The Craft of Metal #1: Satanic Rites —Part II

by Creed Braddock on July 14, 2018

Form and Function

Musical innovation does not spawn independently. Most of the progressions in underground metal have taken stylistic influence from more accessible genres and within those aural parameters created a new foundational narrative to divorce the context from the aesthetics it had previously used as a guideline. This approach allows for a less jarring immersion into a musical journey while at the same time utilizing tropes of superficial familiarity to manipulate the audience into being subjugated to an indirect path towards the artistic catharsis of unique expression that is the spiritual negative of the aesthetics used. On Satanic Rites, we can observe how Hellhammer has utilized the foundation of punk rock to shape their sound while introducing a unique tonality and dynamic scope to flesh out the beginnings of a new musical genre.
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The Craft of Metal #1: Satanic Rites —Part I

by Nicholas Vahdias on July 14, 2018

Satanic Rites is one of the early influences that would take the heavy metal and hardcore punk of the past and transform it into Extreme metal through some groundbreaking compositional tools that were unheard of at the time. On first listens, the music can be confused for many other bands due to the impact this record had in its time, and rightfully so as it serves as an excellent introduction to what metal would have perfected on a much larger scale a decade later.
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Gorrenje / Infamous – Italian-German Black Metal Brotherhood (2017)

by Johan Pettersson on July 14, 2018

By now established as one of few post-nineties black metal acts worth saving for posterity, Infamous returns with yet another joint effort production on the Hammerbund label. Joining the bill is the somewhat amusingly christened Gorrenje, a band previously unknown around these quarters but apparently of a slightly older vintage than their Sardinian counterpart. As has earlier been the case, Infamous proves to be vastly superior to their collaborators and is therefore the one most worthy of our attention.
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Thrombus – Mental Turmoil (1993)

by D.A.R.G. on July 12, 2018

The present album is an example of undergorund death metal that, while humble and rather representative of the genre, does an excellent job of crafting good, concise music that delivers a strong experience effectively. Mental Turmoil shows us a band that has not liberated itself and is thus at the mercy of stronger influences, such as the more pensive side of U.S. death metal meeting the aggressive side of the more melodic European flavors —and one can hear echoes of an early Obituary somewhere in here, as well as other voices. Thrombus concots its own little mixture of influences, even if there is nothing quite original in it.
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Evil Literature #1: Tony Thorne Countess Dracula (1997)

by D.A.R.G. on July 12, 2018

The myth of Elisabeth Bathory is known to us in its most twisted forms, filtered through years of mysoginistic prejudice and augmented further by gothic sensibility for horror that fascinated the minds of the 19th century. Little understood are the full cultural and historical context of the region and its political dynamics. Little is it taken into account that all records of what happened were taken under peculiar circumstances by those vested in Bathory’s demise, and that greater political forces were at work to bring her whole family down. Nor is it a neglible detail that accounts by primary servants of Bathory were extracted by the hand of a magister tortararum especially trained in the ‘art’, and that these same tortured servants were summarily executed after these ‘confessions’ were given.
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