in its whole chooses to explore neither direction, but grinds along at mostly mid-pace, like someone trying to look tough while walking in front of a church and shouting “are you talking to me?” at God. Likeable elements are a plenty, such as the moments when a hardcore influenced three chord riff bursts into an atonal pattern underpinned by an expert rhythm on drums while the cleverly restrained hoarse voice arrangement emphasizes tension instead of drama, making it easier to concentrate on the fragile atmosphere resurgent in the Christ-opposing ideas at play. Hod’s metal seems quite honest in purpose and recognizably Texan, mostly being cursed by Blood Storm’s and Divine Eve’s better takes on similar influence and subject matter. But the content that is simultaneously grounded and packaged, like the automated output of the Swedish scene, unfortunately makes “Serpent” sparsely appear in memory or in record player.

Blaspherian – Allegiance to the Will of Damnation

Heavy and pounding constantly almost like an old Manowar song has been transposed to the symbols of a Texan death metal notebook, the abilities of Wes Weaver in conjuring an evil sabbath of languid subversive black metal bliss are proven a second time; the first was, of course, Imprecation’s semi-classic “Theurgia Goetia Summa” one and a half decades ago. Absolutely unwavering, panzer-like in insistence, Blaspherian weaves slow melodies and processional passages of chords together mimicking funeral organ alternately on rhythmic chugs over slow double bass and tremolo runs giving slight nods to both Necrovore and Goatlord, always keeping to some ideal of profane serene moonlit beauty in the symmetry and progressive elegance with which this basically simple music unfolds, notable being for example the surprising tempi and energetic tension of “Curse His Name”. What is to be applauded is that Blaspherian takes absolutely no filler into this tight mini-album where it would have been easy to recombine for endless tedium. If a more critical angle is required, it’s possible to say that melodic possibilities and thematic spheres aren’t quite yet expanded on this debuting work; the epic aerial elegance of keyboards in “Theurgia Goetia Summa” for example has no counterpart on “Allegiance to the Will of Damnation”, which on the other hand benefits from the ascesis of the sound, conjuring to mind images of barren mountaintops where witches gather to dance under the stars, amidst shrubberies, and pay heed to the commands of Lord Baphomet who guides the anti-social in the harmonic ways of nature forgotten by a society occupied with trading trivial goods and vain honours. In such a situation it is obviously better to live in shame and obscurity. By this logic Blaspherian remains elité, even if they are and remain unnoticed by the majority of those who profess listening to death metal or black metal, for the benefit of cowards.

Pestilence – Malleus Maleficarum

I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the seven living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on Conquest. – Revelation 6: 1-2

Summoned forth to rage fury upon the unsuspecting but no less innocent, Pestilence, on each of their first three albums ushered in a predestined Apocalypse of the mind and struck at the heart of the dark forces of the Kali Yuga thereby completing their microcosmic responsibility as “Kalki”and providing the foundation upon which a new golden age and conciousness would hopefully arise. On their uncompromising and frenetic debut album “Malleus Maleficarum”, Pestilence as corporeal manifestation of death and conqueror, harnessed the power of becoming to destroy the destroyer that is illusion and ignorance, and defiantly placed themselves within the torrential stream of becoming in a quest for truth. We as listeners are thus treated with no less than a passionate and structurally free form album that through its fluid, intelligent and precise use of riff craft probes and attacks on multiple fronts the lyrical themes tactfully explored by Van Drunen and Co.

Although one may be quick to argue that that the addition of socially conscious lyrical subject matter such as genetic manipulation and religious strife defines “Malleus Maleficarum” as a strict Speed Metal album, it is nonetheless better characterized as a highly refined and progressive speed metal album that straddles the death metal fence. Indeed, indicative of their speed metal roots is the common use of hysterical and staccato driven guitar technique reminiscent of bands such as Exodus, Destruction and Slayer that, coupled with an emerging yet competent sense of dynamics, melody, development and recapitulation of themes, successfully places “Malleus Maleficarum” outside the realm of pure Speed Metal and onto a pedestal of its own thus providing the impetus for not a few debates regarding the essential nature of this album. Not to be missed of course is the embryonic vocal performance of Van Drunen, who while courageously exploring the memes that have driven modern society into calling forth the forces of plague and death to precipitate the end of this current cycle of humanity, opts for a hoarse rasp like yell in contrast to the later visceral death metal growl he is better known for.

Considering the less than inspiring output Pestilence has recently spawned, it is worth recalling and meditating on the legendary albums birthed by the youthful genius of this legendary band if only to provide inspiration and the soundtrack for a new generation of Hessians who will march forth triumphantly into the dreary haze of an uncertain but exciting future. With that said “Malleus Maleficarum” remains essential listening 20 years after its initial release. Standing out as a thought provoking album of much symbolic depth it also remains an uncompromising and virile album that successfully bridges the gap between speed metal and death metal and reveals the genetic ancestor of the latter genre. Not only a dramatic album in its own right “Malleus Maleficarum” stands as an interesting historical document that should not be overlooked by any serious Hessian.

Forgotten death cults from Finland: Rippikoulu

What force in the inner core of man gives birth to death metal impulse? Is it fear, hatred, obstinence, passion, paranoia, vision or celebration of power? “Rippikoulu” is Finnish for “confirmation school”, which is an institution partaken by Finnish teenagers in order to be educated in the rituals and tenets of the Lutheran church. Celebrated usually in a camp away from the city and the participants’ homes, it ironically has a habit of devolving into a minor orgy of sin while the sole motivation of attendance for most is the hope of the meager sums of money elderly relatives usually bestow upon one, after the confirmation. When small town death metal cults produced their blasphemic demo output, it’s not far-fetched to say that it was this kind of absurd experiences with organized religion that led them to deny and spontaneously analyze the hypocritical, indoctrinating social customs that lead a child or a man to accept Christ for the sake of community and convenience, while at the same time materialistically mocking the values of the spiritual tradition.

Valkeakoski was another boring town even by Finnish standards which used to smell like feces because of the paper industry, an example of climate perfect for original death metal. At surface, the most notable characteristic of Rippikoulu was their use of Finnish language for invocation, which has often been abused but at the right hands and in the right mouth withholds the tremendous syllabic power feared by Nordic warriors since the Bronze Age, as recounted in Kalevalan mythos. The stupendous music of Rippikoulu’s two demos, “Mutaation Aiheuttama Sisäinen Mätäneminen” (“internal rotting by mutation”) and “Musta Seremonia” (“black ceremony”), bridge the grindcore influenced ecstatic physicality of Xysma with earthen, suffocated sludge in contorted, space-and-time stretching rhythmic dynamicism reminiscent of Winter‘s and diSEMBOWELMENT‘s most psychedelic lapses. It gives the impression of a blind, tormented prophet shouting fragmented glimpses of pure vision to the darkened, apocalyptic world with barely any ears left to listen to human voice amidst the collapse of industrial infrastructure. In the slow, emotional leads one could hear Paradise Lost, but in its warlike sparseness and logic, even nihilism, it’s something closer to the most doomed moments of Bolt Thrower’s “War Master” while the almost ridiculously disembodied parody of gloomy gothic organ in “Musta Seremonia” brings to mind Unholy‘s drugged haze; Faustian sorrow and blasphemous sense of humor united in one single strangely reverent and innocent package which is without question another forgotten jewel of the olden Finnish death metal scene.

Dantesco – Pagano

The challenge of creating relevant but still traditional Heavy Metal in this current age where even the most commercial face of Metal has been changed by the extremity of the underground seems to be an almost insurmountable task. The most recent efforts of mainstream veterans like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest in continuing the genre provides little in and of themselves to enthrall the masses as they did with their once advanced, Romanticist art. There are also the countless Power and Doom Metal bands that have hijacked the older forms and do so with little to none of the magic that possessed the music of the seventies and eighties. Though the secrets of the grand, old tradition have been apparently condemned to obscurity, they can never be lost and befitting the nature of lost wisdom, have turned up in the least likely of places.

Dantesco hail from the small Latin American island of Puerto Rico and through their music, divulge a rich tradition of Spanish music and highly exoteric and vibrant Catholicism. Although chronicling the triumphant Heathen soul at war with Christendom, ‘Pagano’ conjures the sounds of the immanent culture and possesses it with a bestial inflection, as the vocals of Erico that dominate this album resemble a Latin black mass arranged with the magestic sensibilities of an European opera. Infact, the vocal style is as properly operatic as imagineable in Heavy Metal music, putting the high-pitched aspirations of a Rob Halford or Messiah Marcolin in their places, though still conveying a sense of extreme primality and visceral power rivalled only by the demonic throats of Black Metal vocalists. These sermons are conducted exclusively in the native Spanish tongue, which suits the guitars incredibly well, as the melodicism of the riffs is only supplemented by the Doomy heaviness of Candlemass influence, but really crafted with Spanish classical guitars in mind. This is where the music really comes alive, before there’s any chance of hearing the vocals as just a unique ethnic gimmick to fill space with. The compositions are constantly engaging, commanding narratives the scale of the epic title-track to Iron Maiden’s ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son‘ with attention to mood dynamics often passed over in favour of an intentionally one-dimensional wallowing by other bands who play this melodic, traditional and Doomy kind of Metal. All the techniques on show have been long perfected, and more recently, have even found their way into the mallcore slang of pre-teen alternative/hard rock bands (via. Gothenburg), but fortunately, it’s all found an orderly, emotive and inspiring expression in ‘Pagano’. The tight but hyperbolic interplay of vocals and guitar is a feast for those that love to follow several strands of ancient melody at once, as if transforming the old Hispanic anthems of Mexico’s Luzbel into rousing, harmonised hymns, tempered and then unleashed to invoke the spirits of pre-Christian warriors. True Heavy Metal, fit for contemporary ears, giving the current crop of extreme-influenced Pagan and Black Metal bands a serious run for their money.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Atrocity – Todessehnsucht

Somnium timoris
Desiderum praeteritum
Maestitia praesentiae

Last week’s look at Cadaver’s mighty ‘…In Pains‘ album indicated an acute, tumultuous response to the human condition that was endured by a small number of tormented, Death Metal-playing souls during the early nineties. This largely-contained epidemic of mental afflictions very sharply scarred the minds of German band Atrocity, with their debut album, ‘Hallucinations‘ manifesting as an unrelenting commentary on the habitual ravages of the modern mind, exploring in particular one of it’s greatest banes: addiction. The music was technically inspiring, considered highly progressive in its day, and the subject matter was dark and disturbing in it’s pseudo-biographical recollections of fragility and fallibility. ‘Todessehnsucht’, the follow-up album would take both music and concept further, to create an all-encompassing opus of death and crucially, it did so on very Germanic terms. Far from being just another set of sociological observations, this work is painted on a much broader canvas, using the brushstrokes of a culturally-inspired aesthetic to illustrate something more spiritually aware.

Self-produced in Germany, far from the FLDM treatment given to ‘Hallucinations’ by Scott Burns at Morrisound Studios, Atrocity clearly had in mind to juxtapose the great past of their Fatherland with its failings under the weight of modernity. The liner notes in the booklet first prepares the listener for this journey, quoting the great pessimystic and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer‘s statement implying that the world is suffering, a view which he found to parallel Buddhistic teachings related to dukkha. A view which would enter into the music of Atrocity. Even the album’s title, translated to mean ‘Longing For Death’ (and released in America by this name) is evocative of Schopenhauer’s ascetic ideal, subduing the Will to live and halting the underlying motions that guide consciousness towards suffering. A variation of this idea develops throughout the album, from the basis that the modern world is plagued by all manner of self-absorbed and destructive vices due to a loss of spirituality (following the death of God in Nietzschean thought), but rather than withdrawing from this plane of despair to a state of solipsistic peace, Atrocity condemns and confronts it, to clear aside all the illusions that define the last age of man, ushering in a new era free from human ignorance and worldly attachment. The root of all ‘evil’ according to this worldview is not to be found in external structures like government or economy (although they serve only the mass delusion), but man’s capacity for avijja, to disconnect from reality and pursue the gratification of the ego. Hence, the rendition of Richard Wagner‘s funeral march for Siegfried from ‘Götterdämmerung‘ is not out of place on the introduction to ‘Sky Turned Red’ (as if it could be out of place on any Death Metal album!) as an epitaph to the pre-modern world, and that’s not the only influence the master of the Gesamtkunstwerk exerts on ‘Todessensucht’.

The music on this masterpiece of Death Metal seems to follow the progression of ideas in German musical thinking from the venerable Wagner to modern schools of Classical, engineering grand, articulate riffs of Wagnerian chromaticism to be compressed and transformed with mechanistic force and precision into twisted shapes of dissonance and hyper-extended fragments, referencing Arnold Schoenberg‘s emancipation of music from harmony. The guitars shred away at warped melodies and complex rhythmic patterns, technically similar to Florida bands like Cynic and Death but musically more reminiscent of Modernism, going further to evoke the nightmarish sounds of Dane Rudhyar or Bernard Herrmann, than Cadaver and possibly even Gorguts managed. This idea is explored as well by the sickening lead work of Röderer who embellishes the album with defining solos to the level that James Murphy achieved on Obituary’s ‘Cause of Death‘. Riffs often outrun standard timings and the drumming is well arranged to account for the added demands of energy or restraint. The bass is quite prominent and deviates very little from the main themes, emphasising the narrative context of the guitar riffs as they superimpose the restless dynamics. Alex Krull’s vocals are memorable, retaining only as much human tone in the guttural outbursts as an old man uttering his final words.

Before Atrocity lost interest in Death Metal, they were in the top tier of the genre and left behind a real classic that fell into relative obscurity due to the lack of re-releases issued by Roadrunner. This is an album that unveiled the futile attachment to mortality and found liberation in its demise.

40 Candles upon the Altar of Heavy Metal

If we say that the average life-expectancy age in the western world is 80 and simplify things a little further by positing that half of those years are spent asleep during the night, then we’ve only got about 40 years to do some real, serious living. It’s been that many years to this day since Black Sabbath released their debut album, as good a day as you’re going to get to hail the 40th anniversary of Heavy Metal, and every single one of those years has been spent wide awake through procession of the daily sun and the darkness of the night. Heavy Metal arrived at a time to sentence a generation of delusion to death and confront the rest of modernity with the weight of reality and the power of the occult. A lot of newer generation listeners entered the Metallic planes of hell through bands that were breaking away from Heavy Metal’s Rock formalities and Blues atavisms, giving an impression that the older music was in most cases obsolete. From the moment that Sabbath had arrived and Satan unveiled his majestic black wings, the spirit of Metal was unlocked like a Pandora’s box that held all the secrets from the past and future, and the subversion of the present ensued, encoded in the language of the riff! Let us mark this unholy day with the truest celebration of Heavy Metal imagineable, as Devamitra introduces his epic compilation chronicling this wise and powerful art-culture:

History has become obscured, for few are interested to learn and explore the dawn of the barbaric and romantic sounds of metal music. All sorts of glam and joke bands are mistaken for Heavy Metal, which they aren’t, and many even believe there was never any serious merit, dark insight or focused direction to Heavy Metal in the past. The “Anvil of Thor” compilation was created to aid discourse on death metal and black metal with a friend of mine, as our musical learnings were composed in entirely different moulds and I wanted him to see the language of heavy metal with its forms, symbols and motion at least partially from my perspective. “If you don´t know the past, it´s impossible to understand the present.” Listening to these tracks in the preferred order as they appear in the playlist file, it should be easy, for example, to see how the tritone blues of Black Sabbath and the poetic narrative of Judas Priest contained the suggestion of high energy riffs as they appeared in occult bands Mercyful Fate, Death SS and Angel Witch, consequently mutating into Doom Metal in Trouble and Candlemass, Speed Metal in Slayer and Metallica and Epic Metal in Manilla Road and Manowar. This isn’t quite a “best of Heavy Metal” but one of the possible paths of seeing through core visions, techniques and moods of Heavy Metal music. For old heavy metal fans, it will hopefully revive fond memories of these sinister and majestic LP’s and for others, broaden the perception and hopefully bestow surprises.

Anvil of Thor – Heavy Metal Thunder Compilation

Death Metal Album of the Week: Necros Christos – Triune Impurity Rites

After the backfire of metalcore and ironic jokes wrapped in death metal clothing, failed reunions and commercially motivated Bloodbath-style tributes a new breed of death metal bands obsessed with funereal, paranormal and asphyxiating atmosphere above all else penetrated the ground from beneath. While originally celebrated exclusively by collectors and geeks who possessed tremendous tape and vinyl collections, gradually metal fans from differing backgrounds gathered to see the tours and savor the albums of new more authentic seeming bands like Dead Congregation from Greece, Deathevokation from California and Deutschland’s Necros Christos. While these bands were all firmly rooted in the abominable legends told by Incantation, Mystifier and other anti-musicians, they took care to use the organized polish and visual design of 21st century black metal to appease also the generation raised on dramatic, ideologically motivated “art”.

As for the music, it’s far from impersonal or humble. Mors Dalos Ra and his team of qabbalists indulge in goofy rituals, hyper-exaggerated pauses and gestures, horror organs, chanted spells and minimal doom riffs almost like going for a parody of satanic metal through the ages. However, the songs are joyous, exhilarating, morbid and alive with unholy fire. The guitarists use their knowledge of classical guitar and oriental scales to wrap the death metal themes in a progressive procession of movements that seem to mimic an inverted Passion play, the journey of a goatborn Christ to relinquish his throne to undead gods, while sodomized angels weep over the mythical ziggurats appearing somewhere in the moonlit wasteland near Bethlehem. Sounds hilarious? Well, that’s what it is – like Impiety or Impaled Nazarene, Necros Christos throws all the mockery and analogy squarely in the face of the philosopher, eschewing subtlety and relishing madness. The music is surprisingly controlled, as there is no chaotic blasting nor disembodied screams floating all over the place. Instead, we get an organized meditation of lurking and crawling Sabbathic (in various senses) melodies, from extravagantly beautiful (“Gate II – Offenbarungen der Mayrim”) to grating and dissonant (“Skulldoom of Sumer”) while many leads toy with Baroque ideas and desolate urges fitting for a Paradise Lost demo. Especially recommended for a listener who doesn’t consider “cheesy” a curse word.

Heavens Below & Heavens Above

As we now have ample space to look back over the year that has transpired, let us visit only two Black Metal albums released earlier in 2009 and in doing so, we might illuminate the difference in the spirit of these artists, though their influences and outward gaze follow a similar trajectory.

Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

With this album, Blut Aus Nord’s habit of jumping from one established school of Black Metal thought to another has been replaced by a slightly more focused exploration of the abstract ideas that Vindsval‘s tried to find an appropriate voice for since after the release of the crowd-pleasing ‘The Work Which Transforms God’. The continutations from that album and the following ‘Odinist’ lie in the same dissonant and synthesized riffs, but the template here is more Burzumic in the sense that songs specifically seem to mould themselves well to the approach of ‘My Journey to the Stars‘ from Count Grishnackh’s self-titled work. In addition, as there is a distinctly Eastern flavour to the metaphysics which Blut Aus Nord has arranged very eruditely over the course of the album, corresponding musical themes are ever-present.

As unusual as it is, in Black Metal music, to come across traces of an European longing for the cosmically affirmed existence mixed with a very Buddhistic negation of the unreal, these aren’t incompatible ideas and have been demonstrated in European art since Sanskrit and Pali literature first arrived in Germany and in the hands of Richard Wagner. However, there seems to be an unavoidable unsubtlelty that plights bands who are this radically overt in their application of Indian and Oriental themes, which even Blut Aus Nord’s mastery of ethereal sound effects hasn’t been able to disguise. Where this becomes present is in sync with the downfall of the music in general. The composition is a highlight reel of riffs that have some relevance to each other, but too often feel contrived and edited in the attempt to bring about some change in the dynamics of the music. This leaves the songs often rushing towards their conclusions in quite a generic manner, or going nowhere in the same manner of fellow French bands S.V.E.S.T. and Deathspell Omega. Riffs are then overlaid with leads or interspersed with patterns that are Eastern sounding, which does break the dip in interest, but only vaguely hints at where the artist wants to go and doesn’t actually take it there. The leads sound especially tacked on, possessing none of the integralism of a Sorcier Des Glaces on his ‘Snowland‘ masterpiece.

In the end, the psychedelic and cosmic sounds of ‘Memoria Vetusta II’ are well-intentioned but it comes across more like a New Age soundtrack than possessing the profundity of a Steve Roach album, for example. It is, though, Blut Aus Nord’s best work to date and does actually give hope of an interesting follow-up if the band gets totally lost in these conversations with the universe and not totally bored with it, needing to change ‘direction’ again.

Midnight Odyssey – Firmament

It’s almost impossible for some Black Metal bands, breathing only the contaminated air of darkness, to escape the grasp of Burzum’s music. Midnight Odyssey’s ‘Firmament’ is another highly Burzum-influenced album, but this one from down under refers to the Count’s most accessible work so far, ‘Filosofem’ with some hints of the earlier albums. This amounts to revisiting those thick but purposeful, contra-shoegazing, melodic guitars, distorted screams and the rolling, equitarean kick-drumming.

Countless bands have tried and failed to capture the Romantic visions that first gave rise to this style, because it’s technically quite easy to execute, but such simplicity doesn’t demand technical ability (mimicry) nor even a thorough understanding of such visions (erudition) but possessing the sight itself, so that the music can live and emanate as simply as we breathe. ‘Firmament’ fills this role excellently as a series of interactive sonic portraits that are laden with a sense of ferality amidst the cosmos. Epic melodies ring sharply like the emotions of a soul that finds beauty and the true conditions of life in the unknown, wild and organic frontier, far away from the constructions of our artificially-induced desires. These emotions become enmeshed in the depths of the night and senses heighten to an active sense of awareness, re-uniting struggle and survival with a cosmic context, and in a manner highly reminiscent of ‘Jesus’ Tod‘ with an increasing sense of immersion created by a focus on guitar ambience rather than phrasal (though continual), percussive or rhythmic elements. Infact, even though the drums are very well applied to create an engaging sense of pace, it would be interesting to hear the entire album sans percussion. Keyboards are applied both in the manner of Burzum’s reflective ambient pieces, and as a subtle, ethereal layer over the woods-shrouded Black Metal music, giving the album its reflective and almost panentheistic (like the American Transcendentalists) dimension.

A great debut album and although its form is very familiar and pretty easy to grasp, this is one which will have the biggest impact on those that have two feet grounded in the mud and grass, covered in bruises and wounds from bushes and thickets, but still with their eyes on the stars beyond the heighest leaves, breathing deeply in the all-embracing darkness of the night.

Impaled Nazarene – Ugra Karma

Following up the band’s debut album ‘Tol Cormpt Norz Norz Norz’, Impaled Nazarene opened the silo once again to release their deadliest missile of truly Brahmastric proportions with 1993′s ‘Ugra Karma’. Roughly translating from the original Sanskrit into ‘bad actions’, the album’s title indicates the nature of this distinctive blend of Punk, Black Metal and other styles and sounds, as a dance of destruction atop the accumulated filth of the modern world. The updated artwork of a hooved, nuclear Nataraja performing this world-ending ritual over desecrated damsels and making occult gestures in front of an inverted pentagram takes this idea further in a profound hybrid of apocalyptic Hindu and Satanic imagery which also heavily underlies the musical approach of ‘Ugra Karma’. The deep, muscular bass-work in these anthems of armageddon give power to aggressive and militarised Punk-like guitar riffs imbued with a majestic, Black Metal sense of melodicism and pace. Their target is in sights, the riffs transform imminently like the complexion of a scene changing upon the arrival of Harrier squadrons from over the horizon, to rain hell on harmless victims! It’s these simple and incredibly conclusive narratives that give each song such a depth of expression, with the finality of a Vedic chant. Drums are overbearing and industrious in their sound, maintaining a constant beat that drills the blasphemous, mystical revelations of doom into the listener with a Nazistic authority, leading a new SS to purge the world of its undesirables. Impaled Nazarene present with all of their hatred not only the downfall of the world they despise, but the primal law which will bring that land of light and love to its knees, sodomise it and replace it with evil.