New Reviews coming up

Vader: The Ultimate Incantation
Incantation: Diabolical Conquest
God Macabre: The Winterlong
Demigod: Slumber of Sullen Eyes

Best Death Metal Albums

Beyond Essential
Atheist- Unquestionable Presence
Cryptopsy- None So Vile
Deicide- Deicide
Deicide- Legion
Morbid Angel- Altars of Madness
Morbid Angel- Blessed are the Sick
Repulsion- Horrified

Essential 
Atheist- Piece of Time
Carcass- Symphonies of Sickness
Cryptopsy- Blasphemy Made Flesh
Death- Leprosy
Death- Spiritual Healing
Death- Sound of Perseverance
Demilich- Nespithe
Entombed- Left Hand Path
Gorguts- Obscura
Immolation- Here in After
Immolation- Dawn of Possession
Massacra- Final Holocaust
Morbid Angel- Covenant
Possessed- Seven Churches
Sepultura- Beneath the Remains
Sepultura- Schizophrenia

Classics
Amorphis- The Karelian Isthmus
Bolt Thrower- Warmaster
Bolt Thrower- For Victory
Carcass- Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious
Death- Scream Bloody Gore
Death- Symbolic
Dismember- Like an Ever Flowing Stream
Entombed- Clandestine
Immolation- Failures for Gods
Incantation- Onward to Golgotha
Incantation- Mortal Throne of Nazarene
Merciless- The Awakening
Necrophobic- Nocturnal Silence
Nocturnus- The Key
Sepultura- Bestial Devastation
Sinister- Diabolical Summoning
Suffocation- Breeding the Spawn
Therion- Beyond Sanctorum
Therion- Of Darkness

If You Have the Time
Adramalech- Pure Blood Doom
Asphyx- The Rack
At the Gates- The Red in the Sky is Ours
Autopsy- Severed Survival
Bolt Thrower- IVth Crusade
Carnage- Dark Recollections
Death- Human
Gorement- The Ending Quest
Demigod- Slumber of Sullen Eyes
God Macabre- The Winterlong
Obituary- Slowly We Rot
Sepultura- Arise
Sepultura- Morbid Visions

Not So Into
Atheist- Elements
Bolt Thrower- Realm of Chaos
Cannibal Corpse- Tomb of the Mutilated
Carcass- Heartwork
Death- Individual Thought Patterns
Grave- Into the Grave
Massacre- From Beyond
Obituary- Cause of Death
Unleashed- Where No Life Dwells

In the Nightside Eclipse

We have to be careful not to believe what black metal tells us about itself. There are two competing stories. On one hand, the teenage rock 'n roll rebellion of Venom and early Mayhem, on the other hand the *ressentiment* of pretentious underground Internet Recording Artists burrowing further into their own insecure lack of self-definition. One side assures us that black metal is about church-burning, leather-wearing, and goat fornicating, while the other side strains to intellectualize its emo roots, painfully obscuring any vitality leftover from metal and turning into its own caption on itself.

One of the most sophisticated black metal bands was Emperor. Elitist, literary, highly proficient musicians, their album At the Nightside Eclipse stands as a high-water mark for what the genre might achieve in terms of utter seriousness. At the same time, the album (its art especially) verges on fantasy metal in some points. The influence of Emperor is just as much the dousing of everything in keyboards and a renewed interest in the narrative employment of orcs.

As great as Emperor were, and as gripping as their presentation is, the later development of Emperor into pony-tail wearing prog musicians and goths suggests that something was wrong even early on. Very likely it was the feeling that they had something to do with classical music, which is true and interesting but also misguided. Another culprit might have been their feeling that they were philosophers of some kind, which is always better left suggestively for others to pick up on, and ought never to lead to the sort of concept albums Emperor later made.

So what might Emperor, and the kind of black metal they stand for, have been really about? (if not about drinking flaming goat semen and spitting it on the Virgin Mary, for instance?)

*

Let me transport you for a moment to the plains of Troy, and the songs of Homer. The poet calls up before us the most heinous, unrelenting violence, one shattered ribcage after another. Great men heave giant stones at one another, and hack obstructing limbs away from the armor they rip from corpses. All this slaughter is devoid of piety or remorse or even the apology of necessity. It is hard work but it is man's work, and the war stretches on, one suspects, because there is nothing outside of this hell. (And in the Iliad, we never leave Troy or see how one could.)

Here there is no mysticism or frostwinds or Viking raids or KISS-style face paint, but you still have everything essential to black metal. Namely this, the utter horror and violence of existence--an unceasing march to death, shortened by constant warfare and the mercilessness both of man and nature--is asserted as itself meaningful.

What separates the Iliad from the nonsensical chaos of an all-consuming violence is only grasping that given, absolutely un-removeable fact (of death) and turning it into something willed, mastered, wished-for. Life is a long (or not so long) pointless agony, however it is dressed up: no different from the meaningless existence and death of a bunch of benighted monkeys or rodents. The Iliad shows us this SAME dreadful insanity, but as by a reversal of perspective, as though it were our own volition and desire.

One stupid thing that is written about Homer is that, by turning this painful conflict INTO art, the poet "immortalizes" the heroes. No no no no. There is not some pointless thing, the Trojan war, which BECOMES art (is set down in art). The Trojan war already is the immortalization, the purpose, the accomplishment. The war is its own meaning. But nothing has been ADDED to existence other than SEEING it as having this meaning.

*

To return to black metal. It is easy to get caught up in Emperor's lyrics about "the infinity of thought," the ageless generations of black wizards, etc. But what do we really know about this arcane wisdom that they summon? Only that the agents of darkness cry out in the sorrow of seeking knowledge, of isolation, and that they wield unconquerable swords, they are eternally wrathful, that they wish for a union with the mystery of a hateful nature, and that they will wreak woe upon all in the name of the Lord of Strife.

But that is all on THIS side of the "mysteries" and "transcendence" of a religious (Satanic) view of the world. What Emperor are ABOUT is bringing "awe and derision" into the world, establishing a limitless empire of pain, and so forth. And the soul behind all of this only EVOKES the dark meaning of what is essentially a rapacious horde of unchristian, unapologetic tyrannical barbarian conquest. The "values" evoked are not values *aimed at* in a subsequent rule, but are just already the values of slaughtering and defiling.

My point is, THIS is evoked as meaningful, profound, mystical, eternal, etc.

"We will grant Him their pain. He will grant us His flame. In flesh and blood. He will arise to deliver the key. As the armours black robe slides across the landscape, we see the land of wisdom, strength and pure evil... Darkness, frost, hate... the throne will be ours.

May the wolves start to howl again. May the age of darkness arise. May we touch the black flames of the past again... and forevermore."

*

It is easy, then, to draw the contrast with death metal, which is philosophically a 180 from black metal. A band like Carcass revel precisely in the meaninglessness of gore and anatomical destruction. Their lyrics are a nihilistic joke. But you also see that the answer has nothing to do with "evil" or "darkness." As Nietzsche teaches us, evil is something to go beyond..., but this is something you can't tell teenagers.

King Diamond "The Puppet Master" (2003)

The Puppet Master, the eleventh album by Danish metallers King Diamond, labors under several disadvantages. First, the title is almost identical to the most famous metal album of the 1980s, Metallica's Master of Puppets. Second, it is a concept album whose concept can best be described as "Pinocchio in reverse." Third, how many groups still have any fuel in the tank after ten albums?

For the uninitiated, King Diamond is the solo project of Mercyful Fate's lead singer, the corpse-painted rapscallion who introduced himself to the world by releasing--a Christmas single. The (now) dozen King Diamond albums are permanently locked in 1980s Euro-metal, a kind of aural Hot Tub Time Machine. It's this strange world where Pantera never existed.

So, on one hand, the technology here is not exactly state of the art. If you've heard Abigail or Don't Break the Oath, the eerie banshee wail and predilection for baroque touches are the same. No, King Diamond still doesn't understand "narrative" in music. Someone get this man a copy of Springsteen's "Atlantic City"! And it's so bafflingly uncool as metal that the ridiculous puppet love story will have most listeners recalling this:



For all that, this is one of my favorite metal albums. For one thing, King Diamond never blinks. There's no ironic chink in the entire presentation. For another, the guitar solos are stunning. Given that there isn't much room for "texture" in what is essentially musical theater, the bursts of lead guitar are never filler. For contrast, see Kirk Hammett's tragic addiction to the wah-pedal, or any recent Slayer album. Andy LaRoque never phones it in.

I suspect this is a hard sell, and to fans of extreme death metal and normal people alike, this will appear like "Toy Story 3: In a Metal Mood." Maybe so. It's certainly not what I would play if I was meeting my girlfriend's parents for the first time. But it is also so eccentric, so catchy, so self-convinced, that it is not something you will want to keep to yourself. Listening party?

Megadeth- Killing is My Business ... and Business is Good! (1985)

Was there ever a cooler band than the early Megadeth? Featuring the ultimate regressive-personality alcoholic as mumbly lead singer, plus artwork transparently ripped off from Iron Maiden, these disorientingly and over-abundantly talented musicians never seemed remotely comfortable making this blazingly fast, coke-fueled thrash metal. The whole project is itchy and nervous, motivated by a thwarted megalomania (and coke).

If Metallica is a studied synthesis of NWOBHM and hardcore punk, Megadeth is the absurdly technical and paranoid rejoinder, drawing on jazz fusion while paradoxically playing much faster and more aggressively for all that. It is the quintessential music by and for assholes.

Let's not forget that only one band can ever be called "MEGADETH." How cool is that?

Anyways, this is the first album from these maniacs. It isn't at all "stadium-friendly" or anthemic. It is literally just a series of shredding guitar solos and churning riffs, played as fast as possible. The vocals are a disaster, the Nancy Sinatra cover is almost the longest song (not a good sign!), and the sound is kind of bad... but the riffs never stop coming, and the rhythm section is startlingly fluid and prominent.

At times the music can be quite opaque, especially as Mustaine's vocals show little interest in melody... and then within the same song (as on "Killing is My Business" and "Looking Down the Cross") they will burst into catchy daylight before disappearing again.

Most of all, this record feels rushed in every way. Not only played fast, but composed hurriedly, recorded virtually live, and with album artwork improvised by the record label. In the end, that is both its defining character and charm, and a liability. (It's obviously not a classic on par with the Metallica masterworks, which are much more deliberate and self-conscious.) I don't normally curse on this blog, but the main effect of Megadeth's debut is that it is a "nasty little fucker."

Rating: 4/5 (****)

Best songs: "Rattlehead," "Chosen Ones," "Mechanix"

Burzum- Fallen (2011)

The other day, my friend was describing a James Baldwin novel to me. I had asked whether it was great or not, but instead he decided to present the book to me as a Frankenstein's monster of dismembered parts. He told me exuberantly how this novel incorporated the subject matter from one of Baldwin's other books, the style from another, the politics from another. To me, of course, this paint-by-numbers critical approach to an artist's oeuvre leaves completely unanswered the question of whether a work is worthwhile. Instead we find ourselves in an infinite regress: as though what made Go Tell It On The Mountain a great work was its "sharing elements with Go Tell It On the Mountain" (!)

Varg Vikernes describes Burzum's new album as: "…a cross between Belus and something new, inspired more by the debut album and Det Som Engang Var than by Hvis Lyset Tar Oss or Filosofem."

We have all seen parodies of this artistic logic in any satire of how Hollywood works. A producer is pitching his new sitcom/movie to an executive: "It's a cross between Barbarella and Laverne & Shirley! It's a cross between Spiderman and Meet The Parents!"

The idea in black metal, evidently, is that there is a niche audience who, if they can describe an album in certain adjectives (or, *sigh*... regrettable angsty prose-poems) will be happy... regardless of whether an album's riffs are catchy, or whether the songs are boring. It is another version of the sex-starved teenager who will swear that ANY nude photo of a blonde with fake boobs is "so fucking hot" so as to demonstrate just how straight and virile he is. So, a black metal song can be as bad as you please, but as long as it "sounds like an outtake from Filosofem..." the woeful spirit signs off on it for being "gloriously mournful." This is just to sign away one's critical faculties over to the authority of the sticker on the cover of the CD.

All we learn from any of these examples is that it will always be possible to cynically peddle one's wares to an audience that demands only that something fit a certain Venn diagram of already-known styles and sounds. 1000 monkeys typing at a 1000 typewriters for 1000 years may not be able to produce the works of Shakespeare... but they definitely COULD write "a cross between Othello and Macbeth"--provided this pollination were all that was wanted. To certain metal fans, undoubtedly no more is expected.

As with the teenager described above, it is stupid to argue about the merits of this album. If anyone tells you that it is anything BUT corny, repetitive, pretentious, unmemorable, lightweight, and sort-of irritating, that person is just playing dress-up with their listening experience. This album is garbage.

If said moron insists, "No, it sounds like Filosofem... but with fast parts!" Well... I don't disagree. The only difference is that it sucks. That's a difference that matters to me...

At the Gates- The Red in the Sky is Ours (1992)

I know this post is about 10 years late--i.e. 10 years after "sounds like At the Gates" was a ubiquitous descriptor for every American emo and hardcore and metal act, when every bearded, drug-dealing bike-messaging cruster was raising their fists in the metal sky to the Slaughter of the Soul album... even a few years after their cash-in reunion in 2007. (At which time knuckle-dragging "metal fans" among my acquaintance were shocked at my lack of enthusiasm: "Y-y-you don't... g-g-uh.. like Slaughter of the Soul? But it fucking slaaaays, man!")

I confess, though, that Slaughter of the Soul made a huge impression on me when I first heard it in 2001: they made it sound so easy! And the narrative going around at that time was that, yes, At the Gates had other albums, but they were basically a prelude to this, their masterpiece. One listen to their earlier music confirmed this: uncatchy, full of diverging parts, badly-recorded, and lacking everything that made Slaughter of the Soul such a landmark: twin-guitar hooks, compelling choruses and audible lyrics, a style combining basically Iron Maiden and Slayer... Of course, you could squint and imagine that the earlier riffs were somehow aiming at the same thing, picking out a few seconds in a 6 minute song that "foreshadowed their later genius."

How wrong-headed this all seems now! Nothing has been more driven into the ground than the Slaughter of the Soul sound--its worst incarnation being in Victory Records screamo and metalcore appropriations--so that perhaps even someday we shall want to revisit *this* album as deserving and merely overshadowed by its influence. Still, it is a ludicrously front-loaded and monotonous record, far too easy to overplay.

On the other hand, At the Gates' debut, under consideration here, is positively fecund with inspiration, overflowing with cool parts, labyrinthine structures, and a precocious grasp of "technicality" in death metal (this was 1992!), while managing to avoid almost every trap of "sweetness" and pandering to be found in, say, Swedish compatriots Dark Tranquility.

Still, this record's reputation is in need of some burnishing! Here is the allmusic.com review:

Here's what Sweden's At the Gates told us with their first album, The Red in the Sky is Ours: they were from, er, Sweden; they were very upset about something -- probably their parents; they played extremely fast and furious; and they pretty much sounded like a "baby" Entombed, offering little in the way of innovation to the booming Gothenburg death metal scene. And that's pretty much it. Later on, their contributions would rank among the best death metal around, but, for now, only the title track and latter-day concert favorite "Kingdom Gone" show any inspiration. Everything else will barely interest even hardcore fans.

My response:

• Doesn't sound like Entombed (except maybe the one song cited).
• Erroneously perceived as a "entry" in "the booming Gothenburg scene," where in fact the album precedes the debuts of Dark Tranquility and In Flames.
• Even assuming by "Gothenburg scene," the reviewer means unrelated bands such as Dismember, Entombed, Carnage, Grave, etc., At the Gates here are light years beyond those bands (still largely tied to a Discharge/crust influence); the ideas here still sound inventive and eccentric, not tied to an early 90s "scene."
• If anything, one can read here a hidden influence on Norsecore, especially on Dark Funeral.
• In any case, this is the worst kind of historical interpretation, deeming the album irrelevant only because it does not fall in with the development of the reviewer's favorite style.

The Red in the Sky is Ours, far from being "melodic" in the sense of ring-tone melodies and warmed-over Iron Maiden influence, is melodic in the true sense: the songs unfold according to a melodic understanding or logic. Instead of being a simple phrase or hook, melody here is the entire song's working-through. Add to this a bubbling technicality, a permeating but eccentric emotionality (so far from U.S. death metal's tone!), the occasional crazy use of a violin, and you have the exact opposite of Slaughter of the Soul: a record almost so overcharged with ideas as to pay off almost unlimited relistening.

My only criticism of this record, which is the flipside to its virtues: it is incredibly dense, and almost lacking dynamics. Many of the songs have the same feel.

Here is an album you can really get lost in; on the other hand, one almost has to do so, to get the most out of its depths. The surface is not pretty or easily approached.

The Crown- Deathrace King (2000)

Here is a problem with my aesthetic: I am consistently criticizing music that is just monotone grinding away at a style, or the lifeless technical reproduction of some cultural flavor or historical "sound,"-- and valorizing music that "jumps out of the speakers" at you, that is immediately catchy and memorable. In extreme metal, this is a convenient way to edit out and expel 90% of grinding, monotonous, merely extreme albums: death or black metal that never rises above the teenage thrill of grossing out parents and grunting. It is also a good way to approach power pop or hardcore punk: the tendency of this music to merely go through the motions without even crossing into consciousness always = total failure.

What then to do with a band like The Crown? Because the Crown are catchy, memorable, replete with moments that jump out at you, etc. So, why aren't they my favorite band? (The short answer is that I don't love Faith Hill or Sting, either, who are obviously more poppy and catchy by any standard than, say, Cryptopsy. But people sometimes forget that I'm not an idiot and that this ("poppiness") might not be what I mean.)

This can only be done by contrasts. Let's take a song I love: "Deicide" by Deicide.

A lot of this "technology" seems clunky in 2011; the different voices, the over-the-top intro, the rapped breakdown, the "I am evil" lyrics, the utterly predictable set-up for the guitar solo, the divebombs in the solo itself, the somewhat ponderous tempo...

But to say all of these things about how dated "Deicide" sounds, if we agree that it's a great song, is the same as to say, "Today, we could never get away with being so obvious." I get the same feeling when I think of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and its famous opening. But this assumes--what is obviously false--that everyone today is on the verge of writing the 5th Symphony...and is only being stopped by their tastefulness! The same thing can be said about Deicide: these dated techniques can be rephrased as Deicide's "drama," their embrace of the absurd, pompous, and theatrical. Because, damn it! the band is named Deicide! If ever there was an aesthetic motivation for this kind of flare, does one not find it in Milton's Satan? Is "tasteful restraint" the name of the game here? Deicide know that it is not. It is not that this acknowledged super-classic is (for some technical reason) sonically inimitable; it is rather that death metal has become scared of its own shadow. A failing of spirit!

Anyways! "Deicide" is not, for all that, a 3-chord, verse-chorus-verse pop song. Rather than being repetitive, it has a narrative unity ("what happens next?"); there are no hints of the "melodic death metal"--it is resolutely ugly music. The immediacy, the catchiness, and the richness of the song are in fact particular to metal: it gets you headbanging. I can't say it any other way. But then the structure is nimble, instead of "ritualistic" or whatever people use to describe boring metal nowadays. Deicide doesn't stick around to milk the hooks, or drill them into your head: every bit of the song is incorporated into its "push." This won't be everyone's idea of "catchy," since it isn't tuneful, but on the other hand, this headbanging catchiness is what death metal does best, what other music only stumbles upon by accident and can't hold onto.

So, The Crown. Like Witchery, or Nifelheim, (and, to be fair, all-time genius Bathory), this is verse-chorus-verse-chorus extreme metal. There are plenty of rockin', consonant guitar solos and trills, big emotional moments (like I enjoy so much in Metallica), single-note melodies that are easy to follow, etc.

But the bottom of this bag of tricks is reached quite quickly. The guitar solos are ONLY "rockin'"--they aren't interesting or beautiful, or relevant to the song. The catchy choruses, when all is said and done, are not as catchy as Venom or Kreator or even Morbid Angel. The supposed death-metal underpinning of everything, in the end, is warmed-over thrash metal riffs.

How to tell THIS kind of unsatisfying obviousness from genuine catchiness? I want to say something like, "Try to have your first listen through the (imagined) ears of a twentieth listen." For example, a lot of times, I have put on an album and someone in the room has exclaimed, "WAAAH this music is insane!!" But, honestly, what serious person pulls out a beloved record from their collection and throws it on the turntable simply to be baffled by it? And yet this is always a risk when a death metal fan approaches an album.

Not, however, a risk that The Crown run. The name of their game is not technical brutality but big choruses and rock flair. The idea, I think, is that they are going to be a "guilty pleasure" for serious metallers, pure ear candy... But while I may feel guilty (about not writing my dissertation instead of this review), I am not melting in pleasure.

There's nothing to say to someone who WANTS to like something, who has a Crown-shaped hole in their musical desires (and will soon have a Crown-shaped hole in their wallet!!). But all of our record collections are littered with these records. The record that was "exactly what I'm looking for" that day. Now, on any given occasion, my skepticism could be wrong: what sounds to me like "obviousness" could be a rich and rewarding, catchy album with little parts that will be enjoyed for a lifetime. But the evidence is all on the side of resisting a band's presentation of itself, of resisting hype, of waiting out the internet chat, of doubting the validity of comparisons (I like Deicide, but I do not like bands that tell me they "sound like Deicide").

I can easily imagine the listener who indignantly responds, "The Crown ARE catchy. They DO rock. Who are you to speak with the Voice of Eternity?" And these things aren't subject to some quantitative proof. My only response can be: my life is littered with these albums. I try to pick up on what lasts in music, what holds my interest for years of listening. The world exists to tell us that The Crown rock, and that Deicide are cheesy. But this doxa is worth precisely nothing.

Conclusion: what "jumps out at me" here is the feeling of "jumping out at me." I'm not a phenomenologist, but this seems to me a conceptual analogue (no pun intended) to the loudness war in CD-mastering.

Iron Maiden- The Final Frontier

If only there were truth in advertising, and the new Iron Maiden album were as fun and ludicrous as the silly sci-fi album art! Alas.

What we get instead is their longest album ever, with most songs over 7 minutes. That wouldn't be a good or bad thing, but every Maiden fan knows that the longer the song=the more pretentious and "literary" and repetitive. Well, I'm not sure that *every* Maiden fan knows this. In fact, the more die-hard of a Maiden fan one is, probably the more that person is likely to find "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or "To Tame a Land" to be works of art on par with Wagner's Ring Cycle-- but better! because it's metal, maaan!

I digress. Well, not really. Because this gets to the heart of the matter: Iron Maiden's track record with "epic" songs is terrible. On their first album, the longest song ("Phantom of the Opera") may also be the best, but it's also the only one. Killers isn't burdened by any such tracks. But at some point, the band decided that songs like "Alexander the Great" were the way to go, and doubtless many of you have agreed.

That is not entirely true, though, because the band also panders like no other--and toss off some disingenuous "singles" that are patronizingly straight-forward. You can just see them, having composed their arduous masterpieces, reflecting that "Now we need a single. Something really anthemic!" Some bands can do this very cannily--Nirvana comes to mind, or 80s Ozzy--but I've always found it embarrassing when Maiden act like "The Wicker Man" (for example) is "Jumping Jack Flash" or what have you. It ain't.

So, you get more of this here. "The Final Frontier" is just such a song. I suppose I'm meant to find it a number-one hit from an alternate universe where the mainstream (boo! hiss!) has been set to rout and metal rules, but it's kind of bland.

When it comes to the very long songs here, the listener runs headfirst into a problem with Iron Maiden's creativity and limitations: the pleasures of listening to Iron Maiden, even at their best, are not very profound. It's not Beethoven. Occasionally they "rock," and their discography is littered with strong hooks, but their idea of "big" is usually ponderous instead of fleet-footed and truly epic (in the Homeric sense, as interpreted by Matthew Arnold in his classic essay on translation).

On the other hand, unlike Metallica's St. Anger, this is not an album made by the band for themselves; Iron Maiden make every attempt to please, and the record is dominated by Dickinson's would-be tuneful performance, which comes across as quite same-y and also pretentious. It's "catchy," if you like, in every sense except that it doesn't "catch."

I can't resist another comparison. Take Black Sabbath's Sabotage, which is no stranger to long songs and some pretention. But one is immediately struck by the movement, the dynamism, of Iommi's riffs, and even the very-long "Megalomania" is rushed along by a cycle of memorable parts. Compared to this, Iron Maiden's long songs come across as improvisations--not in the jazz sense, but in the somewhat flabby dialogue of Curb Your Enthusiasm compared to the tightly-written pacing of Seinfeld. There is a certain spacing in which everything is clearly intended to happen, but this is a matter of schematics rather than real creativity.

In a way, I feel bad for Iron Maiden. They are doomed to keep creating Iron Maiden Albums until the end of time.

score: 2.5 (** 1/2) stars

best songs: "Where the Wild Wind Blows," because it sounds like Oasis

Inquisition- Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan

It is probably ironic that my favorite black metal album, Transilvanian Hunger, which utterly captivated me on first listen, is responsible for all that is terrible in black metal for the past 15 years. Darkthrone themselves understood this, that nothing "more" could be done in that direction, which they promptly turned their backs upon (with what results, one has seen).

Transilvanian Hunger, because it is so "minimalist," *appears* to have thrown out the metal tradition and to be in-itself an entire style. The result of its influence has been a disastrous paint-by-numbers of 4,000 bands that "sound like Transilvanian Hunger." Inquisition is NOT one of those bands, for the precise reason that they are thoroughly a metal band. Let's see what that means.

Inquisition basically operates in two modes--ugly, ugly, and simple grinding/blasting, with basic riffs and vocals in the barked/croaked Von style; and on the other hand, slow and meditative passages with long and "pretty" riffs, but which remain absolutely integrated into the rhythm of the song and are a kind of commentary on the condensed blasting parts.

What's interesting about this band is that they began as an extremely riffy, complicated death-thrash band in the style of early Sepultura. The first demos are absolutely bursting with semi-technical and furious stringwork. Now Inquisition make two-piece (guitar and drums) black metal cut from the simplest material, but every second of the song is still supposed to "count." That is, while other bands will bore me with long ambient or noise pieces in the illusion that I will find this to be "evil," Inquisition give even their most boneheaded and primitive riffs an intensity of performance and conviction, so that one is not waiting around for the "pretty" riffs exclusively. In fact, one of the best moments on the album is the switch from an unaccompanied, swirling guitar part into a blunt and idiotic mosh part ("Rituals of Human Sacrifice for Lord Baal"). I believe it is their emergence from an extremely riff-oriented style which makes this simpler music so entertaining, and belies its "ritualistic" pretensions.

In songs like the title track, one can hear (in contrast) what went wrong with newer Graveland. Mid-tempo, croaked vocals, cycling short riffs... on the surface, the sound is the same, but the whole *point* is different here. In Graveland, I'm not sure why all this is being thrown at me, but in Inquisition, the beat and alternating of melody with micro-riffs are not just layers of digitalia; the point is to get the listener headbanging!

This music shouldn't work at all, and the way it is put together is an acquired taste for sure, but the best Inquisition songs really put to shame all recent black metal that is too little creative to forge its own style. Inquisition's "style" is so offputting that it is only here at all because it *does* work phenomenally well.

Score: 4 stars (****)/5

Best songs: "Rituals of Human Sacrifice for Lord Baal," "Hail the King of All Heathens"

Immolation- Here in After

Part 2 of 6 on Immolation

Immolation were in no hurry to release their second album, which came five years after their first, and is a suitably worked-over, defining statement by the group. Although a number of the more brisk songs () recall the debut, the newer elements are: an unconscionable heaviness, more dissonance and guitar squealing, the word "Christ" prominently in almost every song, and longer guitar solos.

What this all adds up to is a belated response to Morbid Angel's Blessed Are the Sick. No longer is the band content to pummel away, as though "brutality" were enough to win over the listener--rather, the composition is varied, and almost pretentiously intellectualized ("time signatures" and whatnot). On the other hand, as with the Morbid Angel album, the songs are catchier than before, and completely "legible," not to mention spacious. Where most other death metal is a cluttered horror vacui, Immolation here almost approach--gasp!--dynamics.

While many bands have "technical" components more remarkable and overstated than this album, they are rarely as integrated: for instance, Necrophagist could be accused of mere window-dressing with technical frills, while obviously a number of other bands are just metalcore bands who throw in some shop-worn cliches to pass themselves off as "brutal technical death metal." Immolation, like Darkthrone on Soulside Journey, are not aiming for mere effect, but subordinate everything to the song.

That all being said, this is not my favorite Immolation record-- it is completely immersive and listenable, but the best songs (see below) tower above the rest of the record (the middle), much like Slayer's Reign in Blood. The result is that the disparity between existing songs becomes the disparity between the middling songs and their unrealized potential: "Why didn't they just write a record full of hits?" Unlike Reign in Blood, the middle of the album does not consist in short songs that just race by.

Great album to put on and sit through, although not every song is a hit. Still, staggeringly more thoughtful than most other death metal.

score: 4 stars (****)/5

Immolation- Dawn of Possession

Part 1 of 6 on Immolation

After years of being into death metal, I finally heard Immolation for the first time last year. This itself requires some explaining (not of a biographical nature). While other premiere bands--Cryptopsy, Suffocation, Deicide--are among the very first bands that a would-be fan will come across, Immolation, however highly esteemed, will always be underrated.

Totally disregarding quality, and speaking strictly anecdotally, the ORDER in which a fan will get into death metal is something like this:

1) hearing Cannibal Corpse when one is a 14-year-old metalhead, and moving into "the harder stuff" from whatever Ozzfest bands.

2) the punk route: getting into death metal through grindcore and a craving for extremity beyond Assuck (nowadays: Insect Warfare)

3) the hipster: death metal seen as an outgrowth of technically-minded indie rock; totally dehistoricized fandom where Death are appreciated ironically, but Gorguts are seen as the pinnacle of death metal.

None of these scenarios could ever lead directly to Immolation--they are not cartoonish enough for children (like Deicide), not poppy enough for punk fans (like At the Gates), not technical enough for "math metal" hipsters (like Behold... the Arctopus). I'll add, Immolation must also be bypassed by hicks (for whom Entombed are the logical entry point), legions of Latino metal fans (Sepultura), and black metallers (black metal). This is what makes a cult band: you only arrive at Immolation by seeking them out, and not for any aura that has attached to them. The one thing you keep hearing about Immolation is... they're really good. And this, curiously enough, is not a big draw.

As it turns out, Immolation ARE really good, but also hard to describe, since what is interesting is NOT their sound but their songwriting. Three aspects of their sound stand out: 1) the incredibly deep vocals, which however are not "gurgled" but are actually somewhat tuneful, with audible lyrics; 2) the lurching, martial rhythms, really atypical of the jazzy fluidity OR grinding rigidity into which most death metal falls; 3) Immolation really *do* have a signature style and sound, but to cognize this requires taking in about five of their albums.

The album before us is their first, Dawn of Possession, from 1991. The closest comparison for me is Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness, but marked by a totally different drumming style. Certainly elements of thrash remain, because this is not at all at the level of abstraction of say, Incantation, Suffocation, Cryptopsy, etc. Nor is this really "technical" at all, although it becomes more interesting and complicated with every listen.

Here's a listenable live version of the first song, from 1991--when the lead guitarist still had hair!

On subsequent records, Immolation would become terrifyingly heavy (but not "extreme"), so it is interesting to hear this straight-ahead riff fest (more or less). "Those Left Behind" is noticeably more complicated and discordant than the all-out songs surrounding it, and points the way towards subsequent releases.

Dawn of Possession, released the same year as Morbid Angel's Blessed Are the Sick, and obviously outclassed by that release, nonetheless does not sound dated (in a negative sense). Although straight-forward and obviously not high art, Immolation do not at all sound *dumb* here, which cannot be said for Massacre or the first Deicide. Like other second-tier classics---not quite Morbid Angel, Death, Carcass, Sepultura, or Suffocation---Dawn of Possession is strictly for metalheads and for fans of history, but not to be overlooked on any account.

More on Immolation in the coming days/weeks.

score: 4.5 stars (**** 1/2)/5

best songs: "Dawn of Possession," "Fall in Disease," "Into Everlasting Fire"

Necrophagist- Epitaph

Necrophagist seem to violate rule #1 of my aesthetic: they substitute for sheer pleasure (in metal, "headbanging") something not in-itself particularly enjoyable ("technicality"), and then dare the listener to discover the difference. We have just seen that in Cannibal Corpse, extreme gore lyrics, outlandish heaviness, and repetitive breakdowns all stand in (for the teenage listener) for the elements that in fact make quality death metal.

Is something being brought in, criteria-wise, through the back door, which in fact has nothing to do with catchiness, interest, and the joys of paying attention to metal?

Ultimately, I don't think so. Necrophagist, for all their noodling, have a primarily melodic intelligence. This is, in the last analysis, limited (they aren't the greatest band of all time). Until Necrophagist produces a song that is not bathed in the Necrophagist "glow," which is curiously inhuman, they will be only a minor band. But it is possible and enjoyable to follow these songs; they distinguish themselves (unlike Cannibal Corpse); the bag of tricks is ultimately also limited, but is already much greater than on the first album; and the melodic content of the best songs is rare in metal these days (since "melody" now only means At the Gates/Iron Maiden lead-riffage).

Irritating is that every song has to come to a dead stop and let some emotive chords substantially ring out, before the identical, overplayed guitar solo---as at :25 and 1:18 in "Stabwound." Best would be if the band could aim at some variety of effects; the classical music obviously beloved by the band surely could show the way here.

I'm basically ambivalent about this album. It's a fun listen, but for all the flare and obvious construction in these songs, they never approach the heights of similarly-"progressive" later Death, which is really the model for this stuff. Or should be. The whole aura, as intricate as it may be, is not really as "operatic" as Metallica's Ride the Lightning, and not really sweeping at all (no matter how much sweep-picking there may be). It is actually a very "micro" record, and this is of less interest.

score: 3 (***)/ 5 stars
Best songs: "Epitaph," "Only Ash Remains," "Symbiotic in Theory"

Cannibal Corpse- Tomb of the Mutilated

Death metal, at its best, is not what it seems.

This music whose main characteristics are its heaviness, the ghastly lyrics, the relentless speed, and the growled vocals--is really a very subtle art, to which all of the above is strictly peripheral. No death metal record is interesting BECAUSE it is heavy, fast, or brutal.

The most interesting death metal (Cryptopsy, Morbid Angel, Immolation) never relies on cheap effects. The compositions, rhythms, and melodic understanding of these bands would certainly not cross over into "rock" music. The same is true for Joy Division or My Bloody Valentine or Discharge--none of the pleasures of listening to these bands can be translated into rock/pop karaoke versions.

I can't, in this review of a non-masterpiece, go into quite what that "something" may be. Cannibal Corpse have a reputation among connoisseurs for being mindless, sheer aggression, shock value--for being death metal at its most dumbed down.

A few facts: 1) to anyone acquainted with modern death metal, Cannibal Corpse are somewhat dated and quite quaint; if their entire appeal lay in shocking 14-year-olds who have never heard anything like it before, this shock cannot extend to *us*. 2) the vocals are entirely thrown away. They are so monotonous that you tune them out before the first song is over. 3) the lyrics, while indeed disgusting, are also so monotonous that they are unreadable.

The songs here all have a couple interesting parts, taken in isolation--it is only at the level of the whole song that everything becomes indistinguishable. Their "bag of tricks" exhausts itself *very* quickly. Anyone looking to have a grand old time taking this band as camp (a kind of death metal the Misfits) will be sorely disappointed, though. This all gets old fast.

At the beginning of this review, I wrote that death metal is hard to review because it is hard to get a hold of what it is supposed to do well. For any 15-second interval, Cannibal Corpse are indeed indistinguishable from the greats, and from the dregs for that matter. But earlier I was in the kitchen listening to Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales, having the time of my life. I am not having the time of my life listening to Tomb of the Mutilated. If the explanation for why this album is less immediately entertaining is BECAUSE "it's death metal" (i.e. it is trying for something different than Celtic Frost), then this is no explanation at all. Why play death metal at all if to do so is an admission that it will be less interesting than Celtic Frost? (The same thing can be said for free jazz or any experimental music that foregoes the "immediate" pleasures of, say, rock/pop).

It is my position that this is NOT the case--that experimental film CAN be as engaging as narrative film, that free jazz can be wildly entertaining, and that death metal can really rock... But this requires an understanding of the particular criteria in each case, rather than an abandonment of criteria altogether, or a construction of quality that is merely tautological or coextensive with the genre itself (e.g. how "crazy" free jazz is can't itself be used to evaluate it).

Tomb of the Mutilated is unorganized and uninteresting. If you can tune out and tune back in, you won't notice. But I would HATE to have to endure the whole thing on a long road trip.

score: 2 stars (**)/ 5
best songs: Hammer Smashed Face, Split Wide Open

High on Fire- Snakes for the Divine

This is a terrible record, sure--but it's an interesting case, because unlike other famous terrible metal albums by great bands (Metallica's Black Album, Celtic Frost's Cold Lake), there is no obviou$ rea$on why High on Fire should make this particular album in any bid for popularity. It basically sounds the same as their earlier records (although more on that later)--they have not made any concessions to pop hooks, or even trends in the underground (thuggish metalcore, grungey post-emo, technicality).

The main observable difference is that the songs are more streamlined, and generally faster. Neither of these are good or bad in themselves. The incredible guitar tone achieved on their second album, Surrounded by Thieves, is not to be found here, and neither is the particular clarity that Steve Albini brought to Blessed Black Wings.

No, the problem seems to lie in the band's misconception of themselves as muscular, overpowering thrashers with long guitar solos and huge "epic" songs. But this was never the case. High on Fire were about one thing: constructing tension. Because Matt Pike came out of the most tedious of genres, doom metal, he knew a thing or two about how to maintain a listener's interest when nothing much was going on.

None of the songs here, though, build to anything. This might be too damning, but a lot of this is just vaguely thrashy and super-generic. It is certainly *someone's* idea of Metal. They are built out of disposable parts, much like newer Immortal albums. A six-minute long song is largely repetitive, has no big payoff, and the Worst Metal Sin of all: really bad guitar solos. When I put on some fantasy metal record, take me on a journey, dude...

In one sense, saying why this record is as tedious as the record itself. My job as a reviewer of metal is basically to evaluate RIFFS. To sum up everything real quick: the riffs here are not great.

But apart from all this, I feel there is a bigger problem: we are supposed to be enjoying how HUGE and AWESOME and METAAAAL this record is. But none of that can express itself or stand in for itself. All these signposts of awesomeness are not the thing itself.

A youtube comment for their new video: "I feel like a viking standing atop a mountain of fucking skulls whilst crushing faces and hurling boulders at my enemies below."

I guess that is what I am supposed to feel. But previously High On Fire accomplished this, not by substituting hugeness and repetitiveness, but by actually being awesome. By creating tension, by making every part of the song count, by writing vocal hooks--well, the same vocal hook for every song, etc.

One-word review: boring. Energy better spent discovering what made previous High on Fire albums true journeys into a dream world.

score: 2 stars (**)/ 5

best songs: weirdly, the CD bonus track "Mystery of Helm."

Reviewing Metal on myspace

First off, all these metal bands have such ludicrous myspace pages. You have to scroll down past these huge, hideous, full-page logos in order to see or do anything. Inevitably you can buy about 400 different t-shirt designs for this bands no one has ever heard of, plus the band's name is indecipherable anyways. Why not just buy one t-shirt and tell people it is a different band every day?

First up is PSYCROPTIC, from Australia. The song I'm reviewing is "Ob(servant)"

http://www.myspace.com/psycroptic

Why is "servant" in parentheses? Is this like saying the real song's name is "Ob" and the rest is just extra information. Shouldn't "Ob" be in parentheses, as some kind of commentary on the word "servant"?

This song is so intent on being crazy and having a million parts that it ends up sounding like a much simpler genre, bad 1990s powerviolence. Especially in the randomly-assorted vocal stylings, which range from Pantera-esque shouts to goofy, almost interrogative hardcore burly yelling (the "silly" Infest style), to irritating screams. If I didn't know better, I would say that Psycroptic didn't even want to be a death metal band!

If you want some pointless noodling that goes straight into tough-guy breakdowns, has no melodic content, and doesn't even sound like death metal, this is the death metal band for you. In short, this is a bunch of crap thrown together.

*

Malignancy; song: "Xenotransplantation"

http://www.myspace.com/malignancy

Obviously, I'm listening to this stuff on my computer speakers, in order to replicate the "real life experience" of browsing myspace in 2010. But it's a level playing field. I know what computer speakers do to Deicide and The Supremes, so I can make that mental adjustment. Anyways, this SOUNDS terrible. The guitar tone would be really interesting, as it is very dry and rough for this style of music, but every 3/8ths of a second, there is a squealing pinch-harmonic that ruins everything. I guess the band is being "technical," but it just has the effect of making me think my phone is ringing. It doesn't even exist *within* the song, for my listening experience.

It's too bad, really, that this is completely unlistenable, because the vocalist is fascinatingly abstract, and the song (on a few listens) is coherent and almost memorable through the retarded permutations of the random rhythms inflicted on it. If they toned down the (maddening) squealing, this could be in the vein of Demilich meets Cryptopsy. But, instead it is like a bad joke!

*

Baroness; song "The Sweetest Curse"

http://www.myspace.com/yourbaroness

Another terrible song title. Oooh, a curse--that's bad! but sweet--that's good! Now I don't know what to think! I guess I'm supposed to hate this band because they are indie rockers and therefore "false," but I don't roll that way. Is it good? That's all I care about.

But, no, no it isn't good. The ludicrous indecision about how they should sing--you could script the band-practice decision on how "melodic" or "clean" they *should* be yourself--belies what a failure this music is at BEING the indie rock it so obviously wants to be. These vocal parts=not catchy; dress them up how you might. I mean, will anyone want to do karaoke to this? Compare, on the other hand, the final Carcass album, where the death-metal vocal stylings were barely holding-in-check a masterful and catchy hard-rock record.

In short, this is a tuneless, caterwauling emo band's idea of Iron Maiden. If you can inhabit the sonic space implied by the first part of that sentence, then perhaps this is "the year's best album." But then you have already given up the game.

*

Spawn of Possession; song: "Lash by Lash"

http://www.myspace.com/spawnofpossession

If I were a band, and I had a myspace... man, I would only put up my best songs! Perhaps I couldn't release a stop-to-finish great album, but my myspace page collecting the best songs from my several albums: it would be a greatest hits collection.

Spawn of Possession, however, have opted to post, for the entire world to hear for free, this kind of mediocre song. The riff is outrageously long, and a million things happen/(nothing happens) before the song gets going. But it never really gets going. Again, I suppose I am in metal bliss because some labyrinthine noodling is happening... but this is to confuse "pleasure" with "recognition." Yes, Spawn of Possession, I hear that you are playing "technical death metal"--but that information could have been emailed to me. On the other hand, if you had emailed me "we rock!"--then I would have had to go see for myself.

Do you rock? Well, by combining the most straightforward elements of heavy metal with the most unpleasant and meaningless random jig-jaggery, Spawn of Possession occasionally gets a (mental) head-bang going. But then I don't see the point of all the OTHER stuff?

Suffocation, for instance, who are heavily alluded to (ripped off) here, never throw out all their bag of tricks and just cave in to making basic thrash--Suffocation stick to their guns, and they are "fun" because they do the Suffocation thing so well. But Spawn of Possession, rightly understanding that they are boring, set aside their baffling and intricate style whenever they want to "rock." This is tedious: music should produce its interest *from* its concept/style, not on top of it, as a kind of dessert after a bland main course.

Darkthrone- Circle the Wagons

Even though this album continues the path Darkthrone have been taking for some time now, actually listening to it is shockingly weird. Bizarre lyrics, off-key warbling, passages of stunning brilliance, a pretty crap recording, impossible-to-read irony (?), etc.

Some day we will have to go back and hear Under a Funeral Moon and ask what was really going on there, too...

Once again, Fenriz sings the songs that he wrote, which is probably something I will never get used to. Because the Fenriz songs are always the best, you can look at this in two ways: 1) the best songs on this record are marred by his terrible, high-concept vocals; 2) because they are in a different style than the Nocturno Culto songs, you can regard the album as a "split" or a collaboration instead of a full-band work. Something like John and Yoko.

The Fenriz songs are as much punk as metal, but not really (as metallers will think) a combination of *hardcore* and metal--much less of crust and metal! Rather, just as a punk sound can be heard on the first Iron Maiden albums or in early Motorhead--thus predating hardcore--these Darkthrone songs are more Vibrators than Discharge. More Sex Pistols than World Burns to Death. They are light-hearted and tossed-off, but their goal is catchiness and they don't fail there. Even on "I am the Working Class," which does everything possible to be unlistenable...

The Nocturno Culto songs are dirge-like affairs that seem "stuck" in the Darkthrone records of the early 2000s, and they are less hilarious and less fun than Fenriz's contributions. This means: worse. But as the Engels to Fenriz's Marx, Nocturno Culto still is extremely talented and "Black Mountain Totem" is another dramatically tense composition in the vein of "Oath Minus" from the previous album. "Stylized Corpse," however, *drags.*

Even though I like this album, it is kind of a train wreck: which at least means that it really grabs your attention. What were they thinking? How can they top this? What breach of taste is about to befall me? Obviously this record was not recorded to be Dark Side of the Moon, and it is neither polished nor pruned nor self-serious.

Still, it is an "event" and the artists succeed in bending me to their will and seeing the world their way for 40 minutes. Success. I have been on a journey, if not a soulside journey.

Score: 3.5/5 (*** 1/2)

Best songs: "These Treasures Will Never Befall You," "Circle the Wagons," "Black Mountain Totem"

Burzum- Belus

Burzum was never my favorite of the Norwegian black metal bands--that would be Darkthrone--but like every other fan, gossip, or rubber-necker on the internet, I was curious to hear this album. I even listened to the 30-second previews on Amazon... which in recollection was rather desperate. But now it has arrived in my iTunes, the vinyl is in the mail, etc., and it's time to say what's what.

The first song makes it seem like the last 15 years of black metal never happened (if only!)--could be an outtake from his last pre-incarceration album, Filosofem. And that's... ok. But I think we all really don't JUST want Burzum to be a Burzum clone. And the album really does open out to be much more than that. But what does it add up to? We want something game-changing. We waited long enough.

As the album unfolds, it is apparent that it is NOT game-changing... but then you realize, if we "really knew" what it took to be game-changing, then that would just be an exercise of will. To set out to reinvent everything about music--lots of artists try this, and the history of metal especially is strewn with the failures (Into the Pandemonium) that result. There are very few successes: Bathory's Hammerheart comes to mind as the great mid-career paradigm shift.

Belus is not so drastically different from earlier Burzum... but it is RADICALLY, shockingly different from the black metal of the last 15 years. The album screams, "You guys got it all wrong!"--and I am completely persuaded. Xasthur, Leviathan, Krieg, Velvet Cocoon, Nachtmystium, Wolves in the Throne Room, and legions of more obscure one-man "Burzum-influenced" bands--- all of this seems completely beside the point now.

However, this would not be the case if Belus JUST sounded like Filosofem. It is better than that album, which was limited by its high concept. Belus is, in a way, the definitive Burzum album---but to understand that statement is not to limit Burzum to a mere style. What makes this record is what makes any record: a great number of "neat parts" and compelling riffs. But what makes this album "journalistically" interesting is that it has *zero* attachment to black metal's trappings... and yet... sounds completely like Burzum. Seemingly we missed the point the first go-round.

Black metal since Burzum's last album has consistently tried to "cheat" and produce the style and dubious "kvlt" attitude of a perceived original scene. The most successful bands were the most eccentric--Vlad Tepes, Sacramentary Abolishment, later Graveland, Bone Awl--and eventually not a single person living will care about most of the last decade's basement black metal. But what we learn here is that Burzum maybe ought never to have had ANYTHING to do with all that in the first place.

There is a lot of beautiful music here to lose yourself in.

Best songs: "Kaimadalthas' Nedstigning," "Sverddans," "Keliohesten," "Morgenroede." (tracks #4-7)

Score: 4.5/5 stars (**** 1/2)

Best of the Decade in Metal

The list over at Dark Legions inspired me to do my own list.

Darkthrone- F.O.A.D.

King Diamond- The Puppet Master
Satanic Warmaster- Strength and Honor
Antaeus- Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan
Ildjarn- Nocturnal Visions & Son of the Northstar
High on Fire- Blessed Black Wings
Immortal- Sons of Northern Darkness
Axis of Advance- Strike
Emperor- Prometheus
Arsis- A Celebration of Guilt
Nifelheim- Envoy of Lucifer

Summoning- Oath Bound
Graveland- Memory and Destiny
Inquisition- Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan
Necrophagist- Onset of Putrefaction
Nasum- Human 2.0

Nifelheim- Nifelheim

Nifelheim's first album is a tribute to the 80s black metal of Bathory, Celtic Frost, Venom, Sodom, etc. In 1994, when death metal was on its last legs, and Norwegian-style black metal was still confined to Norway, this was an interesting and daring aesthetic choice. But, in 2009, does it hold any interest for us, as music? What can't be of *any* interest is how close they really get to their influences. Nonetheless, it is worth repeating here one of my maxims of criticism: it is completely insufficient to copy a band's sound from its salient elements on record; the only way to really understand a band is to listen to *their* influences. The exception to this would be the brilliance of Disclose, whose approach to Discharge was through a careful study of the Discharge influence in Sweden (Shitlickers, etc.) and subsequently, through Discharge spinoff Broken Bones. In any case, Nifelheim, like the other bands who have attempted this sound (Abigail, Countess, Megiddo), basically level the early Bathory sound into one-dimensional blasting. (Compare, on the other hand, the brilliance of Burzum's incorporation of the same sound, on the first Burzum album). It must be said that Nifelheim bring a good dose of "rock" spirit to this essentially humorless and bleak music, but the production (horrible) is working against them here, and they are sorely missing the slow bangers that Bathory wisely used to pace albums. Neither are the several guitar solos here of any interest, which is a real liability in metal. Of course, later Nifelheim would go on to great things indeed, but here they are limited to an influence which is neither developed nor properly grasped.

Score: 2.5/5 (** 1/2)

Best songs: "Sodomizer," "Possessed by Evil"