Norway may NOT be my favorite location for Black Metal but there are illustrious exceptions like these GOATKRAFT who came out with a full-length for Iron Bonehead three years ago. Bestial Invasion has just released a collection of unreleased tracks and a few covers in CD format. The tracks were already available since last year digitally but here they are, packaged in a collector’s box of paper and plastic.
In case you didn’t know the band here’s a quick listen to their full-length album.
I’ve been working in IT most of my life and I am not extraneous to the concept of hacking which sounds better than “anally drilling out the reasons why some experiences do work while some others fail”. Yesterday’s concert was actually a big win for me and I will try to understand why did it work so well, and ultimately consider if this is the right dimension for post-pandemic shows.
My old friend Paolo from Coagulated rex bundled the ultimate Black Metal lineup for the night by sewing three top-tier barbwire unholy monstrosities with as much stage presence as infernal sound. Does this ring Black Metal, anyone?
The show was closed to random people, factually restricting the invitations to those actually interested in the show, which was partly a bureaucratic decision but nonetheless a strong message I could relate to, akin to what we did with the Nuclear the Abominations fest 2 years ago. The venue was small and clean, with astoundingly decent toilets, which is something I am graciously obsessed with: THANK you for letting me piss and shit without being hauled in a dimension out of Kapala-Tetragrammacide lyrics minus the aliens. Also, the beer served was quite good and not the usual shitty carbonated dishwasher water you get in bigger venues for ridiculous prices, which is another big thumb up.
On the downside, if I had to find a major flaw in the evening the overall sound was tragically confused. Given the chaotic nature of the music, the result was a giant wall of slurred noise in which basically you couldn’t understand half a shit. Which – at the end of the day – could have been far more tragic if the three bands had not been able to create that kind of suffocating atmosphere of combat shock: the fixed red lights, the stage set, the putrid energy reverberating in the air was really the perfect storm.
So was the shitty sound so much of a problem? Hell NO. Because Black Metal is never about the single riff, it’s about the overall EXPERIENCE. You listen to a Profanatica record, close your eyes and you’re taken to hell. But what about a show? Is it the same as listening to the same record at home? Nope. You go to a show to live some first-person experience and here I am answering myself from the latest grognard posts. Shows like the one I attended yesterday are the reason why shows DO actually still make sense today. It’s not just the music. You get a completely new dimension, like a 4-D cinema when you see something like that. You’re literally submerged in the music, INTO the songs. Eyes, ears, and skin, all harmonically convey the same message. It’s being alive and part of what’s going on in the moment. So no, the sound, shitty as it was, was just a part of the whole.
The second flaw one could point out is that everybody already knew each other, so it was basically a high-school meeting with band shirts. But is that a problem? Did the decision of a private party actually bar anyone from attending? Did id lack in (AH AH AH) “Inclusivity”? Well, you bet it did, ah ah. And you know what? Fuck it! Not because we’re elite, but because selecting dedicated people led to a perfectly balanced night where everyone was accountable for himself and his friends. Which is cool, because it did not really actually bar anybody to come, it just put some first-level funneling into the process. The people that were invited in turn consciously invited other people, there was a first-level connection with at least someone in the show, and I am certain if someone new to this music wanted to attend, nobody would have raised any objections. Despite what one might think, this is an open, welcoming environment, if you’re not a cunt. So no, this second objection doesn’t really work either.
Yesterday’s show was like being catapulted into Jacob’s Ladder under Pervitin.
Uraniavore Goatphago have been the first shock of the horrors of war when adrenaline first hits the brain. VomitVulva were the slaughter in the trenches, where shrapnel made your friends’ limbs fly and covered you in guts. Sadomortuary took the souls of the dead to hell, while the bodies afield were eaten by mutant Armageddon cannibals.
First time I see the awesome Uraniavore Goatphago and I was blown away bt the sheer static barbarity this duo manages to compress on stage. It’s the kind of brutal primitive violence of late Deranged turned black by the Blasphemachine. Horrific noise wall vibrating destruction.
VomitVulva were the perfect choice to jump from the solid berm of the Uraniavore Goatphago directly into the thick of the carnage. The stage was filled with something that looked more like a narcos squad than a group of musicians. A chaotic mass of riffs, profanity, STDs, and shitty booze. This is what you need when you have to tie together the show.
And then, it was Sadomortuary again. The effluvia of the crypt solidified on stage like Ossorio’s blind dead at dawn. If we take away the new hipster nuance of the term “ritualistic”, it would be the right one to describe the interminable minutes of inevitable hooded DEATH that were punctuated by the band that in my opinion best represents Black Metal in this country today.
I don’t have much more to add, I hope that this evening will set a school and that there may be more such evenings. If so, I will gladly go back and get my bloated old ass out of the door.
Another throwback of eight years to complete a review of a record that was released thirteen years ago, how’s that for dedication? And to make things even more old school, the Shub-Niggurath tracks are taken from a rehearsal from 1990! I didn’t really write much at the time, but as I picked up the CD from the shelf and started to listen to it I found myself why I was actually losing any time on this recording.
To be honest, let’s say it straight away, this split is fucking useless. It’s just crap made up to use the logos of two great bands. Let’s be clear, I’ve loved Shub-Niggurath since the demo tape, and I think Necroccultus is an excellent band as well despite their relatively young age (sigh, I just realized they formed 19 years ago), but I can’t stand live and rehearsals unless they’re included in a full discography or as bonus tracks, let alone in a split. To make matters worse, three different labels for three different formats, including a vinyl whose significance I don’t really understand. And even the audio is too poor to justify such a pressing, these are things that you can accept for a band that has played very little for which every live show is a jewel to be recovered, but this is not the case, or possibly for a big band, like Slayer, of which you want to collect every single release. But not here, I don’t think we’re there at all. Even the cover was one of the artist’s early works and on tape/CD it is what it is. Leave this release alone.
Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Abruptum “The Satanist Tunes” demo tape, unholy black misanthropic glossopoeia from Sweden, 1990.
What do you get when you put together an evil dwarf and an alcoholist? You get the best of combinations for some of the best Black Met.. well, Music, ever from Scandinavia. The interior “mal de vivre” of these two guys on this tape is so thick and real you could almost feel it on your skin. This Abruptum recording is not just music, it’s an experience in the misanthropic folly of lost deviated humanity. It’s dissonance and distorted melodies, an unholy abandonment in the shores of suicide, it’s noise/grind meets dungeon ambient, with the best alcoholic vocal performances by the guy who calls itself All (who did basically nothing of interest ever again besides Abruptum, if we exclude some Ophtalamia). Listening to this tape even in the best of your days is guaranteed to fuck your mood bad. A tribute to a shapeless horror lurking within an unholy beyond and a true (probably involuntary) masterpiece of glossopoeia. Pure Black Metal at its finest.
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PS: Please if you want to get this, get Sound Pollution represses, do not buy anything by Southern Lord, BOYCOTT beard hipsters!
Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Corpse Molestation “Descension Of A Darker Deity” demo tape, chaotic brutal madness of Death made in Australia, 1992.
I understood you like me reviewing older stuff so here it is, one of the biggest jewels of Australian extreme metal and one of the greatest demos of the genre: pre Bestial Warlust in all its gory and dismal schizophrenia!
Jesus fucking christ, this stuff is so savage and at the same time so intense and raw it feels like the sound of a million deranged butchers cleaving flesh in a dungeon cellar. You know aussies can be out of their mind but here we got that formula transfixed to some of the heaviest, ghastlier Death Metal of all time, still scary after almost 30 years. The overall sound is massively choking and uncontrolled, heavy and deep and vaguely Autopsy/Goreaphobia in feel, but then things get out of control and all the folly of primitive Oceania stirs in chainsaw in hand. The vocals are a sink that grinds human waste, the guitars vibrate with sheer madness, the drummer is just fucking possessed and to top it off, the production is ugly, dense and filthy as every black/death/grindcore release is supposed to be. There is really little to add besides everything here is perfect, including those handful of samples and slow grinding moments of demonic despair. A classic among classics, and to think this is 1992???? It’s fucking un-be-lie-va-ble!
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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Schizoparanoic Platoon “Warfare: Mass Annihilation” MCd, Martial und militaristic Death Metal from Greece, 2019 Askio
Very acidic, rusty, warmongering Death Metal is what we get from this decently prolific band from Greece, whose latest EP (this) has also been recently repressed on tape by Infested Morgue rex.
Battlefield insanity is what better defines this band, in a more acidic “Voivod projected 300 years in the future” or a more brutal static version of Marduk/Exmortem way more than Bolt Thrower. I personally wan’t sure of this recording the first time I put this one in the record player but the cyclical obsessive sound dug in rather quickly. The vocals are stern and arrogant, just shouting orders on top of a squadron of tracklaying bass/drum machinery.
Misleadingly monolithic, there is also more stuff going on within this suffocating mass of sound than what might seem at first.
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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Black Prophecies “Azathoth” demo, Black Metal from Genova, s/p 1988
Before the post-“Hammerheart” deviation and nazi roleplayers raised in Iraq there was a time when Black Metal was still a name known to few and dealt with scary esoterica and horror. Among the handful of bands that pioneered the genre in the ’80s we had the great local Black Prophecies who, a bit like Morbid Angel, mixed elements of lovecraftian cosmic horror with the dark side of religion.
Along with other bands like Poison, Semen of Satan or Hastur from Peru these bands defined the term Black Metal at its best, when despite (and because of) almost unintelligible rehearsal quality you get the sense of absolute loss and perdition, of being caught in a maelstrom of formless beings of teeth and horns ripping you to pieces but while Death Metal intends to inflict pain to your soul outwards from the rending of flesh, this music was supposed to tear apart straight at the soul, bringing pain outwards from the inner self.
There are screams of agony in this putrid mass of sound that resemble a grotesque reassembling of extreme metal elements, the inch by inch skinning of the spirit done through the olystic combination of atmosphere and brutal demonic violence: the riffs are straight to the point, at the same time minimalist but ripe of negative energy, and the evocative, tribal drumming perfect for the job, sometimes everything slows down to a grinding, scary atmosphere that defines the term BLACK. It’s part Medieval Prophecy AND part Christ’s Death, you’re damn lucky you can get it in the brilliant collection that Terror From Hell Records released in 2012.
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