I know how to smell a scam, and this thing reeks. But I couldn’t write it off so easily, because I found it through a band’s official tour schedule. So I started looking around at a bunch of different band sites, a bunch of reputable music magazines, everything I could think of, and sure enough, it appears to be legit. If it is a scam, it’s about the most well played one I’ve ever encountered. I honestly think this is real.
So you probably figure, ok, cruises are for yuppies and old people, it’s probably going to be a lot of cheesy hair metal, washed up gimmicks, and no name bands. It certainly isn’t going to be the most impressive names in metal, all playing at least two sets a piece, chilling on the deck getting hammered with the fans between performances, right? …Right?…
Blind Guardian, Týr, Finntroll, Ensiferum, Korpiklaani, Amon Amarth, and Iced Earth top the lineup. I’m not fucking kidding. This cruise includes Nevermore, Marduk, Sonata Arctica, Moonspell, Rage, Epica, Dark Tranquility, Testament, Obituary, Exodus, Fear Factory, Gamma Ray, Unleashed, and a Bathory cover band consisting of members of Mayhem, Einherjer, Dimmu Borgir, Thyrfing, and Primordial.
On a cruise ship.
I think I just crapped my pants.
According to the creator of all this, “I live in Vancouver, BC, very close to the cruise ship terminal. So one day about three years ago I was sitting with my friends on my balcony having a few beers. Obviously we had one too many, because I remember asking those guys, hey, wouldn’t that be cool to charter one of these and put a heavy metal festival on? That was when 70000TONS OF METAL was born.”
Happy Halloween. Hope you enjoy the conclusion to my black metal countdown.
10. Bathory – Bestial Lust
Were I outlining a history of black metal, this song probably wouldn’t make the cut. By mid-80s standards it might be black metal, but by early Bathory standards it’s pretty straight forward thrash. That is, from a stylistic perspective it was already in 1985 a throwback to the genre Bathory had evolved out of. But it’s such an awesome song that, thrash and black metal being so intimately tied in the 80s, I think I can justify it. I considered giving the ten slot to In Conspiracy with Satan instead. Feel free to humor it as the more appropriate choice.
9. Mörk Gryning – Tusen år har gått
When I think of quintessential black metal, stylistically speaking, the first album that comes to mind isn’t In the Nightside Eclipse, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, or any other obvious staple. It’s Mörk Gryning’s 1995 release, Tusen år har gått. This inexplicably forgotten Swedish band managed to capture every stereotype element of black metal perfectly in their debut release. If I personally ever aspired to start a black metal band, this album is what I would try to emulate.
8. Immortal – The Call of the Wintermoon
But when it comes to influence, to the legends go the glory. Immortal gained much of their fame for later works, with Call of the Wintermoon known best for its ridiculous music video, not the song itself. I avoided showing that video for a reason. 1992’s Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism is less noisy than a lot of its contemporaries, and its dark character shines through all the more because of it. This album, and this song especially, set a standard for black metal aesthetics. It’s one of the first to be so distinct from thrash that the influence is no longer immediately apparent.
7. Burzum – Key to the Gate
Varg Vikernes’s works being so album-oriented, I could think of very few individual tracks that maintained their greatness apart from their larger vision. But Key to the Gate always, for me at least, stood apart. The intro is absolutely demented, and yet it progresses into a well-structured song. For me it really captures Varg himself, a mind half brilliant and half warped beyond rationality. In explaining his historic past, Varg has been known to change his story frequently. Sometimes the church burnings, the murder, the primitivism all appears to be part of a rational and not altogether disagreeable plan. Sometimes he reveals himself a racist, homophobic, paranoid imbecile. The 2010 release Belus, his first in over a decade, is in striking contrast to Dissection’s Reinkaos. Following Jon Nödtveidt’s jail term for murdering a homosexual African man, his creative genius had left him. His next album was a failure, and he took his life not long after. Varg made some rather bold statements about Euronymous’s sexual orientation in explaining his motivation for murder (not to mention some claims to white supremacy that surpassed mere confusion to the point of complete ridiculousness). Yet after serving more than twice as long as Nödtveidt, his next album was a brilliant continuation of the old Burzum, as though no time had passed at all. There is a sort of unnatural complexity to him, and his music alike.
6. Dissection – Where Dead Angels Lie
But Jon Nödtveidt’s significance in at least this one instance should not be overlooked. Storm of the Light’s Bane, released in 1995, features perhaps the single most memorable black metal song I’ve ever heard. At least for a brief three years, Sweden’s Dissection was rivaling anything Norway had to offer. As so many black metal stories go, Nödtveidt’s suicide was nothing approaching traditional. I read that he blew his brains out sitting in the middle of a pentagram surrounded by candles, with a grimoire open before him.
5. Gorgoroth – Ritual
I wouldn’t go so far as to say Gaahl is overrated, but Hat, their vocalist from 1992 until 1995, suits me best. Their debut Pentagram is just as unforgiving as their later works, but with a lo-fi value that captures an essence of evil more effectively than brute force. The third track, Ritual, struck me the first time I heard it and remains still one of my favorite songs of the genre. (And it shares so much in common with Nattefrost that I almost have to believe it had a direct influence on his solo project.)
4. Darkthrone – Transilvanian Hunger
This one kind of goes without saying. If Kathaarian Life Code initiated the second wave of black metal, Transilvanian Hunger predicted its future. Primitive and raw on a whole new level (it was recorded three years before Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal), the album’s trance-like appeal might have some relation to Varg Vikernes’s lyrical contributions. I imagine it was more a matter though of fewer minds leading to a more consistant focus. It was the first Darkthrone album involving Nocturno Culto and Fenriz exclusively as band members.
3. Emperor – I am the Black Wizards
Emperor’s self-titled 1993 EP briefly pre-dates In the Nightside Eclipse and, along with two other EPs/demos of the era, features many of their first album’s classics in their unrefined, original forms. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the originals better (Emperor’s reunion performance of the song at Wacken 2006 is by far the best version of it out there), but the original appeals best to that rawness with which the second wave of black metal made its mark. All of the refined features that set Ihsahn’s song-writing apart–the heavy synth, the complex movements, the difficult guitar riffs–are present, but in this early form they still took second stage to that demented ethos black metal embraced for a few years in the early 90s.
1. Mayhem – Funeral Fog
“Please excuse all the blood.” Dead’s suicide note, the artistic photographed rearrangement of his splattered brains for use on a future album cover, clothing buried with dead animals for weeks to reek of decay, Euronymous’s brutal cold-blooded murder with a knife to the skull, Varg Vikernes’s inclusion as the album’s bassist AFTER murdering its lead guitarist, the burning of the Fantoft stave church, the trial that lead to Faust’s confession of murdering a random stranger, Tchort’s imprisonment for grave desecration, Samoth’s imprisonment for arson… Black metal consumed itself in a real life horror story unrivaled in fiction between 1991 and 1993, and it all culminated in the release of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Funeral Fog must be appreciated with an eye towards the literal insanity that surrounded it. “In the middle of Transylvania, all natural life has from a long time ago gone. It’s thin and so beautiful.” We reflect on Elizabeth Bathory and Vlad Tepes as the real life icons of evil from which the cultural genre known as horror, 20th century serial killers not withstanding, was born. But in the early 90s, the middle of Transylvania was southern Norway.
Happy Halloween!
I leave you with a final treat that couldn’t stylistically make the cut.
I don’t think I could have possibly stumbled upon a more appropriate image for this penultimate entry in my music column than the goat Heiðrún feeding on Yggdrasil. (Well, technically Læraðr.) I’ll today be concluding my compilation of songs that, while still being “black metal” in some sense, extend well beyond the boundaries of the genre.
10. Hardingrock – Faens Marsj
In 2007, Ihsahn and his wife Ihriel teamed up with Hardinger fiddler Knut Buen to merge Ihsahn’s evolving progressive black metal with Norwegian folk music. If the vocals are the only real trace of black metal remaining in this particular track, I think the appeal is no less apparent.
9. Temnozor – Busov’ Vran’
(Темнозорь – Бусовы Враны)
Temnozor’s 2010 release is easily their best in my opinion, and certainly their most folk-infused. That this Russian band in 2007 released a split with Nokturnal Mortum might be telling. Their ability to harness folk as a sort of primitivism has evolved tremendously, and it herein shows. The gripping dynamics of Russian vocalization are inseparable from the overall sound. It’s no wonder this is a predominantly Eastern European movement.
8. Boris – Luna
Pretty much any obsessive Boris fan will tell you they’re the most innovative band in existence, and I totally buy into the hype. Boris has, over the years, consistently denied all forms of classification, seeming to incorporate a new style of music on practically all of their myriad releases while remaining always recognizably Boris. In 2009 they contributed one track to a split with stoner metal band Torche, and in doing so gave black metal a unique new form. It’s an unfortunate shame that the last two minutes of this song, in which they transition into an Electric Wizard-esque doom metal outro, aren’t available on youtube. But for the purposes of this column, this song’s significance still comes through. Boris eat musical styles and shit roses. This is one of them.
7. Agalloch – Limbs
Where were you the first time you heard Ashes Against the Grain? I think a lot of people can actually answer that. Pale Folklore and The Mantle were brilliant and unique albums, but THIS, this was something innovative on a whole new level. I remember the thought striking me almost immediately: “Woah, post-black metal exists.” Any use I’ve ever made of the term originated from my first listen to Ashes Against the Grain. Isis’s Oceanic was probably my favorite album at the time, and here was everything I liked about it taken to by the best band at creating musical imagery that I’d to that point known. The marriage couldn’t have gone better. Ashes Against the Grain will go down in history as groundbreaking and unique, one of those albums that predicts the future without ever wholly conforming to it. It always was a stretch to associate Agalloch with black metal, but in so far as musical genres are merely generalizations, the most unique bands always seem to fit into all and none simultaneously.
6. Ulver – Hymn VI: Of Wolf and Passion
The first 18 seconds of this song are about a decade ahead of their time. They’re absolutely beautiful–downright uplifting. I guess I never really thought of unadulterated black metal as something that could be triumphant. Sure, bands put it to positive use by incorporating folk and the like, but here you have nothing but blast beats and tremolo, a basic Norwegian breakfast, speaking of something glorious. Perhaps black metal’s origin naturally associates it with the dark and devilish, but very briefly, in 1996, Ulver showed that the same unbridled intensity could turn itself towards any honest end. Of Wolf and Passion. An apt title.
5. Nokturnal Mortum – In the Fire of Wooden Churches
I said you hadn’t seen the last of them. Another NeChrist masterpiece, In the Fire of Wooden Churches is an eclectic, constantly transitioning song that almost never repeats and ends triumphant. This video extends a few minutes beyond the end of the song. Its proper length is about 7:11.
4. Peste Noire – Ballade Cuntre Les Anemis De La France
Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor got my 2009 album of the year vote. To quote my brief review of it, “This is brilliant, fascinating, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. As has been said, the ambiance of hate is gone. What replaces it is something I can’t quite define, but it’s captivating. If Famine hadn’t coined it “Black’n’Roll” I think the term still might have popped up, but it’s a whole lot more than that. The 60s-70s rock and roll styles it incorporates, while similar in construct, conjure nothing of the sort to mind. Instead, it gives this sort of disturbingly lively essence to a dismal, filthy Dark Age. Track three feels like I’m dancing circles around someone in a torture chamber randomly sticking hot pokers into them and really enjoying it.” You are listening to track three.
3. Krallice – Wretched Wisdom
Listening to Wretched Wisdom while driving through a barren pillar-studded wasteland in Arizona was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. This is the gut-wrenching scream of an absolute desolation stumbling hopeless at last into the depths of insanity. And here the term post-black applies more than ever.
2. Nokturnal Mortum – NeChrist: The Dance of Swords
Alright, this is my last Nokturnal Mortum entry. Honest. I’ve very little left to say about this band, but I hope you can see why I chose this as their best song. I said of their first entry “this isn’t just a statement about the past, it is a violent declaration of war on the present.” NeChrist might be the celebratory feast on the night of that declaration.
1. Alcest – Le Secret
In 2005, Neige decided it was time to take a new approach with his black metal project. He wanted to write something beautiful, and that he did. The album Le Secret is 27 minutes long and consists of two songs. Neige himself regarded the work as widely misunderstood, and seems to have concluded since that black metal just isn’t a compatible medium for some things. His next album was more on the order of shoegaze, with little in the way of black metal remaining, and his 2010 release, while significantly heavier, largely distinguished the black metal from the shoegaze elements as a sort of contrast between dark and light.
Souvenirs d’un autre monde and Écailles de Lune are both fabulous albums, make no mistake. But Le Secret is so much more. It’s one of those works that can never be repeated, because beyond musical genius it requires a sort of innocence. Those 18 seconds for which I glorified Ulver… here they stand on their own, independent and beautiful.
Welcome to the next installment of my little month of metal countdown. This time I’ll kick off my list of more traditional black metal material. Again, don’t regard this as any sort of ordering of favorites so much as the order I happened to settle on after a number of considerations.
21. Satyricon – Mother North
I’ve got to confess, I could never get into Satyricon. Most of their music never quite hit home for me. In fact, after some consideration they lost out to a band which I couldn’t really start my list with and retain any hope of people taking this seriously. So in recognition of their significance, I present to you the 21st entry of my top 20, and the one song by them I’ve heard that really strikes me.
20. Dimmu Borgir – Mourning Palace
That band that I couldn’t bear to start my list with is Dimmu Borgir. I don’t care what anyone says, they’ve written some pretty kickass music over the years and have no business being placed alongside Cradle of Filth as “fake” black metal. This song shows it best. Released in 1997, it’s certainly got some competition as the most worthy Borgir song for this list (Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia has some rather impressive ones), but the melody that kicks off at 0:48 has been stuck in my head for a good ten years now and I just couldn’t resist including it.
19. Venom – Countess Bathory
Alright, enough of that. I’ll transition into more common fair with the ultimate proto-black metal band, the group that started it all, and the song by them that appeals to me most. What distinguishes it from thrash is not so much the music itself as the message and mood it presents. Their monumental 1982 release that gave black metal its name really marks the transition from a show of force to an uninhibited glorification of evil.
18. Dark Funeral – The Dawn No More Rises
In 1995, Dark Funeral emerged with a great Swedish-style black metal album, The Secrets of the Black Arts. In 1996, they inexplicably decided that it was too raw and rerecorded the whole thing with an eye towards better production. They haven’t been very good ever since. Unfortunately I could only find the re-recording on youtube, and that is why this song is in 18th place and not much higher. If you can by any means find a copy of the original Secrets of the Black Arts (they’re packaging it as a bonus disc with the re-recording these days), pick it up and recognize what a solid band Dark Funeral briefly were. (Ok, I still like them and their new album is pretty good stuff if you’re into the Swedish style, but their transition is still irritating.)
17. Gehenna – The Shivering Voice of the Ghost
In 1994, often forgotten Gehenna released one of the most unique albums in the early history of black metal. Completely forgoing brutality, First Spell captures the sinister element of black metal that excessive blast beats and crushing guitars have a tendency to disguise.
16. Possessed – The Exorcist
I’m not sure why this song isn’t on more black metal charts. Maybe it’s because by 1985 Bathory had really stolen the show. Maybe it’s because Seven Churches is such a monumental thrash and death album that its black metal significance gets overlooked. But between the most sinister introduction I’ve ever heard and the first fully developed use of tremolo picking in metal I can think of (granted I’m no expert on death or thrash metal, hell, maybe bands had been doing it for years), The Exorcist is, in my mind, as much a black metal song as anything Venom or Bathory were writing at the time. I mean, the album cover says it all.
15. Marduk – Christraping Black Metal
I earlier hinted that I’m not a fan of Swedish black metal, and you won’t see much of it in this list. But Marduk (who I’ll finally get to see live this Friday!) are an amazing exception. Every word they write delights me. (True story: I had an idiotic TA once who said she’d give us a bonus point if we named our next paper after a song. It mentioned environmental reforms a few times, so I asked her if “Fistfucking God’s Planet” would be acceptable.)
14. Ulver – Hymn I: Of Wolf and Fear
Nattens Madrigal isn’t the most raw black metal album I’ve ever heard by accident, and given where Ulver turned afterwards I’m always inclined to think it’s a gimmick until I listen to it again. If this stuff didn’t honestly give me a headache it might be among my most listened-to albums. Every track on it is a masterpiece.
13. Emperor – Cosmic Keys to My Creations & Times
And speaking of masterpieces, Emperor are second only to Noktunal Mortum as my favorite black metal band. Not much really need be said about this album, or Emperor in general for that matter. It’s black metal 101, and it’s incredible.
12. Darkthrone – Kathaarian Life Code
This song might not be quite as memorable as some of Darkthrone’s later works. But when, in August 1991, in a studio in southern Norway, “we are… a blaze… in the northern… sky…” was choked forth into a microphone, the second wave of black metal had begun.
11. Nattefrost – Sluts of Hell
“Filthy bitches of hellish sin.” … If I have a black metal idol it’s Nattefrost. Carpathian Forest is the most underrated band in the scene, and his solo work is just as entertaining.
Seriously. You can’t not love this shit.
Hope you’ve enjoyed. I’ve got three more posts to come. Hopefully I’ll get the last one up by Halloween.
Folk metal, pagan metal, viking metal, these terms all share a common root in black metal, starting with Bathory’s stylistic transition in the late 80s. I decided to break the rest of this down into my top 20 straight up black metal songs and this, my top 25 songs that extend beyond the genre without breaking from it wholesale. I’ve obviously taken a lot of liberties in determining what goes where. Don’t regard this as any sort of ordering of favorites so much as the order I happened to settle on after a number of considerations.
I think black metal is one of the most diverse genres to be found, and rather than trying to divide up a dozen sub-genres, I’d like to highlight through twenty five songs the vast world lying beneath blast beats and tremolo picking.
25. Ceremonial Embrace – Mysterious Fate
I know very little about this band. They appeared out of Finland in 2000 to release one fairly average album and then disappear back into obscurity. The opening track however, Mysterious Fate, is an impressive take on a sound you might associate with Windir – staccato synth supported by sweeping slower moments that focus heavily on melody without ever really ceasing to be black metal.
24. Enslaved – Clouds
One of the original “second wave” black metal bands, Enslaved (along with ex-Emperor frontman Ihsahn) really pioneered the transition from the raw style into something much more complex. I like to think of this song, off their 2008 release Vertebrae, as one of the better tracks to exemplify what you might call “post-black”, a prefix that, as in all other genres, can suggest a dozen different things and might be better seen as an approach to music than a stylistic trait. You might alternatively call this progressive black metal, though I like to restrict my usage of that term.
23. Astrofaes – Path to Burning Space
If black metal in the 90s meant Norway, black metal in the 2000s meant Ukraine. This, one of Astrofaes’s earliest works, really shows both the all-encompassing guitar and the folk elements that have come to define a lot of what is Ukrainian black metal. They weren’t the first to really capitalize on these – that credit belongs to a band I’ll be showcasing frequently herein – but in exploiting them they really helped to make “Ukrainian black metal” something distinct and recognizable.
22. Hellveto – Warpicture
When Poland’s Hellveto first started to make their mark in the early 2000s I remember hearing them described as “war metal”, a term that has since fallen into disuse. While this music would today be called pagan metal, with maybe an “orchestral” additive, at the time it was something really unique, and it still stands apart as decidedly different from the Russian bands, like Arkona and Pagan Reign, that helped pioneer the genre.
21. Nokturnal Mortum – Perun’s Celestial Silver
Welcome to the first of many entries I’ve slotted for what I consider to be the greatest black metal band of all time: Nokturnal Mortum. To merely credit them with the explosion of black metal in Ukraine is to miss how completely unique their music still is. No one has managed this sound before or since – primitivism in its ideal. The shrill, lo-fi guitars, the violent brutality of Russian and Ukrainian that Germanic languages don’t quite encompass, a folk sound that is both beautiful and enraged… This isn’t just a statement about the past, it is a violent declaration of war on the present. It is unfortunate that the band has yet to get over their stance on white supremacy and their virulent antisemitism (this song appears as track 88, a neo-nazi symbol for “Heil Hitler”), but it is also a testament to the authenticity of their sound.
20. Drudkh – Ars Poetica
Drudkh have put out eight albums and one EP since 2003, making them one of the most prolific metal bands on the market. Were that not enough, almost every member has played a role in at least one other prominent Ukrainian black metal band during this time. They’ve had their ups and downs, and 2009’s Microcosmos received its fair share of criticism, but I struggle to find any fault in this track. Dark, intense, reverent, in Drudkh can be heard the same renunciation of the present and praise for a distant past that characterizes Nokturnal Mortum (although without the racist undertones, though a sort of guilt by association has still landed them on many a list of nsbm bands.)
19. Triglav (Триглав) – The Warrior of Honour
Like Nokturnal Mortum, Drudkh, and Astrofaes, Triglav hail from Kharkiv, Ukraine. A lesser known band of the scene, having only released one album, theirs is a pagan metal sound that owes much more to black metal than most.
18. Ihsahn – A Grave Inversed
Enough with Ukraine. I take you now to Ihsahn, former Emperor front-man and possibly the most talented musician to emerge from black metal. “Progressive” anything in metal terms conjures to my mind an obnoxious, pretentious focus on esteeming technical skill over song writing (maybe I just heard way too much Dream Theater when I was in high school), but Ihsahn’s “prog black” indulgence is a glorious and rare exception. His 2010 release, After, might be his best work to date, and this track somehow manages to incorporate a saxophone into black metal and still be fucking awesome. I have ridiculous respect for this man, and I hope upon hearing what he’s done here you will too.
17. Altar of Plagues – Through the Collapse: Watchers Restrained
A lot of what I’ve come to think of as post-black metal feels to be founded in the depressive/atmospheric styles that characterize usbm. (If I may digress, Xasthur provides guest vocals on Agalloch’s monumental Ashes Against the Grain.) Having only really taken form over the past few years, there may be much more to come. If you don’t like what follows the first two minutes of this song, don’t bother listening through it. It doesn’t return to the opening sound. White Tomb as a full album though, and especially the introduction of this track, qualify Ireland’s Altar of Plagues as one of many promising new bands in the sub-genre. This was released in 2009.
16. Nokturnal Mortum – Kolyada
This first track, on the other hand, was released much earlier. Nokturnal Mortum’s third album, Goat Horns, was released in 1997 and showcases the high point in their early sound. The band has gone through three major phases, roughly from 1995-1997, 1998-2003, and 2004 to the present. The band has even on occasion re-recorded earlier songs to fit their updated sound, Perun’s Celestial Silver being an example. (That track, of 1999’s NeChrist, originally appeared in 1995 on Lunar Poetry in a very different form.) Their middle period is my favorite and the one I’ll be primarily sticking too, but I’ve provided a second song here, their 2007 re-recording of Kolyada, in case you’re curious what they currently sound like.
15. Enslaved – As Fire Swept Clean the Earth
I here return to Enslaved for their 2003 album Below the Lights. I throw the term post-black metal around loosely, and while this song might have next to nothing in common with Altar of Plagues, such is the case in other genres where the post- tag comes into play. Enslaved are significant both in their music and in the fact that, having been around since the early 90s, a whole lot of current musicians grew up listening to them and stuck with them over the years. This song can be seen as an early example of what became more common later in the decade, and I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that this particular band wrote it.
14. Windir – Dance of Mortal Lust
Windir are so unique that I had a hard time figuring out how to fit them in here. Valfar froze to death on a mountain in Norway in 2004, and a tragedy though it may be, I don’t think the creator of this music could have been fated a more fitting end. I chose this song for its accessibility, but I encourage you to seek out his entire brilliant discography.
13. Emperor – The Tongue of Fire
By the final Emperor album, in 2001, it becomes difficult to think of them as “mere” black metal, or anything else for that matter. At this point Ihsahn was writing their music fairly independently from the rest of the band as I understand it, and you can here hear the full amalgamation of his black metal days and his transition into something far more complex.
12. Drudkh – Eternity
Blood in Our Wells, released in 2006, is my favorite Drudkh album, and this my favorite track on it. Their earlier albums receive more praise, and I encourage you to listen to them, but for me this is the apex of their accomplishments.
11. Klabautamann – October
If you’re thinking “this isn’t black metal at all”, you’re probably right, but in the context of the album it concludes it ought to be regarded as such. Der Ort was released in 2005, two years after Enslaved’s Below the Lights, and whether there was any direct influence there or not, I think Germany’s Klabautamann accomplished in this song the most beautiful thing to yet emerge from that extension of black metal.
I’ll be posting the remainder of this list, along with a few others, throughout the month. Hope you enjoyed.
I must have really been out of it these last three months. I was looking over some year-end lists and saw Arkona… then Kalevala… then Nokturnal Mortum… Since when did they all have new albums out? So I decided enough of this and got out my shovel. 1,097 album topics flagged as metal later, I had nine new releases by great bands between October 1st and now, and one from September that seemed sufficiently overlooked to merit mention. Some came as complete surprises. Others I’d acquired and then promptly forgot. Krallice aside I haven’t heard any of these prior to about two days ago, if at all. But these aren’t just arbitrary bands. They are all groups that have released albums I’m quite fond of in the past:
Arkona – Goi, Rode, Goi!
Аркона – Гой, Роде, Гой!
Napalm Records, October 28th, 2009 Russia
Arkona stand, in my mind, alongside Pagan Reign/Tverd’ at the forefront of pagan metal today. Ot Serdtsa K Nebu might have been too good to be topped, but this is bound to be an enjoyable album.
Dark Funeral – Angelus Exuro pro Eternus
Regain Records, November 18th, 2009 Sweden
I expect more completely standard Swedish bm… but who can complain?
Ihsahn – After
Candlelight Records, January 26th, 2010 Norway
Emperor’s frontman needs little introduction. For those of you who were, like me, disappointed with angL, note that I did listen to After once and I think it’s pretty solid. Expect the usual prog black metal that only Ihsahn can really pull off.
Kalevala – The Cuckoo’s Children
Калевала – Кукушкины дети
Metalism Records, October 3rd, 2009 Russia
Possibly my favorite folk metal band, these guys play songs that would stand up in any epoch if you took out the metal guitar and drumming
Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough
Profound Lore Records, November 10th, 2009 United States
Krallice’s self titled was an easy contender for the greatest album of 2008. They take the concept of post-black metal started by Agalloch and Klabautamann and tie it to the end of an atom bomb. This will probably turn out the best album out of the ten here listed.
Månegarm – Nattväsen
Regain Records, November 19th, 2009 Sweden
An incredibly underrated folk metal band with tendencies towards black metal
Nihill – Grond
Hydra Head, October 13th, 2009 Netherlands
Ambient, spooky American-style black metal
Nokturnal Mortum – Голос Сталі (The Voice of Steel)
Oriana, December 26th, 2009 Ukraine
Nokturnal Mortum stand at the forefront of nsbm, their music so brilliant as to compensate for all radical ideologies, though their new album is a disappointment in my opinion. It’s still better than most else out there. See my review from last week for more details.
Temnozor – Haunted Dreamscapes
Темнозорь – Урочища Снов
Stellar Winter, January 3rd, 2010 Russia
Very folk-influenced nsbm, and much better than the new Nokturnal Mortum album if you ask me. (Not that it need be said, but we don’t ideologically support nsbm. The music still kicks ass.)
And last of all, for a band that never fails to confuse me:
Stíny Plamenů – Mrtvá Komora
Naga Productions, September 1st, 2009 Czech Republic
“The name of the project, Stiny Plamenu (meaning “Stinky Sewer”), was born from the feelings and emotions experienced while watching the sewer expanses illuminated by a flickering fire, the fascinating places beneath the town of Plzen became the inspiration for the lyrical content of the project. Mythological characters of the world of sewer lore soon appeared: Pan Cistirensky (“The Sewage Disposal Lord”), Pani z Vodarny (“Lady of the Waterworks”), Syn Poklopu (“Son of the Manhole Lids”), Mistr Jimac (“The Cesspool Master”) and some others. Stories about these figures are told in the guise of black metal pieces with a truly bestial sound.”
Ok, well I might have edited the English translation of the band name……
Necrosomethingorother here, I’m going to be doing periodic album reviews for a while. My first one involves some rather controversial material, but hey, it’s what’s new in the metal world.
As I write I am acquainting myself with Nokturnal Mortum‘s sixth studio album, leaked Christmas day when I was too busy to notice. The Voice of Steel starts off where the Eastern Hammer EP ended, hurdy gurdies blazing in a mind-blowing intro, and then slowly transitions into some weird amalgamation of pagan nsbm and spacey Pink Floyd guitar solos. It’s still got some battlecry sopilka breakdowns of classic Nokturnal Mortum, the intense tribal drumming that first greeted us on To the Gates of Blasphemous Fire’s Cheremosh, the violin over epic synth that characterized Weltanschauung…
But it also has clean vocals and Pink Floyd guitar solos, and I’m just not sold on them yet. The Voice of Steel is in some ways amazing, in others irritating. It’s a decent album, no doubt about it, but it sure wasn’t what I was hoping for. Nothing would have made me happier than a whole album of the Eastern Hammer remake of Kolyada, and that The Voice of Steel is certainly not.
The album has some real gems, notably Shlyakhom Sontsya. It also has tracks like Moei Mrii Ostrovi that would fit in a lot better on an Amorphis album and just clash entirely with the group’s extremist views. They’re trying to mature musically, but they have to mature mentally first to really pull it off.
Extremism has produced some amazing music over the years. Wrath of the Tyrant, Det Som Engang Var, NeChrist, they all share in common a level of passionate convictions taken so far as murder, arson, or white supremacy. Obviously I don’t have to condone these acts to appreciate their origins, but the musicians have to come to terms with them eventually. Ihsahn seems to recognize his youthful escapades as a childish outlet for his anti-Christian views and now writes more mature music effectively. His album After, another new release, is pretty damn impressive. He can still frown on the Christian culture of servitude without letting it consume him and his innate musical talents. Meanwhile you’ve got Varg writing dissertations on the likelihood of Aryans being an advanced race from outerspace, and I have pretty low expectations of his forthcoming album.
I hear in Knjaz Varggoth’s new music a reflection of this Vargian state of depravity. Their old songs embodied folk, and they believed in it so thoroughly that they took on extremist views, but that was only the lyrical focus. NeChrist was packed with anthems to what the band barely understood, aggression married to mysticism, white supremacy only a catalyst. The aggressive desperation with which they summoned a bygone era made their music a mirror into the past. It was as though the songs they played were ancient melodies shouting, screaming to be heard once again over the clamor of modern rock by any means necessary. I can’t expect another masterpiece like NeChrist, maybe not even something as good as Weltanschauung, but a stylistic evolution means a mental one too, and I hear in songs that combine clean vocals and Gilmour guitars with cries for the motherland the path of Varg, not Ihsahn. It’s hard to appreciate music that’s neither passionate nor mature. The Voice of Steel is not culture triumphant, it’s more like a methodic racial manifesto. Come on Knjaz, either sustain your fire or light a new match, don’t slump into dogma.
For a far more heartfelt nsbm album, check out Temnozor’s 2010 offering, Haunted Dreamscapes.
Through the Shattered Lens 