Archive Review: Ihsahn's angL (2008)

As close to real death metal nobility status as one is likely to find, former Emperor singer, songwriter and guitarist Ihsahn (a/k/a Vegard Sverre Tveitan) helped put the Norwegian metal gods on the top of the mid-‘90s Nordic D-M heap. His later work with the metallic avant-garde outfit Peccatum defined Ihsahn as an artist of unlimited vision who would not be chained by the conventions of traditional death metal.

Ihsahn’s first plunge into the solo waters, the critically-acclaimed 2006 album The Adversary, broke the artist free of the expectations of his former band. The release of angL will serve notice that Ihsahn is an artist of uncompromising integrity with a vast reservoir of creative ideas from which to draw. Although Ihsahn continues to work with death metal as his primary inspiration, and he indeed still incorporates the genre’s building blocks in his edifice – from the growled demonic vocals to the blast-beaten drum rhythms – angL builds upon this foundation and takes liberties by adding elements of symphonic and power-metal, Gothic melodies, and many more colors other than black from his distinctive palette.

Ihsahn’s angL

For instance, “Scarab” starts down the path of most death-dealing metal, with saw-tooth guitars and relentless rhythms driven by demonic vocals. The song gradually evolves, developing a symphonic undercurrent that defines a true melody. As the repeating guitars chip away in the background, Ihsahn delivers his vocal turbulence. The result is one of the most complex and intriguing songs to spring, fully-formed, like a bounding elk from the dense forest that is Norwegian death metal. The remainder of angL offers similar surprises for the listener…for instance, the low-key, almost subliminal vocals that kick off “Unhealer,” courtesy of Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt, delivered before the song plunges into a Goth-made blast-furnace of jackhammer drumbeats and dangerously surgical fretwork. Akerfeldt also appears later during the dark-hued, six-minute-plus dirge, his clean and considerate vocals an interesting artistic counterpoint to Ihsahn’s industrial grind.

But vocals, even words, just don’t mean much here…just the pure, raw, unvarnished emotions of hate, anger, fear, and confusion. Death metal has always harnessed these attributes with an intensity that denies it the mainstream audience that the genre’s frequent instrumental proficiency and creativity might attract. This shit is just too real for most droogs, and Ihsahn is a master at manipulating that magic combination of unconcealed verbal/lyrical fury and migraine-inducing soundtrack to get a response from the listener, even if said knee-jerk reaction is revulsion, or even nausea…

The blistering opening to “Emancipation” is achieved by the multi-level sonic assault of drummer Asgeir Mickelson’s incredible exploding kitwork and Ihsahn’s underrated and inventive six-string interplay. As the song spirals out of control into a disturbing maelstrom, with nothing but white light glaring out from beneath the player’s bruised knuckles, the listener comes to understand that Ihsahn’s approach to his guitar play is simply two-fold: bludgeon the fools with wave-upon-brutal-wave of massive, chord-driven riffs and/or slice-and-dice with laser-precise, lightning-quick flurries of razor-wire notes. Both of these traits can be found a plenty within “Emancipation,” Ihsahn’s fiery axe supported by Mickelson’s battle drums, as real and as dangerous as a steel-toed boot to your tenders.

Threnody (Funeral Song)

“Alchemist” flares up like one of Meshuggah’s math-metal laboratory creations before settling down into definite Frankenstein territory. A patchwork monster of epic beauty and dark grandeur, the song changes directions faster and more frequently than a mongoose toying with the cobra…guitars explode, then contract; time signatures run amok; the machined rhythms display the cold, inhuman grasp of elemental forces…and upon this crazy quilt of sound, Ihsahn embroiders his otherworldly vocals.

The nightmarish instrumental opening of “Threnody” (literally, “funeral song”) cruises beneath your subconscious, like curtains of fog rolling across a dense landscape. When Ihsahn’s (?) gentle vocals come floating into view, they’re accompanied by washes of complex instrumentation. From the intricate, wiry threads of guitar woven into the song’s fabric, to the masterful drumming that comes out of left field to layer on texture, “Threnody” is about subtlety and patience over power, just as the water eventually wears down the rock. This is as moody and atmospheric a piece of music as you’re likely to hear from these quarters, and it is pure genius.

“Monolith” closes out angL with a large-scale explosion of sound-and-fury. Mickelson finally cuts loose with his drum kit, abandoning any semblance of subtlety or sanity as he dots the musical horizon with deadly mortar fire. Ihsahn’s guitarwork is equally impressive: coiled, muscular riffs hiding beneath the rhythmic landscape to strike with certainty with a flash of hypodermic fangs and slashing riffs. The hype and dross that accompanies the release of angL
announced that the album deals with personal lyrical themes, but for all I know Ihsahn could be singing about “Muppets on Ice.” The truth is, as cathartic as the lyrics may be for the singer/songwriter, they’re all but indecipherable to all but the most dedicated listener…and that’s pretty much the keystone of the death metal style.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

It’s the slug that counts here, the raw energy and emotion that is provided each performance, both vocally and instrumentally. These songs are short, sharp symphonies of hyper-expressed rage, and the vocals are just part of the colorful background graffiti. It’s what you feel when you listen that counts, and with angL, Ihsahn has delivered a classic expression for our ears, indeed… (Candlelight Records, released 2008)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Ihsahn’s angL

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog, 2008 

 

Archive Review: Electric Wizard's Witchcult Today (2008)

It’s kind of a shame that my generation missed out on this whole stoner rock/doom metal thingie. The best that we suburban cannabis commandos could do was climb in the back of bud Charlie’s Chevy van, torch up something out of a scraggly $15 bag o’ tumbleweed and jam to the Edgar Winter Band’s “Frankenstein.” Edgar and his pals weren’t exactly Kyuss, ya know, bordering closer to the kind of new agey muzak that they’d play at yer Grandma’s nursing home these daze (which gives a whole new meaning to this rocking chair concept, eh?).

The problem with this stoner rock/doom metal nameplate (the two are joined at the hip like some kind of shiny Siamese musical genre) is that the spacier, mellow bands are like an “entry drug,” fuzzy lil’ kittens compared to the bigger, badder, more beastly critters that lie in wait in the darkness of your most-troubled id. When it comes to good, old-fashioned ear thuggery, you won’t find another band that grabs your cochlea and refuses to let go better than Electric Wizard. These purveyors of fine British sludge have been kicking the can around for almost a decade-and-a-half now, and if they haven’t been particularly, well…prolific…during that time, they’ve championed raw, muscular quality over quantity since the very beginning. Jeez, after all, EW ain’t no pop band, innit?

Electric Wizard’s Witchcult Today

Witchcult Today is Electric Wizard’s latest slab o’ musical madness, and the disc’s eight longish dirges find the Dorset warlocks leaning – almost vertically – into the abyss. Whereas the album-opening title cut is a nifty lil’ piece of mesmerizing ambient childplay, the second mind-numbing track, “Dunwich,” rewrites the rulebook of horror-stoner-doom or whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it. With a detached, fuzzed-out, and distorted guitar attack that sounds like carpenter bees drilling a hole at the base of yer skull, lead Wiz Justin Oborn does his best Ozzie impression, yelping out some hopeless lyrics from the bottom of an endless sonic well. As the blasting rhythms swirl around your head and virtually guarantee swelling of the brain later in your miserable life, the guitars strike, forcing their feedback-drenched, barbed stingers right into the ole medulla oblongata. Yup, the song is that damn good!

Electric Wizard, relentless bunch of bastards that they are, the rest of Witchcult Today provides no rest for wicked little sinners like you and I, cranking songs like “Satanic Rites of Drugula” (so slow-and-methodical that it sounds like two dinosaurs making love), the blood-curdling instrumental “Raptus” (it’s black mass time, and you’re coming over for “dinner”) or the truly eerie “Torquemada 71” (the future soundtrack for a Medieval torture theme park). Witchcult Today closes with two extended, eleven-minute exercises-in-tension, the album-closing “Saturnine” kind of a free-falling, Sabbath-inspired flight of fancy, a real Dave-Brock-meets-Sun-Ra rave-down with the kind of guitarplay that takes Tony Iommi’s nightmares to their absurdist excesses while concrete-block rhythms stomp-and-trudge towards oblivion. The maddening result of this instrumental dichotomy is that “Saturnine” manages to be both a transcendent experience and the most claustrophobic song that’s possibly ever been written – the musical equivalent of solitary confinement in the eternally-gray cell-block of your own damaged cerebellum.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

This is some heady stuff, to be sure, Witchcult Today providing plenty o’ riff-driven funeral finery, skull-splitting rhythms, and more than enough Sturm und Drang* to satisfy any dozen chaos-lovin’ thrill-seekers. As a band, Electric Wizard has only one speed – heavy – as they subject your synapses to the dancing white heat/white light of tortured instruments and strangled vocals. There’s nothing subtle about these bounders, and to be honest, an album as brutal and self-realized as Witchcult Today isn’t everybody’s cuppa hemlock tea. As for the Reverend, I think that I’ll take another drink… (Candlelight Records USA, released July 16, 2008)

(BTW, there are exactly 666 words in this CD review. Gotcha!)

----------

* American Heritage Dictionary definition:

1.    Turmoil; ferment: “A book’s historical roots represent another barrier; so does the personal Sturm und Drang of the author” (Robert Kanigel).
 
2.    A late-18th-century German romantic literary movement whose works typically depicted the struggles of a highly emotional individual against conventional society.

----------

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Electric Wizard’s Witchcult Today

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog, 2008

 

 

Archive Review: Burzum's Anthology (2008)

One of the more notorious founding fathers of the Norwegian black metal sound, Burzum – the musical realm of Count Grishnackh, a/k/a Varg Vikernes – is also one of the few truly three-dimensional bands in the genre. Whereas other black-cum-death-metal outfits steadfastly refuse to step outside of the growl/rip/tear/bash approach to vocals and instrumentation, Burzum would mix things up lyrically, drawing from a number of Northern European folk and mythological traditions; and musically, tossing in electronic experimentation anathema to two-dimensional black metal stalwarts.

Burzum’s good Count, the infamous VV, has spent much of his recording career behind bars, imprisoned for the 1993 murder of Euronymous, his bandmate in the influential death metal forebears Mayhem. The pagan, anti-Christian, seemingly racist, back-to-the-days-of-Viking-yore Vikernes was also suspected in the burning of several historic churches in Norway. His ‘evil’ reputation thus sealed within the metal underground, Vikernes launched Burzum in 1992 with a self-titled album of mostly traditionally-styled 2-D black metal, albeit with a few slower passages devoid of the typical blast-beat rhythms, and including a few synthesized flourishes.

Burzum’s Anthology

Aske, an EP, followed Burzum’s debut, the cover featuring the corpse of a burned-out church (which only further fueled VV’s infamy). The similarly metal-oriented Det Som Engang Var came out in 1993, after which VV went to prison; the four Burzum albums that have been subsequently released were either pieced together from pre-recorded material (Hvis Lyset Tar Oss in 1994 and Filosofem in ‘96) or were recorded by the artist while still in prison (1997’s Daudi Baldrs and 1999’s Hlidskjalf – my apologies for not having the proper Norwegian typefaces available). Although much of Burzum’s catalog is reasonably well-known in Northern Europe – there have been better than a half-dozen tribute albums released of Burzum material, fer chrissakes! – for the typical American or British metal fan, this stuff is largely unknown (and more than a little unknowable).

Anthology will be the first collection of Burzum recordings to be released on these shores. Although a few Burzum albums have shown up stateside through various metal-specialty retailers (especially the first album and the Aske EP, both of which were hot shit at the peak of VV’s trial), for many this will be their first exposure to the controversial artist’s milieu. Note: this 2008 Candlelight Records Anthology album should not be confused with the 2002 release by VV’s own Cymophane Productions – the two albums have widely differing track lists, and the Candlelight collection will undoubtedly receive wider distribution.

Black Metal Pioneer

So what can black-metal fans expect to hear from Burzum? Not what you’re expecting to hear, to be sure…outside of the self-titled debut and Aske, the Reverend is unfamiliar with the entirety of Burzum’s work, so much of Anthology came as a surprise to me. If you’re expecting something along the lines of Mayhem’s early albums, or maybe Darkthrone, you’ll be sorely disappointed. This is more cerebral material, less sonically powerful, perhaps, than traditional 2-D death-metal, but more intellectually challenging and, in the end, offering deeper musical textures and fields to play in. Pulling material from across Burzum’s first five albums and Aske, Burzum’s Anthology presents an incredible snapshot of this intriguing artist.

First of all, forget about understanding a word of Vikernes’ vocals, which sound like nothing more than the death throes of a tortured beast. I honestly can’t tell if the artist is being controversial or not with his lyrics as they’re in a tongue unknown to me, thus I can only speak of the overall sound-and-fury of these tracks. Anthology kicks off with “Feeble Screams From Forests Unknown” from Burzum’s debut album, opening with an unrelenting blast-beat paired with guttural vox and screaming guitar in typical death mode before dropping into an interesting slurry of doom-laden instrumentation and gutted vocal punctuations. “Stemmen Fra Tarnet,” from the EP, descends into darker territory, with fallow guitarwork and strong, albeit more conventional drumbeats.

“Lost Wisdom,” from Det Som Engang Var, shows the beginning of a gradual evolution of the Burzum sound. Slower, down-tuned guitars and plodding rhythms would tread closely to doom-metal turf if not for VV’s howling vox and some imaginative metallic six-string flights of fancy. With “Svarte Troner,” also from Det Som Engang Var, the game really begins to change. The shortest song on Anthology at a mere two minutes, eighteen seconds, it is a provocative ambient soundscape that sounds like being lost in the murky woods as malevo¬lent creatures circle your campfire, hunger on their minds.

Brian Eno’s Worst Nightmare...

“Det Som En Gang Var,” from the 1994 album Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, continues the trend towards dark-ambience, beginning with a single guitar ringing out above the ever-shifting sands of electronic instrumentation. At times it sounds like Killing Joke, and other times it sounds like Brian Eno’s worst nightmare. It’s an exhaustive, fourteen-minute track that changes directions several times throughout, but it is well worth the journey.

Ditto for “Jesus Tod,” from Filosofem. An eight-minute barrage of white light/white heat with a noise chaser, the song’s unrelenting brilliance and changing moods is simply exhilarating. While rapidfire machine-gun drumbeats prime the canvas, Burzum layers on industrial-styled echoed vocals, often lost in the mix, scattergun blasts of (synthesized?) fretwork, and colorful electronic tinting. Fans of contemporary noisemakers like Earth or Boris could probably embrace this sound.

Both “Gebrechichkeit, from Filosofem, and “Balferd Baldrs,” from Daudi Baldrs, sojourn further into ambient madness, gentle tones dotted throughout tense white noise on the former, while the latter follows a more conventional tact with a strident, almost symphonic recurring riff augmented by shots of menacing keyboards and foreboding synthesized sounds. By the time that you stumble through the album-closing “Dunkelheit,” also from Filosofem, the song’s industrial clash and forged metallic tones offer a respite from the dominating ambient darkness of the previous songs. A bonus QuickTime video of “Dunkelheit” on this enhanced disc sounds different than the album-closing song, but no less dangerous. Anyway, what the hell do I know?

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If all of this sounds interesting well, it is…it’s seldom that you get a chance to find something as fresh and relatively unknown as Burzum in this day-and-age of cloned bands and media overkill. Anthology is an important collection of past work by a near-legendary figure on the black-metal horizon, and well worth further study and discussion. Grab it while you have the chance… (Candlelight Records, released March 3, 2008)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Burzum’s Anthology

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog, 2008