Canadian Black Coffee and Italian Black Metal

Raise the unholy libation, present the sacrifice. This Italian black mass of traditional occult black metal is a mystikal ritual for all to indulge in. Every unearthed corpse has a morbid tale to connect us through seance to our dark master. Black clouds of delirious ceremonial chant and sacremental song augment the dark storms of irratic violence this horde pervertedly procreate. Satan is primordially invoked with riffing orthodoxy and vomitted summonings as the band enact their malevolent musical witchcraft. Meanwhile witches dance in shroud around the offering spilling chalices of blood. Unlike the more dejected, depressive graveyard contemplation of their contemporary Italian sects MonumentuM and Cult of Blood, The 13 Drape deliver their bleak visions of funereality with pumelling grimness and evil. Just look at the dead guy on the cover's reaction.

13th Way

Be flung into this emotional stew of blackest thoughts and demonic impulses. Embrace the left hand and debase the natural. Follow your black mass intuition to the extreior circle of existence. Leave behind this unified and barren universe for chaos eternal. The morbidly opaque spectral veil that is Necromass evoke psychic images of this carnival of blasphemy we call mortality from the abysmal obscurity beyond. Mysteria Mystica Zofiriana is a downwards spiral of bestial adrenaline and Satanic reflection that will leave you dizzily disillusioned. A must at sodomatic orgies of hate.

Into an Image of Left

Cult of Blood

As promised (tweeted, that is) here is another tome from Italy's cobwebbed and shrouded vault of occult rites. Released the same year as In Absentia Christi and featuring Agua Regis (Roberto Mammarella, vox + gtr with MonumentuM) on guitar and bass, Cultus Sanguine's epononymous EP is a morose ritual of Lombardian anguish. This is a good soundtrack for the type of party where no one shows because there is a thunderstorm and you drink all the bottles of high percentage table vino you bought and then wander through the darkness and rain into the cemetery only to leave a white rose at the wrong grave and remember that you left candles burning in your appartment. Since those don't happen every weekend (or so I'm told; for me they do) you could just listen now and feel sad.

Ride the winds of hate

BEST 4 LAST BITCHES!

Evidently my 2011 ear was in crude enough shape to overlook one of Canada's most monolithic doom metal offerings of some time, right under my nose here in Montreal no less! Ensorcelor have been making waves in the city's small but mighty scene of true sonic sculptors of morbidly misanthropic magic. Their bearded, tree-wielding wizard-reared rituals caught my attention not more than a year ago at the unholy Death Church in St. Henri and they have remained ever-present in my mind as a colossal local live force worthy to dish it out along side numeroUS heavies (Thou, Yob, Krallice) to pass through this city's gates in recent times. It is the lumbering emotional juggernaut of their live performance, perhaps, that obscured my radar when hunting down great Canadian metal releases this past anno. I have seen the error of my ways. I could not see the dark woods for the light of the true path had blinded me. Having properly installed this blackened volume at my cylindrical altar my heart now rests as it should: in mother nature's darkness. What has struck me most immediately here is the band's ability to invoke such unholy hordes to my mind Thergothon, Skepticism, Mournful Congregation and the Woodsmoke crowd while remaining entirely unique and original, retaining only a few hints of such influences. On top of all this, the record very eloquently evades the all too common sludgisms of much modern funeral doom. The true strength of this unit is their ability to capture the earthiness of doom metal lore and the seasonal moodiness this music exudes. For those south of our snowy expanses, this is the most direct audio tap into the feeling of long trudges through white abyss; of waking up to days on end of dimmed sunlight consumed willingly by early nightfall. This album represents perfectly the musical equivalent of the black cloud that can envelope one's thoughts under a winter's moon...

and if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment...

Raise Your Glass

The Ross Bay Cult Lives On!

Don't be put off by the somewhat tasteless cover art, C. Moyen doesn't have enough hands to do every black metal record cover, he does come damn close though. Keeping right on rolling with this theme of unearthed booty of metal's forgotten past, I bring you easily the best and most compelling "re"issue of the year. "Re" because this was never released way back 1994 when it should've been. As the story goes Antichrist shared a rehearsal space, some top-notch junk and west coast style bestial mayhem with Canadian BM gods Blasphemy. There must not have been any sound proofing between their rooms because at times it sounds like these guys break into riffs straight-off Fallen Angel of Doom, war metal galloping drum beat and all. Frankly that's fine with me. For all my love of Gods of War and Blood Upon the Altar it is FAoD that unquestionably reshaped the sonic morbidity of all black metal to come. With the hordes of bands flying the war metal flag for kvlt status it's great to finally have another stone up in the cemetery of one of Canada's most important and influential moments in metal history. Best not to analyse this one too much, just drink yourself into oblivion and pretend that's Black Winds barking at you.

Devour 

PESTILENCE WAR FAMINE DEATH

Abruptum hold the highly prestigious place of most derided and hated band in the black metal sphere. This is no easy feat, let me tell you. It takes roughly 20 years of dicking around in dank basements and then a whole whack of post production to make what was initially offensive noise to sound even more vile. It is for this reason that they are an excellent place to pick up on 2011's music trends. If Kanye West and Jay-Z can put in about a week at the studio and crank out such "classics" as Nigga$ in Paris then why not pass these guys the buck? Undoubtedly I love this album in relation to much of this year's canon as I do the aforementioned track off Watch The Throne. What Abruptum do with these four very straightforward themes (listed in post title) is abstract and evoke them in a way far more visceral than any musical black metal could. Really the BM world hates this because it beats them at their own game. I'm also posting this because if you don't know this seminal Swedish act this is the perfect introduction to their material. Supposedly broken up since '05 they've had two releases since then of unknown origin. Basically, these are dark and fucked up sounds from the murky past by an entity now residing in the torrential mists of black metal's worldwide miasma. This is the perfect soundtrack for next year if all goes as planned.

Apocalypse Power 

Slavic Black Metal Attack no. 2

Watching a blackness spin before me - cyclical altar, cylinder sorcery rituals

Flowing of victims' (((speakers))) blood unto my sonic tissues

Audio-entrancement meditation

Occult fantasy, mysterious woods

Of the mind, darkened catacomb of the soul

Dream wanderings through obscured landscapes

Ancient spells resonate lost walls, instruments possessed by evil winds

Deviant dirges of time immemorial wed with symphonic sacrament

Arias to haunt the graves of your thoughts

A winding way

GET ON YOUR KNEES AND WORSHIP, WORSHIP, WORSHIP

Don't let some philosophizing USBM bull-shit artist sweet talk their way into your studded leathers with their false second-wave Scandinavian scholasticism. Don't be fooled when they expound about how their band's bloated drumming, ooey gooey choclate-chip guitar tone and cookie-cutter shrieks are really some existential distillation of "true Norwegian black metal". Don't let them get away with idiotically professing "De Mysteriis Dom Satanas is the best thing Attila ever did". Instead put this on and watch them cringe at the acoustic intros, the keyboard bridges and major-scale riffs played over top thrashing proto-blast gallops in fluctuating tempos. Then watch the stupid blank look they get when they ask "who is this?" and you tell them it's Tormentor, Attila's first band, and their 1988 debut Anno Domini. It is the only CD Mayhem sold on their 2007 North American tour when you had yourself entranced by the dark master himself, hypnotizing you with a noose from the stage and convincing you that any evil command he made of you, you would follow. Apparently Mayhem are on tour again. Go see them, if not for the aforementioned experience then at least to get yourself a physical copy of this under-praised masterpiece of first wave black metal. This is beyond transcendence, this is perfection.

Beyond

Canadian Metal Classics Pt. 3

Alright, so it would seem that much more metal is in order this month as we didn't get to cover that much in the past while and I'm sure many of you have catching up to do, especially when it comes to the underappreciated and essential contributions that my country made to the international scene in the '80s. Today we have a hacked up corpse of cross-genre mutilation a la Sacrifice and their 1985 debut Torment In Fire. This is probably one of the most porgressive releases of its day, managing to seamlessly weave together the unhinged chaos of later speed metal, the caveman destruction of early death metal and frenetic thrash metal riffing, all together with an HC-informed "we don't give a fuck" approach. Sacrifice's sheer disregard for metal's growing conformity to subgenre stereotypes at the time makes them indispensible in the carving of the jagged void from which later death metal and second wave black metal would spew forth. In many senses this is to me one of the very first Black/Thrash/Death records as it so liberally blurs it's wide range of influences. One facet that literally screams this are Urbinati's completely ludicrous vocals. Along with an audible Tom Araya in his raspy rapid-fire verse delivery, we can hear one of the first death growls developing in some songs (such as 'Burned at the Stake') while it is his high-pitched shreiks that clearly place Rob in a far darker universe from us. Perhaps the most provocatively morbid sounds suggested on this record are those of the cacophonous rhythm section who not only bring a scraping and frantic punk feel to the performances but also seem to foreshadow the militaristic rhythms found in later Canadian 'War metal' acts like Revenge and Conqueror. See the openings to songs such as "Homicidal Breath" and "Infernal Visions" or the bridge of "Necronomicon" for examples of this. While these are only suggestions of the blackened insanity that my country would unleash unto the world in the coming decades, you will see the aesthetic even further developed in a later post of this retrospective series. But for now, dim the lights, draw the pentagram in chalk on the floor, grab a beer and bang your head as you're possessed by this piece of killer-canuck carnage!
  

 TURN IN YOUR GRAVE

FUCK WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

Venom's debut shook the foundations of rock n roll so violently the musical idiom has never been then same since. All ascension to the realm of high art for this genre and culture was lost, at least for a time, when these swineherdly blokes rolled on the scene with blown amps, bad hair and reeking of Newcastle Brown Ale. What makes this record so compellingly influential is it's paradoxes: a band of untrained musicians trying to make rock n roll while satirizing occultism giving birth to a genre of intentionally untrained musicians trying to make occult-inspired walls of noise. This is indeed the truest of black metal albums because it can't possibly appeal to anyone who is looking to it for artistic merit. Or can it? Either way I recommend you put this on  tonight and crank it up when some friends come over and see how long it takes for conversation to turn to "what is this fucking shit we're listening to?" then drink 40s until no one wants to listen to anything else.

 Poisoned!

A 90s Pair

Many apologies for my extreme tardiness with this blog I love so much. I promise more consistent posting once school starts and life takes on a little more structure. That said, if you're reading, PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS. Now, with no further ado, I'm gonna try to win you back with the two birds, one post approach...

Tried and true, a Canadian classic. Forever Again is a collection of lo-fi atmospheres, unresolved and vague tales from the heart and hooky, minimal, bedroom dream punk anthems. Without totally evident conceptual continuity linking the songs, Eric's Trip managed to meld and define a radical new aesthetic with this record. In a decade that, like the 80s, has become known for excessive and tastelessly BIG production values, these mopey 20-somethings managed to capture their message in their medium. The intimacy and vulnerability of the lyrical content is reflected in the recording: the calm of almost inaudible field sounds, acoustic guitar and voice close miked in a soundproofed basement and drums distant and small in the mix. The subtle use of basic tape effects and reverb adds to the comforting claustrophobia and wintry effect the album has. Eric's Trip's career-long boycott of guitar compression sums up their sentiment towards the state of record production in their time: if wasn't broke when you put it to tape, why fix it?

Let Go 

Deeply destructive and strange, Nattens Madrigal (trans: Madrigal of the Night) is, for me, arguably the best Norwegian Black Metal release of the 90s. The no bullshit performance and necro production, the dense harmonic textures, virtuosic guitaring and a balance of acoustic folk and minimalist electronic interludes make for a thoroughly immersing sonic barrage. One must question the devotion of the extreme metal underground to harsh sound when seeing how mixed the reviews of an outright masterpiece as this are. The myth goes that the gnostic gents of Ulver spent their entire production budget on Gucci suits and substances and then recorded this on a four-track in a forest. While this little romance adds to the mystique of the record and is probably at least half true, a very professional mixing and mastering job is evident and most likely cost more money than is perceived to have been spent. However, it is the popular rumour that gets cited most as reasoning for a lack of appreciation for the sound of this album, even by Ulver fans. The reality is that much of the Black Metal community are completely unwilling to hear artists with original approaches to the aesthetic and dismiss these as ineffective outings. But even through the unrelenting aural attack the genius at work here is painfully audible.

Alone & lost 

The common denominator here is strong material presented in a DIY manner through user friendly four-track tape porta-studios, which were in abundance by the mid-90s. Both the artists here evaded the oppressive commercialization of sound engineering in their decade and crafted albums with impressively well-defined sonic personalities. I think Marshall McLuan would have appreciated these excellent records.