Help the Music Mole in his continuing metal adventure...

Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark
Ajattara - Kuolema
Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales

umm, xasthur?

At the moment I'm also digging:

- The first Fleurety album that was recently re-released
- Sigh's "Imaginary Sonicscape"
- Negura Bunget

these are all fairly progressive albums mind you and not really one for trad-metal purists. I like this style a lot though and wish I could hear more as most of my friends have started listening to the "sheets of glass being dropped in a church" style of metal one associates with Burzum et al.

Music Mole, you ought to also check out some (and I mean just SOME) of the new wave of power-metal that's been coming out. Some track recommendations:

Rhapsody: Last Winged Unicorn
Rhapsody: Power of the Dragonflame
Nightwish: Wishmaster
Manowar: (anything by them really).

GREAT record.

James

Also, any recent Nevermore and Paradise Lost 'Draconian Times' (moody and rockin', though not breakneck)

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0319/seward.php

I just love their tone of intellectual superiority.

specially 'The Final Chapter'

Things don't get more rocking than this, believe me.

Well, they did for a while. Heck, Fenriz had a Tangerine Dream-like project in the mid-90s. I wouldn't say too many weegee metallers are experimental these days though. Seems to be more attempts at a) cyber-metal (with none of the heart of Voivod) and b) death metal, something Norway never really excelled at in the past.
Most of the elexperiments were in the late 90s.

Our metal scene is disappointingly tepid these days, to be honest.

If you desire the true essence of black metal the time has come for the new wave of pitch black metal, led by my band Byzantum. we are only only ones keeping the flames of blackness!

This goes back as far as 1987, when Mayhem got Klaus Schulze to do the intro for their Deathcrush demo. Arguably much of the idea behind early 90s Nordic BM (Burzum/Darkthrone/Mayhem/Ildjarn et al) was to achieve the effects of ambient drones through metal - endless repetition, focus on continuously flowing distortion textures rather than distinct staccato powerchord riffing, washed out fuzzy reverbed sound, etc.

OK since I last posted I got hold of Ulver's Nattens Madrigal and (at the suggestion of my friendly record store metalhead) Darkthrone's 'Transilvaian Hunger'. Extremely f***ing impressed by both records, I am. Creative dirty production aaaah there's nothing like it.

The guy in the store told me that Darkthrone's main man listened mainly to techno and electronic music these days. That's interesting, cos I do techno but increasingly only listen to metal these days.

That seems to apply to both the above records, especially Darkthrone's one. Hence a mood, and ambience, in spite of the furious pace.

Osmose just reissued Antaeus' expressively bleak CUT YOUR FLESH AND WORSHIP SATAN -- it's easily the peer of Nattens Madrigal and Transilvanian Hunger, so cut cut cut.

if he was referring to Fenriz, i doubt it. maybe he went through a phase in the mid 90's when he was doing the whole Neptune Towers trip, but nowadays he comes across more as thrash metal purist than anything else.

E: Right, I will try to find it! So, what's your current playlist, then?

[..]

F: Oh, it's so much, man...Let's see: DJ ASSAULT from Detroit, DJ SNEAK, always... Bruce Springsteen from the 70's, I think we can do with, let's say, NIFELHEIM too, their latest album, and maybe number five, what shall I say? ORCUSTUS from Norway.

[...] I started getting into techno in ‘92, all that Chicago house stuff. Then I thought, “this is gonna be huge.” After three years, I was still into it. I thought, “ok, I’m not gonna ruin this magic as well.” I learned just how to work the turntables

Maelstrom: So what are you talking about, then? Tell us about stuff you really like. There is some good techno out there. I don’t know if it’s correct to consider Aphex Twin techno, or if it’s really good, but I think it is.

Fenriz: Yeah, well, you have to call them techno, but he’s really left field, what we call that style. I listen to fifteen of the sub-genres of what we’ll call techno, but that also includes house. When I DJ, I play between 20-25 styles.

Maelstrom: So who are the coolest artists?

Fenriz: That’s too many to mention. I’ve been listening to it for 11 years. But I’ve got a Plastic Man tattoo - Richie Halton. Everyone should know who that guy is.

I'm surprised it's been out of print. It's not like it's old at all.
It's also incredibly boring and generic. Come on, this is basically on level with listening to Dark Funeral and Marduk!

What? Snob? O no!

Metal tip of the day: Download the damned Anacrusis discography.
Particularly Manic Impressions and Screams And Whispers. The latter is just about my favorite pop metal type thing! Hooray!
Their debut's a pretty great thrash metal thingymajig too.
You can get 'em here!

thank you! i thought i was alone, oystein, until i met you.

E: Yeah, it's nice to know that you can kind of always rely on DARKTHRONE to, you know, well...

F: Well, you know, I hope so

No, I think that CYFAWS is more than those - it is far less controlled and more rabidly insane than those two (rather meticulous/clinical) bands. And although I am no fan of the generic Swedish sound and Dark Funeral is of course massively overrated, Marduk does have a big asset in Morgans guitar playing which is way less one-dimensional than it appears to be.

Although it's a good thing that Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan has been rereleased, I already have that - the one I've been after for the past four years is their Rekordin 2000-1 MCD, which annoyingly went out of print almost as soon as it was released. Bastards.

By the way, Ulver are clearly from another planet.

Weakling - Dead as Dreams
Fleurety - Min tid skall komme
any Negura Bunget
Ulver - Bergtatt
Death - Human
Carcass - Necroticism
Bolt Thrower - The IVth Crusade

and necro's right, weakling weakling weakling. absolutely, along with leviathan and ludicra, some of the best american metal right now.

Also, though they're not out until the 31st, the new Lamb of God and Mastodon albums (Ashes Of The Wake and Leviathan, respectively) are amazing.

http://www.maelstrom.nu/ezine/complete_iss25.htm?osCsid=6a59b9a54f1cdffe917db7a72226a7bd

Well - I loved it very much. I found it very easy to assimilate from a techno headspace - some of the instrumental bits reminded me of Underground Resistance (!!). The music was lo-fi but beautifully produced, never a foot wrong. I was slightly dissapointed that it was easy for me to grasp. I was hoping for more of a grapple - Aborym is a nice grapple. I think Beherit's album is a classic of the genre, becuase it has that stamp of authority, especially in the vocals, and that sound that everyone is aspiring to in this style, the sound they call 'evil and necro' - it definitely has that, and it's hard to achieve, so - hails, haha.

Incidentally, I don't believe the satanism - I'm yet to find any black metal where the satanism is really felt as a way of life. Perhaps it's an impossible task, but I don't mind at all, that's not really what I like - I like the sheer creative intensity of it, and feel the same about, say, Jandek or Brian Wilson. So it's camp and moody, and agreeably saturnine, making a lot out of very little, really it's hard not be impressed.

I am not surprised in the least to read today that one of the main Beherit guys (you may know more than me) is now a techno DJ. Totally unsurprising, just as with the Darkthrone dudes. You can tell that they have that sensibility from the music - and Aborym don't, incidentally. They could never write techno, because it's a subtle sonic shift from the industrial thing they do, but one that requires an eye for obsession with simplicity and detail revealed via repetition.

I just completed a techno/black metal thing for a USA label, and sent it 2 weeks ago. Their eloquent silence is reinforced by this record - to get that sound they call 'grim and necro' is no small feat, and my record definitely failed. This record definitely succeeds Back to the drawing board. Or ont o something more suited to my perspective, perhaps.

What do you think of 'Drawing Down the Moon' el sabor?

i find the production on DDTM really odd spatially, kind of close with reverb and delay used in odd and sparing ways. the vocal production is surprisingly detailed at times. i hated the album when when it came out because it was so disorienting and the production seemed haphazard, but these days it strikes me as something that must've been intended.

i'm really looking forward to listening to it on quality hallucinogens.

apparently nuclear holocausto not only djed techno but released an album as gamma-g:

Around the same time Beherit started to release ambient albums, Nuclear Holocausto, who had lost his interest in metal, worked as a techno DJ using the name Gamma-G. He even released one compilation called (G)raveyard 2001 - The Ultimate Hardrave Massacre. (from metal-archives.com's beherit page)

i'm very interested in hearing that one.

totally OTM! and i like aborym.

also, cleaning house, watering plant (well in my case feed flies and blood to death plant), and hunting for food just to beginn to start with. black metal is not just music it is lifestyle!

black metal also get bloodstains off weapons, it is quite ingenious the ways it can be applied. i tend to leave blood of enemies on though. power is gained through their slaughter.