Black metal travelled many roads when attempting to fully understand its identity; many of these paths were imaginative at first, but ultimately served to further divide the genre into identifiable individual brands instead of renewing discovery of what it had at its center.
One of these myriad styles was “melodic black metal”, named for its tendency to quote the melodic flourishes of classic heavy metal. Arguably inspired by Mayhem’s debut, this sub-sub-genre at its best was able to create an effect of introspection arising out of darkness, while the worst examples adopted the rhythmic emphasis — handed down from rock — of heavy metal along with relatively predictable pentatonic melodies.
Blazemth has historically waffled between these two extremes, relying on chromatic ascending and descending verses followed by a melodic restatement of the primary theme clearly inherited from Dissection. Like Dissection, it often returns to simple chromatic runs in order to ride a catchy rhythm for all its worth.
The band demonstrates a great faculty for building those themes into fragments of a powerful statement which, like suddenly being suspended in the air above a battlefield, open perspective on the surrounding chaos. These heavy moments make this a passable entry, but leave open the question of what they are doing to advance the genre.
The Return of Lucifer shows us a competent, and even stirring at times, release but the elephant in the room is that more development is needed to make this album more than a well-crafted restatement of prior themes. While that can be said for most metal now, those who go further will be remembered for aeons.
Lineup
Ferran Volkhaar – guitars/vocals
Shunh – guitar
Franklin – bass
Riky Mena – drums
Jorge Dragon – didgeridoo
Tracklist
1. Magik Invocation
2. The Return of Lucifer
3. Inferno
4. War
5. Hecate
6. Visions of My Dark Soul
7. In Fight I Die
8. A Passage of Unlight
9. The Grummer
10. Outro
Tags: Black Metal, blazemth
Albums by Tusmorke (band recommended by Fenriz) that the DMU needs to review:
Fort Bak Lyset
Hinsides
Nordisk Krim
Lol who needs another obscure metal blog, just leave fenriz to his techno DJing which is actually worth something
Sounds like a fusion between Angel Witch, Jethro Tull, and (old) Genesis. Kind of fun.
Oh cool another band that sounds like another band that didn’t survive the 70’s, sign me up for one of those occult overpriced fruity vinyls
Most of Gen X, like Fenris, is stuck in the 1970s because that was the stuff that your parents had around the house when you were growing up before the divorce happened, the new boyfriend came in who made you lick the peanut butter off his penis, the diversity arrived and you had to leave your old home, your grandparents went insane and moved to Florida to become massage therapists, and your Boomer parents “found themselves” and discovered Buddhism, libertarianism, or colonic purging and left you alone in the basement with nothing to do but listen to old albums and hug yourself while you waited in vain for the insanity above to end.
Weren’t boomers a bit young to be parents back then?
The Pemmican-Eating Ones began their birth arc in the early 1940s, usually 1943 or later by which point it was clear that Hitler was hosed and democracy would win another war to ensure greater misery for everyone. Boomers grew up without hope, since their society had been entirely taken over by commerce after going diverse with the Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Arab, and Slavic newcomers. No culture + high taxes = nothing but commerce remains. They grew up in this soft dystopia and hated everything but themselves, therefore are only really truly happy when they are telling someone else that they did wrong and now owe them one.
Hello Brett,
Would you shit your pants on TV then run an assault course (still on TV) for a million dollars?
Yours sincerely,
Stett
No, but I’d shit someone else’s pants and then run an assault course for a million tax-free dollars. Can buy a lot of vintage metal with that.
I think you’re projecting.
I’m erecting.
“Jorge Dragon – didgeridoo”
Ok.
I feel like sharing this song because I like it. I don’t know if it’s metal, punk, metalcore or whatever but the band understands how to use tension better than most “br00tal” Death Metal IMO. Song is “100 Demons – Time Bomb”. Thoughts?
It keeps internal contrast, seems to go nowhere, and the music feels like a scenic pastoral backdrop for the angry ranted vocals? Otherwise great.
Hey Brett, what do you think of Die Kreuzen’s four albums?
Well, they’re round. Sort of black and shiny. Have grooves. Will have to re-listen.
The first full-length is worth a listen. October Days is interesting as well. The following two albums are an acquired taste and border on proto grunge while retaining hardcore and metal elements.
Grunge makes me twitch. It was industry reincorporating bad 70s blues rock into punk. But I’ll check them out.
The album is October File . . . I must have been drunk when I typed that last message.
Die Kreuzen were always too weird to be industry darlings. There’s a bit of blues rock influence here and there in their last two albums, but not much.
Curious what DMU thinks these days about Sonic Mass by Amebix. At the time of release it was heralded as radio rock, but then I remember a lot of folks here praising the first Tau Cross album, which is similar. Thoughts?
As for the album reviewed here, it’s derivative and sterile as fuck.
That Amebix album was reviewed here:
https://www.deathmetal.org/news/the-best-metal-of-2011/
The early EPs from Blazemth had more charm to it than this release. They were always derivative though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYF7PVElZw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0M5_igSYZE
Generally, I think well of both. They are attempts to bring back the glory of 1980s heavy metal which was radio friendly but packed a bit of a hit, so that the Baron can convey some lyrical sentiments that are more poetic than the blunt analysis of punk.
Tankard-now that’s a great band.
Probably the best of the chanty speed metal bands, and the inspiration for Nifelheim, who wrote the epic song “I am the Sodomizer.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4LGSrSeKVc
classic metal anthem
Another band for the DMU to review: Naked City, especially the album Grand Guignol.
I’ve only hears Leng Tch’e, but it’s a fucking great album reminiscent of Winter.
No way dude. I used to listen to naked city but it is not dmu material. Anyway leng tche is where it’s at for that band.
Why not? DMU regularly reviews albums that are metal in spirit, appeal to metalheads, or are tangentially related to metal. Naked City meets all three criteria, especially the two albums mentioned so far.
Which metal spirit? Lord of the rings, mad max, or dune? Naked city is a punk band that drank too much free jazz. Their songs do not develop into anything and don’t want to. Even leng tche is a half hour anal cunt song.
A black metal spirit, both first and second wave. Their albums (especially Absinthe) are like the musical equivalents of the Decadent movement. So much pain and anger directed against modernity.
They often quote musically bands like Winter, Celtic Frost, and Mercyful Fate. Their songs are not deconstructed like Discordance Axis or metalcore bands. Listen more carefully.
I don’t listen any more carefully to anything that doesn’t grab my attention immediately and hold it. Naked city used to do that for me but they are Dada if anything and I’m more into baroque, surrealism and cave paintings now. Any quotes you hear are a coincidence and if they aren’t, isn’t that all the more reason to just listen to Celtic Frost? If you want to hear a noise band with fleshed out ideas and energy check out Boredoms before they turned into a drum circle, which is another band that only has any staying power because Yamataka Eye is involved.
I respectfully disagree. Boredoms is good stuff but has limited replay value for me. It is more random than Naked City and lacks atmosphere. Naked City recorded some longer compositions on Radio that show what they are getting it with their shorter songs, but that album as a whole is weaker than everything else they put out except Heretic.
Seems this is all a matter of taste but I still don’t think most people who visit this site give a shit about naked city, or Boredoms either. I also don’t really give a shit, I guess I’ve just kind of grown out of it.
There’s a certain level of subtle gimmick bands that attract a mostly hipster or at least casual listener audience. I think of a good band, Zeni Geva, that is mostly worshiped by hipsters simply because for most people it is unlistenable. The same audience likes to keep a copy of Napalm Death Scum around so they can tell their friends, “Waow, 54 tracks in 32 minutes, it’s not even music!”
They also like Buckethead, Boyd Rice, Diamanda Galas, Elvis Costello, vocal jazz, etc. for being conversation pieces. Same way they picked up on Opeth, which was originally something that appealed to low self-esteem metalheads who wanted to be able to tell their friends, “See, it’s progressive, not idiot caveman horse rape music!”
Not everything hipsters latch onto like leeches is complete gimmicky trash. Kates Bush and Boyds Rice for example.
It’s not a binary of trash/good. It is good, but only on the surface. It is not immortal art. It is a demonstration. That has its place, no doubt, but you will not listen to it over and over again and have a transportative experience. Sort of like Andy Warhol is neat but it is not Michelangelo.
It sounds like you are describing Mr. Bungle. Naked City has far more depth, more cohesion, and better replayability.
We agree here, but there’s degrees of this. Mr. Bungle may be the nadir.
Paintings aren’t even Warhols best work
The Rothko Chapel is not Rothko’s best work, I am told, but it is his only work that I value.
I hate seeing Boyd Rice in this list — “God and Beast” is a brilliant album.
Maybe, but generally, it is surface aesthetic used to make a point, kind of like a lot of hardcore. Say what you want about RAC, but it is basically music to commit hate crimes to even if it is boring. There is raw pathos and id in there, although confused by alcoholism and incoherent ideologicals like National Socialism (basically 1860s Democrats).
Some bands are great on the surface — the combination of aesthetics, concept, imagery, texture, production, instrumentation, backstory — but not enduring listens.
Our goal here has always been to find the bands that a metal listener can purchase and enjoy over many years. Everything else is transient, either hyped novelty or hipster (“not for profit, maaaan”) novelty.
Hipsters to chippers, I say.
That is a noble goal regardless to our differing opinions about these bands.
It is true. We like good music and do not really care where it is from. The problem: very little of it is really good, and a lot is judged as relevant based on surface novelty only. You should see the review queue. The bedshitters ate Taco Bell for a week, then feasted on dried prunes and drank buckets of water before passing out in a Modelo Especial coma and coating the bed in a thick layer of fragrant feces.
Ah, there’s the problem. Had they gone with Modelo Negro, they’d have probably made something brilliant without realizing that they had done so.
At this point I am in favor of banning all beer except Sam Smith’s until quality improves.
BTW, they are a good soundtrack to Bladerunner.
The only thing I have to say to this is that you should watch Funny Games, probably the German one first.
I never understood the point of hollywood remakes
Actors gonna act. The second Funny Games isn’t just another watered down flashy hollywood remake. Same director. Nothing is lost in the acting or cinematography. I think it’s just as good as the original.
It’s more of the churn. Your average Hollywood movie sells aesthetics. Cool CGI, attractive actors, neat settings, weird gadgets, curved penises, that kind of thing. Then they unleash the scriptwriting “workshop” style writing which is formulaic by design. As a result, every movie now is a version of Friends just in some weird place with some weird technology and oddball backstory. Same shit, different day. It’s the churn. This is the same reason why every television series shits the bed during the second season: the inertia of the creators has failed, so in come the meritocratic professionals who implement churn-style formulaic writing. Now they have run out of weird locations and character drama settings so they are simply remaking the past to use their new CGI toys, insert women/minority-friendly PC ideology, and smooth out those ragged scripts with a uniform churn product which is to real scriptwriting as the generic breadfood of big industry is to real food.
Very attractive album. Likes the dark sound. Stands above any racial sound! Away with the ants.
Ants are by definition anti-racist, but racialist music is generally crap. Absurd, Skrewdriver, and Burzum were flukes. The Right-wing is moronic and embraces all sorts of stupid shit in addition to having no idea what it is and is trying to achieve. The only problem is that since it is more realistic than the Left-wing, it deserves support while Left-wingers deserve the chipper.
Skrewdriver is kinda pushing it. Make it Arghoslent, GBK, or my favorite NS artist Skinhéad O’Connor
Never heard the last one, but I would argue that Skrewdriver is much better than the first two.
Boredoms isn’t a gimmick. It’s badass and I’ve always liked it more than than naked city, which is too cerebral and that’s why I got bored of it right away. Boredoms tapped into something gnarly, MAN. Anyone into heavy music can hear something in onanie bomb meets the sex pistols. Mr bungle is cool too, at least disco volante is. Everything in between the first and last song on California is fuckin stupid though, and everything before disco volante is stupid and proud of it. I just don’t really care about any of this stuff anymore cuz I’ve heard it like a million times and there’s heavier shit out there. But it’s not hipster trash, whatever that is.
OK, Daddy-O.
Thanks that really means a lot, that’s what I love about this website, nothing here but the cutting edge of no effort sarcasm and pretentious opinions dressed up as objective analysis, boy do I hate intellectually stimulating casual conversation
Its only the best form of discourse here.
Shitposting is the thing you blurt out at the end of a long work day, after partying into the early morning hours, when you have thought everything and realized it is all nothing, then reduce your thoughts to simple clarity that flowers into many directions at once, but you speak only the seed and realize: that is enough; this is the doorway; this is where common sense, logic, and eternity meet.
Like saying “equality is the opposite of quality.”
Is equality quantifiable?
It is relative. If someone has more than another, you do not have “equality.”
Let us leave off the boredoms for awhile.
Mr. Bungle, like the funk explosion of the late 80s and early 90s, was music designed to be purposeless but a motley form of contradictory impulses so that it seemed outside the herdthink.
Same way that grindcore broke down when it was constantly extreme and lost all dynamics and contrast, this kind of garbage plate music hits a comfortable background noise level of contrived, manipulative Weird™ and then fades into irrelevance.
Brett Stevens says:
March 28, 2022 at 8:13 am
The Rothko Chapel is not Rothko’s best work, I am told, but it is his only work that I value
What are some other great artists?
This is not my area of expertise. I like some of the older European landscape painters. Rothko Chapel works because it is an interior decorating project that provides an “art-like experience.”
You mentioned Michelangelo earlier, as transportative. Is he as good as they say? What are some especially transportative works of his?
And you described Andy Warhol as neat, as in demonstrative rather than transportative. Is most modern art like that?
Michelangelo is to Warhol what altars of madness is to ecstacy of death. maybe generous to warhol though because none of it has stuck with me, but I’m not too familiar. Michelangelos best work is in sculpture.
Just like any art, best to start with what you’ve heard of, because you’ve heard of it for a reason, and follow your nose.
I like goya and rubens a lot.
We need an art expert in here. What I have seen from Michelangelo is impressive; the “David” statue is probably the best known.
In my view, most modern art is demonstrative, including “protest art.” It is why it is so trivial: it makes a point like propaganda, but there is no expanded appreciation for the beauty of life.
The reason the Rothko Chapel succeeds is that it is artistic interior design. He wanted to create a mood, and the viewers do the rest. This makes for a pleasant contemplative experience, but it is not like looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Speaking of chapels, I think metalheads can appreciate this scene from the scrovegni chapel
https://i.redd.it/cgtfms9h69e01.jpg
Thanks for good music recommendation to you Brett, and to all contributors. See ya all very soon. Cheers ;)
Are you showing up for our weekly drinking session, or alluding to global thermonuclear war and an afterlife?