Impetuous Ritual – Blight Upon Martyred Sentience

Impetuous Ritual – Blight Upon Martyred Sentience (LP, CD – Profound Lore Records; Cassette – Parasitic Records, Darkness Attack Records)

Format: cassette

Purchase: from the band

Price: $6.50AU

Listen here

 

My teenage years were largely dedicated to listening to black metal. I listened to way shitter stuff – a fair bit of hardcore and metalcore – but my consistent obsession was black metal. I started where most people did – Burzum, Emperor, Darkthrone – before moving onto the French Les Légions Noires, and progressively more underground and weirder material. Throughout this period, though, I wasn’t a big death metal fan, and I’ve only really gotten into death metal to the same degree as black metal in the last few years. It wasn’t because I didn’t like death metal as a teenager. The bits I listened to, like Deicide and Cryptopsy, were fucking sick; fucking heavy and often just as evil as the black metal I loved. I was just committed to black metal, and didn’t spare much time for other stuff.

 

By my early twenties, at least, I’d found a few death metal bands that I listened to religiously; Dead Congregation, Incantation, and Impetuous Ritual. I came to Impetuous Ritual through their totally fucking harrowing debut album Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence, released in 2009. The tape edition of the album was released by Parasitic Records in 2012, and I picked it up almost by accident; I’d heard of the band and was ordering a couple of LPs from Psychic Assault in 2013, and grabbed the cassette, too. I still remember sitting in my old car, which had a tape deck, and experiencing this mixture of horror and disorientation as I played the album. Of course, my disorientation wasn’t helped by the fact that the B side, which I listened to first, plays the fucking album backwards. The A side, when I finally found it, offered no respite from the horror, if some from the disorientation; Impetuous Ritual were then, and remain today, one of the darkest and most impenetrable bands I have listened to.

 

Black and death metal have had an uncertain historical relationship. They shared common ground in the ‘80s and very early ‘90s, as bands like Sarcofago and Morbid moved between the relatively young genres creating utterly fucking ripping results; a feat perhaps easier at a time before black metal had clearly come into its own as an independent genre. Bands like Black Witchery and Blasphemy built on this tradition, creating pulverising and blasphemous black/death metal. Throughout the ‘90s, though, the two genres became progressively distinct, and in some cases antagonistic towards one another. Fenriz has claimed that Darkthrone’s transition to black metal was in part a rejection of the ‘vulgarity’ of death metal in the early ‘90s. Within the death metal scene, a focus on technicality and brutality above all else gradually obscured the darker elements of death metal that had been especially present in earlier years, and which sustained a link between black and death metal; sibling genres united in impiety.

 

The last ten years have seen a real resurgence in bands indebted to old school death metal, a trend I fucking love. Bands like Coffin Lust, Sewercide, and Contaminated are all paying tribute to the best of late ‘80s, early ‘90s death metal. The resurgence isn’t exclusive to Australia; US bands like Necrot, Fetid, and Blood Incantation are equally part of this movement, as are European bands like Undergang and Dead Congregation. For me, a result of this return to death metal’s roots is that a lot of new death metal sounds fucking evil as. Rather than simply focusing on brutality, like a bunch of shitty fucking Dying Fetus clones, these new bands are all creating evil and ferocious death metal; the genre is once more a breeding pit of darkness. Simultaneous to this, the boundaries between death and black metal seem to be increasingly flexible. Are Nyogthaeblisz, for example, a black or death metal band? What are Heresiarch, or even Vassafor, or Khthoniik Cerviiks? What the fuck are Tetragrammacide?

 

Genre disputes are often stupid, but as I’ve noted before, these disputes can carry weight. There is polemical force in describing a band as black or death metal. There are significant identity claims by bands and fans that rest on the supposed differences between these genres. The partial collapse of the distinctions between black and death metal has meant that many bands are increasingly able to draw from the resources offered by both genres, blending the available material in the assembly of completely fucking twisted works. Impetuous Ritual are one of the bands responsible for this increased movement towards creating dark arts between the borders of black and death metal, and Blight Upon Martyred Sentience stands, even more so than the band’s earlier offerings, as a landmark to what can be achieved in this pursuit.

 

Blight Upon Martyred Sentience builds on Impetuous Ritual’s earlier albums, the aforementioned Relentless Execution of Ceremonial Excrescence and 2014’s Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence. The first of those records offered a harrowing cacophony of dissonant churning chords over lethal fucking blast beats, with the guitars rarely slowing from a pace of blistering tremming. Variation was provided through the rare trading of blast beats for slower tom-heavy beats, trading heaving dirge for caustic ferocity. Scarce melodies penetrated the gloom, and even then appeared as only one or two notes drawn forth from the chaos; no respite was offered. The second album took this template and filled out the mid-tempo and even slower sections of the record, emphasising the turgid elements of Impetuous Ritual’s sound, most notably on glacial and epic album closer ‘Dirge’. Unholy Congregation was sludgier, but also ratcheted up the intensity at times, too, including through some wailing chromatic guitar leads. The band retained some sense of melody, but it was scant in the midst of the brutal cacophony.

 

Blight Upon Martyred Sentience shares much with these earlier releases. Like its predecessors, Blight fuses ferocious blasting and trem picking to sections of slower dirge, which is to say that like the earlier records, it offers cacophonous death metal riffs than are a mix of blistering and crushing. Following the path of Unholy Congregation, Blight provides increased focus on the slower parts of Impetuous Ritual’s sound. Though much of this is at a ripping pace, as on ‘Inordinate Disdain’, there are many sections of monolithic death-doom, like on crushing album opener ‘Void Cohesion’. Again, there is almost no melody present, with the distinctly blackened tremming riff halfway through ‘Inordinate Disdain’ a rare exception. Only ‘Untoward Evocation’ and album closer ‘Intransience’ feature any riffs in a higher register; a contrast that serves to emphasise how oppressive the album is. Like Unholy Congregation, the wailing leads also remain; second track ‘Apostosis’ and fifth track ‘Synchronous Convergence’ provide two of the most obvious examples. I’ve seen these leads described as similar to those deployed by the Reverend Kriss Hades in Sadistik Exekution (a band that clearly took a stand in defining itself as a death metal, rather than black metal, band), but another possible influence could be Von’s Satanic Blood, an equally grim and uncompromising record. The putrid, raw vocals exhibited on all three records coat the music in a further layer of impious filth. The albums also share an atmosphere that is both cloying and suffocating – of an inescapable, irremovable horror – and viscerally punishing – suddenly, brutally violent.

 

Where Blight Upon Martyred Sentience exceeds what came before is in its song structures, in particular. Impetuous Ritual’s two previous albums consisted of songs that followed relatively conventional structures. The songs may have been especially cacophonous, but they were clearly still death metal songs that built on a long tradition of churning and impenetrable Australian death metal starting with bands like Corpse Molestation. Blight still consists of noticeable songs, but conventional song-writing has been largely cast aside. Riffs take shape out of walls of drum-free dissonance (on ‘Sullen’, for example), passages of howled vocals (‘Denigrative Prophecies’), and unsettling ambience (‘Void Cohesion’). The album is at times nausea-inducing in its unforgiving refusal to offer the listener standard song-forms to cling onto for stability. All the disorientation I experienced when first attempting to listen to Impetuous Ritual has returned. This time, though, flipping the tape can’t solve the problem; the queasy, disorienting feel is a product of the songs themselves.

 

It is the increased attention given to cultivating such a torrid atmosphere on Blight that makes this record so powerful, and makes it stand out in Impetuous Ritual’s canon. Indeed, it also reveals the degree to which the album is indebted to black metal. On Blight, more than previous records, Impetuous Ritual draw on the harrowing, grim atmosphere associated with the best black metal acts. In its unrelenting darkness and its unnerving use of extended periods of ambience and atonal, arrhythmic noise, Blight has as much in common with the most repugnant and uncomfortable of black metal acts, like Blut Aus Nord or Nihill, or even Deathspell Omega, as it does with bands like Incantation.

 

The impenetrability of this record is matched by its presentation. A swarming mass, in red upon a black cover adorns the front, while the inside of the cassette booklet features a spiral design overlaid with a pentagram and other lines; a cryptic symbol or design of some arcane catacomb. The lyrics are almost entirely unreadable, printed against a background that obscures them almost in their entirety. The refusal of intelligibility is of a piece with the sound of this album; nothing is given to the listener, no ballast or standard point of reference. Indeed, it is equally consistent with the band members’ refusal of any identity. The current line-up is simply listed as ‘- vocals, guitars, drums’, ‘- guitars’, and ‘- bass’. Much has been made of the supposed presence of the human forms behind Impetuous Ritual in other acts, but such subjects are simply a distraction from what is at stake here. This album is not about something so trivial as personalities, for the forms behind it all serve a far greater truth, affirmed as each new riff bursts forth: of the necessity of suffering, of extinction, and of the vitality of the mass grave. Through the twists and tangles of black and death metal, Impetuous Ritual’s Blight Upon Martyred Sentience is a terrifying, whirling triumph of aberrant darkness.

Interview: Malhkebre

Though it was released in 2014, I only encountered Malhkebre’s stunning Revelation earlier this year, and it remains probably the best record I’ve heard all year. Revelation is a twisting and tortured slab of black metal rooted in the most vital Satanic rites; abyssal hymns characterised by raw hateful riffing that evokes the best of traditional black metal, and churning dissonance, reminiscent of the modern French black metal scene. I have noted before that I value bands that revere tradition, while using it as a platform for creativity, and Malhkebre fit this description perfectly. Revelation is at once pure black metal, and its own monster, a product both of sincere devotion to genre tenets, and the artists’ own deranged psyches. In particular, the record evinces a deep dedication to Satanism, and to its associated ritualistic practices. I was enthralled by this, and reached out to the band for an interview. I was fortunate to speak to vocalist Eklezjas’Tik Berzerk, who also runs Battlesk’rs Productions, about Malhkebre and their particular theological vision.

Malhkebre Bandcamp

Malhkebre Facebook

Battlesk’rs Productions Website

<$6.66: Hails, could you start by introducing yourself?

Malhkebre: Hails, here is N. Kapalika, Disciple of Ignominy in service for the Apostles.

<$6.66: As I understand, Malhkebre have been a band since 2002. Could you give a quick history of the band, for some context?

Malhkebre: Malhkebre released a confidential first demo tape in 2004, entitled In His Name, which was soon followed by an MLP, Prostration, and a split EP with Aosoth, The Truth Through Salt. It took the band twelve years in total to release the first album, Revelation. If the assembly was scarcely active in studio, it was not on stage, with numerous live appearances, including a European tour with fellow brothers Christicide.

From day one, the aim of Malhkebre was clear and remained until now the same: to produce fierce and uncompromising black art, apart from the trends or the expectations of the audience.

<$6.66: You’ve put out four releases since your formation, and I’ve read we will see the fifth sometime soon. Your last release was the harrowing Revelation, released in 2014. The release prior to that was in 2009. This is a slower-than-average output, but – and I wouldn’t want this taken as a criticism for this reason – the output has been entirely worth it. Can you explain the lengthy gestational process between releases?

Malhkebre: There are multiple material reasons that could be invoked: line-up changes; a lot of time and energy involved both in Battleskr’s Records/Necrocosm Productions and other musical projects like Sektarism; some difficulties to ink a deal with a label taking us in their charge… all of them would be true, but insufficient to explain such a long delay. The fact is that the creative process is long in itself for we are determined to release only material we are one hundred percent sure it is worthy to release. We can be very intolerant with our own creations, and thus take a lot of time to reshape them until we are satisfied. This added to the other reasons given above may explain why we take so long to release our albums, but we do believe that in the field of black arts only quality should be taken into consideration.

<$6.66: Let’s turn to the themes underlying Malhkebre. Is there a specific theme closely uniting your four releases, or do they stand as independent entities? Is there something larger at work here?

Malhkebre: What is larger here is the common set of beliefs we share and express through our work. Our releases are linked in the way they talk about the same themes: faith in an absolute Lord; lowering of human ego and finality; rejection of accepted values and praise of violence under various forms. From the prostration of the blind adept to the revelation of mysteries obtained after a long spiritual process, there is a logical and living link. But one should better see there the result of a personal journey rather that something long-planned. We live our work and it lives in us, and things come as they naturally grow.

<$6.66: Your lyrics are in Latin, French, and English, and I read the former falteringly, the second poorly, and only the third competently. I take it you are fluent in all three? What lies behind the decision to work in three languages?

Malhkebre: The Devil speaks in many tongues thus its gospel shouldn’t be limited to one… each language has its own poetry, rhythm, and ways to express underlying things. We can skip from one to another depending on what is meant and for what effect we search, and the three languages you mentioned were not chosen, they came naturally. That’s as simple as that! Some other languages could be used in the future, or not.

<$6.66: I am very interested in hearing you explain the particular vision of Satanism that drives your work and on which your lyrics focus. In particular, you have spoken against more Pagan or humanist understandings of Satanism. These conflations of Satanism with nature, or with an atheism that takes the worship of man as its core, are particularly prominent in black metal today. As well as outlining your own views on Satanism, could you reflect on what you despise in these more optimistic, more life-affirming images of Satanism?

Malhkebre: Please bear in mind that the following words are of subjective nature; all the Apostles not necessarily sharing the same exact view. We believe more into doubt and perpetual questioning that unshakable dogmas, and debates regularly occur between us on this matter among others. Thus said:

The key concept to be understood concerning Satanism is that it is above everything a religion of the flesh. Contrary to Christian/Abrahamic concepts and ideals rejecting all that is related to the body and the material world as “sin”, Satanism is a flesh-incarnated, earthbound spirituality. It is something that has to be lived before being theorised. It is not for the armchair thinker (even if reading complex books in the comfort of your living room is an enjoyable activity in which we of course dwell sometimes), but for practitioners that aim to put themselves in discomfort and eventually a state of physical and psychological pain. It’s a question of experience, not only ideas. Given this, the “Pagan” understanding of Satanism can be challenging and deeply acceptable, depending what you make out of it. Remember that the occult primarily dwells in nature; forests and caves are the home of the Sabbat. Worshipping the genius loci (or perhaps we should say diabolus loci?) as a gate to the beyond, confronting yourself with the discomfort and the primordial fear of darkness, coldness, and death in the solitude of a sinister natural place, in a ritual inwhich you engage yourself totally is an excellent way to go back to a “Pagan” acceptation of traditional Satanism.

What is not acceptable is to stay in the secure and unchallenging world of everyday, never questioning yourself, never putting anything in the balance or in practice. Thinking that Satanism can stay quietly in the petrified realm of printed words you can learn by heart. Collecting an impressive amount of pure theoretical knowledge you never put into life by confronting it in reality. Here is the world of the Devil, and as such it is the scene on where we are supposed to act and will be judged. Sadly, a certain part of the black metal scene nowadays seems to have more interest in books that in personal experiences. Humanist concepts have a different shape but come in part from the same drying well: the refusal of putting things in practice i.e. in danger, playing the game safely as a role more than a life. Making it a play, not an experience.

Be it theist or archaically Pagan, Satanism has to be lived. It is up to the believer to build his/her own rituals of it, whatever form it takes, according to his/her own personal sensibility and preferences. It is a personal experience, nothing else.

<$6.66: One of the principal aspects of Malhkebre’s sound, for me, is its ritualistic nature. This is emphasised on Revelation through chanting passages, and the use of bells, for example. The ritualistic quality of the music seems to emphasise its religious dimensions, revealing this to be a spiritual act of devotion. How do you see the relationship between your ideology and your musical output? To what extent can we understand the sounds of Malhkebre as the sound of your worship?

Malhkebre: Chants and bells may indeed emphasise the ritualistic aspect of Malhkebre, but it would be a regrettable mistake to believe that the spiritual nature of our work lays in it. Malhkebre is the sound of our worship in the way that it is the direct and honest manifestation of a set of beliefs (and doubts), which expresses itself in every aspect of the band. The rawness of the riffs, the bestial pulse of the drums, the sickness of the voices are its fundamentals. Chants and candles are of course only the tip of the iceberg… black arts nowadays are plagued with this elegant fraud that is “religious black metal”: a concept that in most cases was misunderstood by unimaginative people, mistaking the form for the content. Hoods and incense don’t make it all. If you’ve seen Malhkebre live recently you’d have noticed the abandonning of this religious regalia: we are coming back to a purer and simpler approach of things, emphasising a more direct and aggressive appearance. The hood-thing was pleasant but black metal needs to come back to its primitive roots, and the audience needs to be reminded of the violent and uncompromising nature of this form of art.

Q: How does the religious aspect of your music translate into your live rituals? I have read accounts of you playing in caves and whipping yourself on stage. What do you understand the purpose of playing live with Malhkebre to be? What are the desired affects you which to inspire in an audience?

Malhkebre: The aim of playing live is for us the same that is supposed to be for every extreme band: transmitting and receiving energy to and from the audience, with the purpose of awakening the atavistic pulses of the body and the mind and ultimately invoking a sinister egregore. Shaking ourselves and the audience, and feeding acausal entities. Once again onstage flagellations are just an expression of these pulsions that lies beneath the fragile borders of the conscious mind. It comes naturally. And we hope the same urge could rise in the hearts of people attending the concert, making them fight or hurt themselves. A concert is a victory when symptoms of violence emerge.

Q: I’ve watched some of your live rituals online, and noticed you’ve had a ‘FVCK SOCIALISM’ banner up at times. Can you explain this? In what way do you see the message espoused by Malhkebre to be political?

Malhkebre: This banner was used once, at the Black Arts festival in Lyon. It precisely said “FVCK HUMANISM, FVCK SOCIALISM”, and nearly caused the cancellation of our concert. It is not a political manifesto in the meaning of taking a side for one party or another. It was a mark of rejection of everything human and positive, which also includes NS-oriented politics (after all, racism is a form of selected humanism: wishing the best for your community/race/etc with a selection based on biased and false principles). Politics in their mundane acceptation simply don’t bother us, at all. All humans without any exception are the same ill-fated lifeforms, we are all equal in front of Death and the Lord.

<$6.66: Malhkebre in 2009 released a split with Aosoth. Your sound is, in my view, distinctly French, combining a certain rawness and religious sincerity with an affinity for tempo changes and churning dissonance. Your black metal also has a wide scope, for you utilise passages of ambience, too. Has your physical environment shaped your sound? More generally, do you see yourselves as part of a French black metal scene, and what do you think of this scene?

Malhkebre: I agree that to some extent we’ve been shaped by our environment, but who isn’t? For example, I praise both Norwegian and Italian black metal for what they are: the products of a country and an epoch. You can find so many differences between A Blaze in the Northern Sky and All the Witches Dance, but both are sincere expressions of a personal relation to death and darkness, that couldn’t have appeared in another country or another time, at least to some extent. Even unconsciously, a band is always the fruit of its soil. France has its own scene that can be very different from one region to another: just compare the Parisian black/death scene (Antaeus, Arkhon Infaustus, Temple of Baal…) and the south-eastern black metal scene (Seigneur Voland, Blessed in Sin) to name a few. We do have the feeling that we belong to a French scene and we bear the heritage of some predecessors, but ultimately our goal is to make a sound of our own, which I think we have succeeded in.

<$6.66: What is the relationship between Malhkebre and the sectarian group the Apostles of Ignominy, of which you are a member? The Apostles’ creed seems to focus on a particular form of nihilism and Satanism. Can you expand on this?

Malhkebre: The Apostles is a congregation of a few individuals tied by special bonds of fraternity and ideological belief. We share common conceptions about Satanism, even if each of us has its own views and ways. But one of our dogmas is that there are no dogmas: discussions always occur and we enrich each other by a constant process of thinking and putting things into questions. The mind is made to move constantly forward, and a faith which refuses or fears to be put into question is one which is uncertain and weak.

As for the links between Satanism and nihilism, Satanism can’t be nihilist because it is the faith in something. We believe in a God and in a spiritual conception of the world. We work to put our everyday life in accordance with our visions, taking the useful parts of material society while combatting its more rotten and decadent ones. And Art under all its forms is a favoured way to find ourselves while putting our words into action.

<$6.66: As well as Malhkebre, you are involved in Obscurantist, Malekhamoves, and Sektarism, and you run Battlesk’rs Productions. Regarding these bands, what do they offer you that Malhkebre does not? What avenues do they open up? Is their relevance purely sonic – Malekhamoves are more a death metal band, and Sektarism a doom band? Regarding the label, what do you take its purpose to be? In what way do these various projects relate to your Satanism?

Malhkebre: Malhkebre, Sektarism, Obscurantist, and Malekhamoves are all the different faces of the Apostles’ project. Each allows us to express ourselves in a sonic and artistic field the others don’t permit: Sektarism for instance has a more conceptual side of religiosity and theatricality we cannot express in Malhkebre, just as the sonic particularity of doom metal (in terms of tempos, etc) gives birth to another form of trance you can’t have with black metal. I talked above about the importance of physical violence at black metal performances: Sektarism don’t obey the same laws. But the devotion to our Lord has to be praised in every form, some direct and eminently physical, some others subtler. Thus the need for different outfits.

<$6.66: Finally, what are you plans, both for Malhekbre and your other projects?

Malhkebre: Malhkebre’s next album is on the way and should be released in the very near future by Lamech Records. Extensive touring should follow. The same will then happen concerning Sektarism with the release of the third album, Fils de Dieu. Some shows are already booked; the next one will take place at the Festival de l’Homme Sauvage (i.e. Wild Man Festival) to be held in the town of Aspet in southwestern France: a promising two-day festival in a natural site with many ritual/experimental bands (Treha Sektory, Common Eider King Eider, Stille Volke, etc). Talking about putting ideas into acts, this festival will be a demonstration of the importance and depth of archaic beliefs in opposition to the mundane world. We are looking forward to holding a Sektarism ceremony there.

<$6.66: The last words are yours.

Malhkebre: A.M.S.G.

Nights of Death Metal in the Skull Cave and my Australian Black Metal Top Ten

One of the highlights of doing this blog has been my increasing exposure to the suprisingly numerous denizens of Australian underground metal, and their various efforts in support of our shared passion. Most recently, I discovered the fanastic Nights of Death Metal in the Skull Cave podcast by Demon Skull, the owner of Demon Skull Records, which was behind the totally filthy Sewercide/Of Corpse split 7”. Skull Cave has had three shows so far. It broadcasts on local radio in the Adelaide Hills from 10pm to 12am Adelaide time on a Friday night, is streamable live, and can be downloaded after the fact. Demon Skull is doing a killer job so far, and the show is totally essential for any fan of extreme metal in Australia, and even worldwide.

 

Demon Skull’s laid back style means that he isn’t overbearing, but he still manages to get in a fucking decent amount of information about the tracks he’s playing. The work this cunt is doing is yet more evidence of true fuckin devotion to the underground; yet another extreme metal fan sacrificing time for the cause. Also, fuck, in terms of Australian metal radio, Lachlan Watt is a cunt with a face that looks like the product of a child’s attempt to draw someone on a fat guy’s knee. All that weird fucking fleshy pasty cunt plays is fucking nu-metal. Fuck Triple J and fuck him. Listen to Nights of Death Metal in the Skull Cave or fuck you, too.

 

Skull Cave has thus far been stacked with ripping picks. For evidence, take the the three albums of the week: Undergang’s demented and disgusting Misantropologi; Tomb Mold’s pummeling Primordial Malignity; and Triumvir Foul’s insanely gripping Spiritual Bloodshed. The last two weeks, though, Demon Skull has also included a top 10 of tracks selected by another person. In the second show, his mate James Rudd curated a top 10 list of his favourite metal tracks. Last week, I was asked to contribute my top 10 black metal tracks. After I admitted I had no idea how to work out what were my favourite 10 black metal tracks of all time (I mean, probably just all of In the Nightside Eclipse, including the intro, then ‘I am the Black Wizards’ again), we agreed I would pick my 10 favourite Australian black metal songs.

 

I thought I’d write this week about the tracks I picked and my reasons for selecting them. I’m convinced that, despite the size disadvantage of the Australian black metal scene when compared with those in America or Europe, Australia has bands that are at least as good as the best bands coming out of those regions, and many bands even better. The list was an attempt to pay respect to this quality, and to highlight how diverse Australian black metal is. Not only are all these bands completely fucking demented and amazing, but the ways in which they are encompasses the breadth of black metal.

 

I should admit that I’m not a huge fan of picking out individual songs from a record, dragging them out of their context and isolating them, when they’re often better understood as they were written, as part of a record. That said, the songs I selected reflect what makes me such a fan of each band, and collectively, make up something of a showcase of Australian black metal. I thought about providing links to listen to these songs, but they’re all available on the podcast, which I recommend as highly as I can. So, here is my top 10 Australian black metal songs, in no order. Destroy your life for Satan.

 

Deströyer 666 – ‘Australian and Antichrist’

KK Warslut is a total racist piece of shit, and he’s beyond fucking stupid. But none of that matters when it comes to the music he’s made. Deströyer 666 are a fucking seminal band, and Warslut holds a profound place in Australian metal history, even if it’d be great if him and all his fucking tough guy forest posing Instagram buddies in Operation Werewolf could all get caught in a fucking forest fire. It’s not immediately clear that Unchain the Wolves is the best album Deströyer 666 has ever put out. All their albums have been totally fucking ripping slabs of war metal. Unchain the Wolves, though, was the first full-length. This shit came out in 1997, and it still sounds fucking furious.

 

Alongside Gospel of the Horns, Deströyer 666 were fundamental in demonstrating the uniqueness and significance of Australian black metal. In 1997,  bands like Emperor were becoming increasingly majestic, and the Les Légions Noires bands were crafting ever more mysterious and vampyric odes to Satan. In this context, it was a fucking statement to drop a fucking bomb like Unchain the Wolves, a blistering, brutal, punkish, and fucking nasty chunk of thrashy black metal. ‘Australian and Antichrist’ is, given its name, a difficult song to leave out from any list of Australian black metal songs, but the song also represents everything that this new wave of Australian black metal promised. It is raw, bestial, and totally fucking impious.

 

Erebus Enthroned – ‘Crucible of Vitriol’

When writing this list, I wondered whether Erebus Enthroned’s blazing first album Night’s Black Angel or its follow-up, Temple Under Hell, on which ‘Crucible of Vitriol’ can be found, was the better album. Ultimately, I realised it didn’t matter; I own both albums anyway, and it’s a stupid fucking question. Both albums are perfect, though in different ways. Night’s Black Angel is raw (see my review here). The songs are short, the riffs fucking razor sharp, and the blast beats fucking pounding. Temple Under Hell is just as good, but it reveals far more expansive song-writing, in part expressed through far longer songs. The riffs are maybe catchier, but it is the way various tempos weave their way in and out of the songs, and riffs are returned to and varied, that makes the album such a fascinating listen.

 

‘Crucible of Vitriol’, for me, combines what made both albums great. The almost d-beat drums and thrashy first riff, and Nihilifer’s bestial vocals, recall the raw hate of Night’s Black Angel. The song’s main trem-riff, used first in a crushing doom section, then repeated over a blast beat, reveals the more complex song-writing that defined Temple Under Hell; the ability to use variation and repetition to craft sophisticated and fucking scathing black metal. The second-to-last riff, a stomping, mid-tempo groove anchored by a fucking massive bass tone is also an absolute fucking belter.

 

Abyssic Hate – ‘Depression Part II’

For whatever reason, Abyssic Hate was actually the first Australian black metal band I listened to, back when I was 14 or so. I initially picked ‘Depression Part I’ for this list, the first track on Abyssic Hate’s only full-length, Suicidal Emotions, but that song is 13 fucking minutes long. ‘Depression Part II’, in contrast, comes it at a relatively efficient 7-and-a-half minutes. Honestly, I think you could have taken either song. ‘Depression Part I’ is far more drawn out and brooding, ‘Depression Part II’ more concise, sharper. Both, though, are engulfing, consuming the listener in waves of Shane Rout’s entirely palpable depression. Rout’s howled vocals, the minimalist production, the mechanical drum machine hits, and the sombre mid-tempo riffing, clearly inspired by the most harrowing passages of early Burzum, make this a totally morose experience.

 

I don’t give a shit about fucking Shining, or Lifelover, or any of those shit fucking European hyperbolic boring as fuck drama obsessed suicidal black metal bands. All those cunts are just aged Silverstein fans working through an even more boring stage of their fucking adolescent angst. Fuck them all. The best suicidal black metal band ever was Abyssic Hate, and Suicidal Emotions is the best album of this sub-genre. Deep down, Kvarforth is really just cutting himself because he’ll never make a fucking album this good.

 

Consummation – ‘Heautontimoroumenos’

Ritual Severance, Consummation’s 2017 EP, is easily one of the year’s best black metal releases. My first exposure to the band, though, was through their 2012 self-titled demo, which consisted of two tracks of abrasive, churning, and ferocious black metal (see my review here). ‘Heautontimoroumenos’ is the first track from the demo, and is a showcase in what makes Consummation so good; biting trem-lines, clashing, dissonant chords, pounding drums, incantatory vocals, and a fucking stomach-turning mid-tempo section to close the song. Consummation typify how creative Australian black metal can be, what can happen when bands exist outside of the dense scenes of continental Europe and the US, where the clustering of bands can at times produce a herd-effect where bands sound increasingly similar. In fucking sunny Brisbane of all places, Consummation have created something totally fucking twisted and dedicated to the dark.

 

Forbidden Citadel of Spirits – ‘Blackened Skies Transcend Me’

Forbidden Citadel of Spirits remain one of the most important Australian black metal bands in spite, or perhaps because of, their uncompromising underground status. Their frantic, psychotic black metal is probably closest to the sounds of the Portuguese Black Circle scene, members of which have shared splits with Forbidden Citadel of Spirits. Like the Black Circle bands, this music is raw, chaotic, and totally fucking demented; testament to a commitment to making something fucking deranged and devoted out of one’s damaged existence.

 

The band has a ridiculously large catalogue, and there are so many tracks I could’ve picked. ‘Blackened Skies Transcend Me’, from the split with Shatraug’s Ildjarn-inspired solo-project Gandr, best captures what made Forbidden Citadel of Spirits incredible, though. M. N.’s chaotic, dissonant tremming sustains the first half of the song, before seguing into a lengthy slow melodic passage, crushing and mournful. Over the painfully underproduced guitars and drums, Ismaelta’s fucking horrific wails bring the song together. Messy and distressing, this is the peak of Forbidden Citadel of Spirits.

 

Carved Cross – ‘Moss and Mould Envelope Ones Final Place of Rest’

Like the earlier Consummation track, I chose this track mainly because of my personal relationship with it. As with Consummation’s ‘Heautontimoroumenos’, ‘Moss and Mould Envelope Ones Final Place of Rest’ was the first song I heard by Carved Cross, and it sticks with me because of that. In other words, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that this is the essential Carved Cross track and all others can be ignored; it’s all fucking amazing, but this track is important to me. Also, not all Carved Cross songs exist in digital form, so there are pragmatic reasons for picking this track, too.

 

I also think it’s important to highlight this track as it comes from the Carved Cross/Sump split I reviewed ages back. Sump play totally filthy blackened punk, and sharing a 7” with them reflects the extent to which Carved Cross draws on a significant punk influence. The stripped down metronymic drumming on ‘Moss and Mould Envelope Ones Final Place of Rest’ sounds straight off any post-punk record, in particular. I wondered whether it mattered including two tracks featuring M. N. on this list, but Carved Cross sound significantly different to Forbidden Citadel of Spirits. This draws from the same well of misery, but puts it to far different ends, offering a pared back and fucking bare vision of devastation.

 

Ill Omen – ‘Æ.Thy.Rift IV’

I actually picked the first track on Ill Omen’s utterly crushing Æ.Thy.Rift, but at 14 minutes, it was too long. The relatively brisk fourth track made the cut, though. This is the first album I ever wrote about on the blog, so I’ll be brief here. Æ.Thy.Rift is a colossal record of blackened doom. Easily one of the heaviest records I have ever heard, this is a devastating ode to death. Keepin has made some of the best Australian black and death metal, and this is maybe the peak of his work so far. The intensive layering of guitar and bass tracks creates a suffocating atmosphere here, consuming the listener in total darkness. The vocals and drums, noticeable only by how low they are in the mix, serve as accompaniment to the guitars and bass, filling out the sound, rather than leading the song. ‘IV’ captures one of Æ.Thy.Rift’s most dissonant moments, a point where the swelling tension of the album reaches a height before finally releasing as the record closes, leaving you fuckin wrecked.

 

Sacriphyx – ‘A.J. Shout VC’

This song is that fucking good, hey. Sacriphyx are, or were (their status remains unclear), amazing. They were also, for a short time, one of the best metal bands from my home town, Canberra. Admittedly, only Anthony lived in Canberra, while Neilanderthal was in the Blue Mountains, but Canberra doesn’t have much shit (Armoured Angel excepted, of course), so I’m claiming it. They even have a photo in front of the Australian War Memorial, which is down the road from my house. Sacriphyx are known in particular for their obsession with Australian military history; Captain Alfred John Shout, this track’s subject, was a recipient of a posthumous Victoria Cross for his valour at Lone Pine. This track also features on what might be the best Australian extreme metal 7”: the Sacriphyx/Stargazer split.

 

The most obvious reference point for Sacriphyx’s sound is the early ‘90s Hellenic black metal scene. ‘A.J. Shout VC’ is clearly influenced by classic Greek bands like Varathron and Rotting Christ. This track, and Sacriphyx’s canon more broadly, is thrashy, while sustaining a rich sense of melody through harmonised guitar leads, all classic attributes of the Hellenic style. Sacriphyx use the meldoic aspects of their sound particularly well, here capturing the sombre, mournful aspects of the Australian campaign in Turkey, and Shout’s brutal and gruesome death there. In these moments, Sacriphyx exceed the traditions of the Hellenic style, venturing into funeral doom territory with the crushingly slow pace of the riffs that open and close this track. A doom influence should come as no surprise, given the members’ histories in Murkrat and Misery’s Omen, among other bands, but the style works perfectly with Sacriphyx’s thrashy melodic black metal.

 

Corpse Molestation – ‘Heathens’

With their fucking scathing and disgusting black metal and their intensely perverse artwork, Corpse Molestation had to be on this list. This band is fucking profound in Autralian black metal. Not only did luminaries in Australian black metal begin their careers in this band – K. K. Warslut was a founding member – but their rotten and raw black metal paved a sonic trail for the filthy punkish blasphemies of bands like Gospel of the Horns and Deströyer 666. The long-cocked demon and pony-tailed girl riding him that adorn the cover of Promo 93, which ‘Heathens’ is the second track on, is the best fucking artwork of an Australian black metal release, and maybe even the best album artwork of all time.

 

‘Heathens’ is such an important track, though, because it shows how rich Corpse Molestation’s sound was. For this song is not simply some raw as fuck war metal punisher. For all its primitive filth, this isn’t just straight ahead putridity, but something more complex: a band taking a thrashy, punk-influenced black metal template and turning it into something fucking heavy and chaotic. In other words, Corpse Molestation not only set the scene for other thrashy black metal bands, but also laid the groundwork for some of the more chaotic black and death metal that has come out of Australia, particularly from Brisbane; bands like Consummation, Portal, and Impetuous Ritual. Corpse Molestation’s significance cannot be understated, and this shit will fuck you up as much now as it would have back in 1993. Horns the fuck up.

 

Nocturnal Graves – ‘Lead Us to Endless Fire’

There is little to say about ‘Lead Us to Endless Fire’ that I haven’t said previously when reviewing the cassette it’s from. For me, this is the perfect track of blackened thrash. From its massively heavy opening riff, the blistering fucking tremming through the middle of the track, filthy solo, and its churning close, this is the perfectly constructed song; diverse yet constantly fucking heavy and head-bangable. …From the Bloodline of Cain was a sick album loaded with killer riffs, but this song is on another level. These guys are on Season of Mist now and if this track is any evidence, their new stuff will be fucking mental. ‘Lead Us to the Endless Fire’ deserves to be on this list on the strength of the riffs and song-writing alone, but Nocturnal Graves, and Jarro, are particularly significant in black metal. Nocturnal Graves have been around since 2004, and prior to that, Jarro played in a string of crucial bands, most notably Deströyer 666. Cunts like him have held Australian black metal together, and have supported the creation of this fucking amazing scene.

 

*

 

There were many other songs I considered for this list, probably most notably Ignis Gehenna’s ‘Baleful Scarlet Star’, that didn’t make it in because of song-length or because I didn’t think of them in time. This is hardly an exhaustive list of the best of Australian black metal, so should certainly not be taken as so. It is, though, an attempt to capture some of the diversity and quality of Australian black metal. I can make no overarching claim about what defines the black metal produced here and perhaps that is the point; the scope of Australian black metal is so wide, the bands so creative. I’m hardly patriotic, and I cannot claim any responsibility for any of these amazing songs, but fuck, we are lucky to be in a country producing the best black metal in the fucking world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview: Blood Incantation

The scope and purpose of judicial office was one of the defining rhetorical battlegrounds of seventeenth century England. From the reign of James I until the end of James II’s kingship, a range of interlocutors, such as MPs, priests, and pamphleteers, declared upon the comportment appropriate to judicial officeholders. Throughout this period, a defence deployed by common lawyers to assert the independence of judicial office from the crown was that the common law was based principally upon precedent. Confronted with a case, judges had recourse to the lex scripta – statute law created by king or parliament – and also to the far larger corpus of the lex non scripta – the unwritten common laws of England. The origins of the lex non scripta supposedly stretched back ‘before time of memory’, and its contours could be determined through studying previous judgments, a task which itself required extensive training in the Inns of Court, the specialist educational institutions of the common law.

 

Edward Coke, the early seventeenth century MP and Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, the highest common law court, argued that a common lawyer required ‘experience in particular cases’. Such experience would ensure that any judgments he gave were rooted in ‘judiciall President’, or, as we would spell it today, ‘precedent’. Common lawyers must ground their judgments, that is, in the existing law. Coke’s injunctions were sustained by later common lawyers, most notably Matthew Hale, who was mentored by Coke, and himself served as King’s Bench Chief Justice from 1671 until his retirement in 1675.

 

During his tenure on King’s Bench, Hale encountered an unpublished version of Thomas Hobbes’s A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, which contended that judicial office had no scope of independence from the king. In response, Hale contended that there was no place for the king in the common law, as the common lawyers operated primarily on the basis of those ‘laws and rules and methods of administration of Comon Justice’ that the ‘wiser Sort of the world have in all ages agreed upon’. These rules could be found in existing case law, the study of which required extensive training. Indeed, to work in the common law required ‘habituateing and accustomeing and Excercising that [reasoning] Faculty by readeing, Study and observation’; a training no king possessed.

 

Just as these early modern common lawyers venerated the importance of looking to their discipline’s history when formulating laws, so, in my view, must death metal bands continue to pay reverence to the genre’s history. Of course, this is not to say the genre must stagnate. The common lawyers never thought that the law could not progress, but that it must do so always with a firm grasp of its history, which it ought never attempt to entirely eschew. Without this relationship to history, only delirium can prevail. For clear evidence of the importance of maintaining a connection to old school death metal, for example, consider Pyrrhon’s new album What Passes for Survival. This is a death metal album that has no memory of the genre’s history. And it’s fucking unlistenable.

 

In contrast, Blood Incantation’s epic, brutal Starspawn, released in late 2016, is an album that remembers the fucking late 80s and early 90s. This is an album fucking steeped in all the fucking rotten darkness of old school death metal. At the same time, though, Starspawn builds on these crushing foundations; it is an advance in what a death metal band can do, but one that maintains a reverence for what has gone before. This is fucking elite death metal, and these cunts are about to bring the fucking Stargate to Australia. Embrace it and meet your oblivion/liberation.

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<$6.66: Hails mate, could you start by introducing yourself and your role in Blood Incantation?

BI: Hey mate, my name’s Paul, I play guitar and do vocals for the band. Morris also plays guitar, Jeff plays bass, and Isaac plays drums.

<$6.66: The basic history I can work out is that Blood Incantation has been a band for six years now, one year longer than your sibling-band Spectral Voice, which currently contains three members of Blood Incantation. You guys have released six records, so far. Two demos in 2013, the Astral Spells demo in 2014, which consisted of some re-worked songs and some new material, the Interdimensional Extinction EP in 2015, which consisted of re-recordings of much of this earlier material, and a split with Spectral Voice in 2015 of another re-recorded older song. In 2016, you released the totally mental full-length Starspawn, which consists of entirely new material. You’ve retained a stable line-up through this period, with the most notable addition being Jeff Barrett, who joined as bassist in 2015. Throughout this last year, especially, you’ve being touring like fucking mad. Are there any key elements missing from that history, or that need to be clarified or expanded upon?

BI: Haha, sort of… We have released only three records: the Interdimensional Extinction EP; the split 7″ with Spectral Voice; and Starspawn. We have only one official demo tape which was the Astral Spells promo in 2014. All other tapes are merely rehearsal tapes, certainly not a “record” or official release. Our rehearsal tapes were made to find a fretless bass player, but no one was interested so Damon from StarGazer offered to fill in for the session. This was all 2011-2013 period. We didn’t re-record and re-record songs, the recording session (July 2013) for the split, promo tape, and the EP are the same songs, same session; one’s just mixed, one’s not. Astral Spells was just a promo for the EP since the release was delayed over two years due to endless mixing. By the time it was ready we were planning our first tour and still had no bassist, so Jeff from Spectral Voice came over since he already played fretless in that band. We had already been in multiple bands with Jeff for years, so our playing styles blended very naturally. All of the writing for Starspawn was completed before Interdimensional Extinction even came out, so people needn’t be surprised that the EP and LP were released only a year apart – we had two long years of waiting for the recordings to surface. But yeah, we have been very busy since then. We’ve done three US tours and one European tour since Starspawn came out in August 2016, and we are confirmed for Australia in September as well as another European tour (with Spectral Voice) in October. As for Spectral Voice, we are just all in multiple bands juggling tours and jobs and life’s chaos, but we’re not quitting anytime soon.
<$6.66: Starspawn is a huge record. It’s diverse and ambitious, spanning soaring melodies and churning dissonance, an acoustic interlude, and some proper fucking shredding guitar solos. And it’s epic, despite coming in at only 35 minutes, it feels like a much more vast record, perhaps because of the diversity, but also because of the sheer number of riffs in the album, and the longer song-lengths; opener ‘Vitrification of Blood (Part I)’ is almost 14 minutes long. In short, the record sounds as if it’s the culmination of years of writing, but it was released a year after you put out two records. How long were you guys working on Starspawn?

BI: Thanks man! We just tried to make it sick, mate, we wanted it to be fucking mental. As I said there were two years of writing for the album before the EP was even released, so you are right it is certainly the culmination. There is still older material that we have yet to record, one of which we have been playing live on these last two tours, so keep your ears open! Maybe we’ll play it down under??
<$6.66: I think this is a follow up question. How do you see the relationship between Starspawn and the rest of the Blood Incantation canon thus far? I realise there are material differences, between analogue and digital recording, most notably. What do you see as the threads that unite Starspawn and previous records, and where do you see it advancing or breaking with earlier incarnations of Blood Incantation?

BI: I think it sounds like the Blood Incantation album to me, I’m not really sure what you’re asking. It’s what I would have expected as a listener, or at least it’s as crazy as I might have hoped they would have gone. Between the EP and the LP I see a very natural expansion of previously established concepts; everything is just “more” on the album. More space, more chaos, more brutal, more melody, more atmospheric, more psychedelic, more tech, more doom, etc. The EP was recorded totally digital on our shitty gear at the time, and the album was recorded totally analogue on our actual gear we’ve been touring on and dialling-in for years, and their respective productions reflect this. The chronology from oldest to newest material goes like this: ‘Mephitic Effluvia’ (from the split), ‘Obfuscating the Linear Threshold’, ‘Hovering Lifeless’, ‘Subterranean Aeon’, “The Vth Tablet (Of Enûma Eliš)’ (from the EP), ‘Hidden Species (Vitrification of Blood Part 2)’, ‘Vitrification of Blood (Part 1)’, ‘Chaoplasm’, ‘Starspawn’, ‘Meticulous Soul Devourment’ (from the LP). So you can see our writing style has only ever gotten crazier, so people had fair warning the album was going to be ridiculous, haha. We’re very happy with the album, so to anyone interested, we will continue this writing style with our next release.

<$6.66: For me, one of the most notable parts of Blood Incantation’s sound is how dark it is, and this is something present on all the records. The main difference I can see, here, is that the earlier material generates a lot of the tension via the use of turgid chugging dissonance, and while Starspawn sustains this, it also seems to generate much of its atmosphere from the lead work. Some of the later leads on ‘Vitrification of Blood (Part I)’, wouldn’t feel out of place on a Mournful Congregation record, for example. How conscious are you guys of trying to produce that atmosphere, and if it’s explicit, how do you work to curate that? More generally, how important is it for you guys not just to write riffs, but to write riffs that convey a particular atmosphere?

BI: Thanks man! I think the early material had more tremolo picking and the newer material is actually more chugging, but the atmosphere on Starspawn is definitely more melodic and epic. The EP songs are sharper, colder, and more dissonant, whereas the album’s style is more amorphous, warmer (AKA LAVA), and more melodic. We’re also all drastically better players than we were in 2013. I think the EP is dark because of how cold and mechanical it is, and the album is dark because of how menacing and diabolical it is. As for the riffs and atmosphere, this is just what we’re going for man, we just make the music this way because we think it’s sick. It doesn’t matter to us if people think one part’s too funeral doom or one part’s too melodic; we made it how we wanted it because this is what we like, haha! People seem so keen to question our motives about riffs, but nobody seems to accept that dude, we just like heavy fuckin’ riffs!! We like riffs with brutality, riffs with melody, riffs with noise, riffs with atmosphere, just fuckin’ riffs mate it’s not some conspiracy! But if you want to talk conspiracy, read our lyrics…

<$6.66: I want to stick with some of the topics touched on in the previous question. We’re in the middle of a revival of old school death metal at the moment, and you guys are very much a part of this. It isn’t a novel point now to suggest that old school death metal is seeing a revival, or that Dark Descent, your label, is especially significant in this. What I’m interested in, though, is that this revival hasn’t just brought a focus on certain types of riff writing, but it’s also brought back darkness to death metal. There’s a kind of reductive genealogy of death metal you could construct where the early European bands like Demilich or Grave, and the US East Coast bands like Morbid Angel, Incantation, and Immolation, produced really dark death metal, which in some cases was explicitly satanic. By the late 90s and early 00s, this style was on the decline and we saw the rise of death metal bands that focused on brutality (Dying Fetus) or technicality (Necrophagist) above all else. That’s all very schematic, but with the revival of old school death metal we’ve seen a significant return to a focus on darkness as central to a death metal sound. In Europe, bands like Phrenelith, Dead Congregation, Undergang, in the US, bands like yours, Necrot, Ascended Dead, and in Australia bands like Contaminated, Sewercide, Coffin Lust all create death metal indebted to the dark. What do you make of this resurgence and Blood Incantation’s place in it? Given that it privileges atmosphere over simply a style of riffing, do you think it has the potential to last longer than other trends in death metal? Moreover, as a band that’s toured Europe and the US, what do you make of the comparative scenes in those countries?

BI: Ah we don’t care about all that mess mate, we’re all just too young to have participated in the 80s/90s scenes, so we just want to contribute as best we can despite being a bunch of young shitheads. Dark Descent is the sickest and most legit Death Metal label around, it’s an honor to work with him and also that so many of our friends’ sick bands are our labelmates. For our own efforts, we’d be playing the same riffs twenty years ago if we’d been able, as this is just how we like to play. I wasn’t moved by the Swe-death revival, simply because not even Entombed were as heavy as Nihilist, so no fuckin’ way some 2000s band is gonna be able to do it. Plus, I prefer more gloomy or intense death metal, which for Sweden is either death/doom like Eternal Darkness or riffy shit like Grotesque or Crematory. With the exception of sunny Florida, American death metal has always been more visceral and fucked up than the Euro styles, simply because it’s fucking stacked against any band not playing Top 40 music here, and in Scandinavia the government would seriously pay youth centers to record bands or let them practice – so every band got a head start. So when US bands started they were more raw and out for blood, not as concerned with the verse/chorus mentality of Europe. Even today, metal is SO much bigger in Europe. The tours are bigger, venues are bigger/better, there’s more vans, more nightliners, actual catering, places to sleep, hella record stores that ONLY sell metal, just everything man. We were playing sold out shows in Europe to hundreds of people with huge stages and all these amenities and nice gear, and came back to the States and were right back on the floor without a soundcheck (not that we mind), no food, and two drink tickets, haha! It’s fucking mental mate, the US doesn’t give a fuck about anything, let alone bands. Hopefully Australia is chill??

<$6.66: Where death metal has gone through trends of brutality and technicality over atmosphere, black metal has unrelentingly been dedicated to darkness, and this focus on atmosphere has often been considered paramount to technicality or riff writing. The boundaries between death and black metal have variously been flexible and strictly policed at different times, but we’re seeing a lot of cross-pollination between genres at the moment. Dead Congregation are on a black metal label. Portal, Impetuous Ritual, and Consummation all sit somewhere between these genres, as do Qrixkuour, who you guys just toured the US with. More specifically, members of Blood Incantation have personal involvement in black metal. All of you except Morris have been in Velnias, and Morris is in the fucking amazing Stillborn Fawn. Paul runs the mysterious Woodsmoke, and was in Leech. How do you guys see the genres relating, both in general, and in particular, in Blood Incantation’s sound? For me, some of the more melodic trem-picking over blast-beats on Starspawn, in particular, could sit comfortably on a black metal record.

BI: I mean, our band isn’t a black metal band, so you can’t just analyze one specific riff out of context to try and supplant it into another genre and expect a linear explanation. For example, Emperor had countless death metal riffs, pinch harmonics, etc, Order From Chaos had more in common with Bathory than Suffocation, 80s Morbid Angel was like Slayer on crack, and early Vader was just Morbid Angel played by Slayer, so… Specific genres exist because they’re each trying to express a specific idea. The crossover genres exist because some ideas can be mutually expressed through differing methods, is all. I listen to all types of metal, play all types of metal, and the same goes for riffs. Funeral doom riffs can be black metal if trem-picked, an acoustic folk guitar part can be grim AF if played distorted, some brutal death riffs sound weak until you throw a punk beat on them and it turns into cro-magnon bludgeon, you know? The riff itself is most important. It’s just riffs mate, people get too caught up in analysis and rhetoric of metal and lose sight of what’s actually enjoyable about bands, which is simply the music itself.

<$6.66: I’ve got one more question about the leads. The diversity of Starspawn makes it a challenging listen, and the leads are particularly prominent here. At first I didn’t know how to make sense of them, whether they revealed a psychedelic influence or something else. I started to get somewhere in digging into it, though, after reading an interview with Paul where he extolled his passion for Morbid Angel, and in particular, for the underrated Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, and for Trey’s leadwork there. There’s a clear relationship between some of Trey’s leads, particular in ‘Prayer of Hatred’, and some of the crazier leads on Starspawn. While Trey used these leads to break up or emphasise sections, though, you’ve turned them into a style of riffing on Starspawn. How do you go about writing the guitar parts, and in particular, constructing the leadwork on the album?

BI: Haha, thanks!! I think you are maybe overanalyzing things. We definitely LOVE Morbid Angel, and especially Formulas, but honestly mate we just go about writing music in the natural mode of playing riffs, improvising together, playing guitar at home, humming melodies, etc. Just normal riff hunting, haha. We’ll never be as sick as Morbid Angel, so we’re content to just try as hard as we can, haha. We know what we want, so we get to a part that needs a shred solo and we put a shred solo there. Another part needs a melting solo, so we’re gonna put a melting solo. Sometimes we need a melodic, written solo, so we just write the solo with melody instead of chaos. It’s just riffs man, that’s what our band is about.

<$6.66: Turning to the lyrical themes of Starspawn, and Blood Incantation more generally, the lyrics might be described as dealing with subjects relating to cosmic horror; of interdimensional transition and, indeed, interdimensional death. Lyrics dealing with space have a history in death metal, but what I’m particularly interested in is that you have described your lyrics as not only dealing with the interdimensional, but as dealing with the occult. Given this, I was drawn to the first line of Starspawn (“Falling… Falling through the stargate within”), and the last lines (“No death as known… Only doorways… You are the stargate”). These lyrics seem to get at a notion of self-discovery and learning through a form of self-destruction. Reading these lyrics, I was reminded of themes that arise in some Satanic bands, that focus on, I suppose, processes of violence as a means to growth and understanding (Ignis Gehenna lyrics seem to suggest this, for example). Can you talk about the specifically occult and mystical elements of your lyrics? Have you got any specific lyrical influences, or are you reading anything in particular when writing them?

BI: We’re not a Satanic band at all, mate. Satanists are literally just Christians – the reality is that they believe in The System, they are reacting to The System, and their worldview is built up (by The System) around their Ego, which is a culturally-induced hallucination needing to be destroyed before they can experience anything transcendental.  Ultimately Starspawn is just a microcosm, carved out of the Field by the macrocosm. The differences between our Esoteric/Metaphysical Death Metal band and Satanic Black/Death Metal bands are as vast as the differences between Zen and Scientology, respectively. True occultism is that which has been Hidden, it is not reactionary. You are right the lyrics deal with interdimensional horror and astral death, but there is also the aspect of self-awareness, which is the water droplet realizing it is the ocean, and transcendentally recognizing that ocean isn’t even real, but material illusion. Your soul has never been born, never died, and is trapped in the material dimensions of hell (aka physical incarnation as you know it) endlessly reincarnating across this matrix/grid of our perceived holographic reality, which is being held in place by Off World entities. Your entire life means as much to anything as any leaf on any tree has ever meant to the entire biological ecosystem of earth – so, don’t get too excited. Human bodies are just batteries, mate, and as explained in our lyrics as well as mystical texts dating back over 6,000 years into the Vedas and mystery schools of Kemet, Sumer, etc, these otherworldly beings corrupt human DNA to imprison infinite consciousness in finite material forms over and over again, instead of re-merging with the source field of quantum nothingness. Surely you don’t think the Dreamtime is mere symbolism? Are you not moved by the world’s ancient megaliths? All religion, all world cultures, all industrial societies, all economies, everything is a joke, just here to entertain your meaningless existence while interdimensional Off World entities eat the fucking life out of you before you get recycled back into their matrix, sorry.

<$6.66: For me, Blood Incantation manages to nail song-writing that matches the lyrics. As dark and otherworldly as the lyrics are, the songs are equally coated in evil and mystery. How much of that is intentional? How closely do you see the relationship between lyrics and music and, indeed, between lyrics, music, and artwork, for the artwork seems to clearly evoke the same themes?

BI: Thanks man! I mean, we don’t do it by accident, haha. Everything is intentional, we want to make it very specific so people have the chance to really dig into the themes, symbolism, imagery etc. We just want to spark their mind. Also, aesthetically, I just dislike shitty layouts, fonts, shirts, etc. I can’t even buy shirts from most of the bands I like because their art is so fuckin’ wack now. But again, that’s just personal. So we try to make the releases and merch look like something we’d actually want to buy, wear, listen to, etc. We just want to make it sick, mate, we just want to make something we can personally enjoy. When people dig it, that’s tight, but ultimately we just like this music, this art, these lyrics, etc, so we put it all together in this way because it is most natural for our interests.

<$6.66: Finally, we’re going to be lucky enough to catch you cunts in mid-September when you come out to Australia supporting Arcturus. What other plans do you guys have for the rest of 2017 and beyond?

BI: Ah it’s gonna be mad!! We can’t wait. We’ll be back in Europe after Australia, doing a month-long tour with Spectral Voice, whose debut album Eroded Corridors of Unbeing will be released while we’re on the road. After that, Blood Incantation are confirmed for Maryland Deathfest, but we will shift gears into Spectral Voice to prepare for US tours and beyond in support of that album. Blood Incantation won’t do another release until it’s a full length, or at the least a dark ambient/neoclassical EP (haha!), so people can catch us on tour or enjoy the existing releases for the time being.
<$6.66: Last words?

BI: Everything is connected!! His-Story is a lie, Cult-ure is not your friend, and there is more going on here than you are being told. OPEN YOUR MIND!!! Dive deep into life’s obscurities and mysticism. YOU ARE THE STARGATE.

 

Zine round-up: Through the Void; Horrified; V.I.T.R.I.O.L

A couple of things led me to using this week’s post to reflect on my recent zine reading. First, I finally got through the last of my current zine stack; the completely essential first edition of Horrified. Second, after spending all week and part of last week listening to Vassafor’s gargantuan Obsidian Codex I finally accepted that I was not ready to review it and require at least another week with the album to even begin coming to terms with it. A week is rarely enough time with an album to fully make sense of it, but Obsidian Codex is particularly challenging, given both its scale – the album is 90 minutes long – and the impenetrable darkness of the album’s insanely down-tuned fusion of black and doom metal. So, here we are; an attempt instead to make sense of some of my recent reading of others’ writing regarding black and death metal.

 

It is perhaps unnecessary to make explicit, but I cannot endorse the practice of zine writing and reading enough. Like underground bands and the labels that support them, those writing zines are committing serious time that could otherwise be spent on any number of other endeavours – spending time with loved ones, engaging in physically or mentally rewarding hobbies, sustaining friendships – to their passion for extreme music. I fuck about on this blog, but zines require a much deeper commitment, given that their production is not only time consuming, but they require a financial and physical investment in printing and distributing them. Regardless of the quality of the material produced, this commitment is deserving of serious respect (with one notable exception among the zines reviewed here). These (again, with an exception) are all the product of passion for extremity, and these mother fuckers all deserve our hails.

Through the Void, Issue Two

Price: $6AU ($9 shipped)

Purchase: from the author

Through the Void was birthed from the mind of one of the freaks behind Adelaide black metal horde Entsetzlich, and it comes with a free Entsetzlich patch, which is a great inclusion. Most of the interviews here are drawn from the musical or geographical context of the author. Entsetzlich’s label Wolfsvuur Records, and recent partners on a split Initiation are both reviewed. Various luminaries of Australian black metal also appear, such as Rattenkönig, whose member Bloodoak handled Through the Void’s logo, Old Burial Temple, whose sole member is in Drohtnung, who in turn share members with Grave Worship, also interviewed here, and Forgotten Kingdoms, the dungeon synth project of Drowning the Light’s Azgorh.

 

Genre-wise, the projects interviewed are all based in black metal or dungeon synth. Honestly, I know so little about the latter genre. For the most part, it just seems like a bunch of fucking fantasy losers who jerk it to Warcraft playing dress ups while poorly ripping off incarceration era-Burzum and early Mortiis. I’m listening to Cernunnos Woods as I write this, described by Through the Void as ‘Pagan Fantasy Dungeon Synth’, and fuck this is some comically incompetent shit. This poor cunt won’t even get an invite to DJ his town’s next medieval fair. A shame, since he was probably holding out a hope that spinning his favourite synth-flute tracks would’ve finally given him the opportunity to show off his personally embroidered cape to the local ‘fayre mayden’ – the only woman in his town who attends these fairs, who is cripplingly obese and spends her spare time writing medieval-themed Twilight fan fiction.

 

Dungeon synth also tends to piss me off because although much of it claims to be grounded in some kind of reverence for the medieval, these cunts know fuck all about the subject. Take Azgorh, for example, who I must admit deserves respect for his work with Drowning the Light, where he has revealed a deep devotion and commitment to hateful black metal. Explaining the themes underlying Forgotten Kingdoms, Azgorh discusses his romanticisation of ‘oppressive kings and tyrants who ruled with a ruthless and iron fist’, which he describes as ‘totalitarianism’. Azgorh might touch himself up over hack history books, but I’m a historian of medieval and early modern European history, and this understanding of the medieval world is piss (setting aside the difficulties in even reifying a term such as ‘medieval’, none of which he’d fucking know about).

 

Azorgh’s ignorance of medieval history is principally wrong on two grounds, and this is a problem because it reveals that all this bullshit about medieval influences relies not on a serious encounter with history, but on some trite fetishisation of the past that ultimately obscures this past for the inventions of the present. First, ‘-ism’ suffixes are a product of the post-French Revolution world; they are a nineteenth century coinage, and ‘totalitarianism’ is a term that was popularised in the twentieth century. In other words, no-one prior to the nineteenth century could have understood their world as characterised by ‘totalitarianism’. It is an anachronism, an artefact of a contemporary conceptual schema projected back onto a past alien to such language.

 

Second, this bullshit about ‘oppressive kings and tyrants’ ruling with an ‘iron fist’ is just incoherent. Certainly, the time period Azgorh is referencing was a time where executions and torture were considered acceptable, but not in all contexts. This period was also defined by intellectually rich and complex legal systems, which often precluded torture. Moreover, monarchs were not particularly powerful, given that that this world precedes the development of modern states; this is not a period characterised by strictly delimited and comprehensively regulated territories. Such lack of power is unsurprising: in a time when communication was reliant on carrying messages on horseback, it is ridiculous to expect a monarch to have been able to maintain rigid continuous control over an extensive area. Hence, guilds and other administrative organisations held expansive roles: without a strong centralised power, a network of small powers governed the day-to-day.

 

The interviews are a good read, for the most part. A lot of them feature some pretty similar questions, at least in opening, and this can get boring after a while. There is a good attempt in each interview, though, to ask the relevant band questions specific to them and their work; there is no sense here that these bands have all been sent the same set of pro forma questions. I was confused, though, why Wargun from Brazilian band Evil is interviewed, and a few pages later, Evil are also interviewed. Even more confusing, both interviews include Evil’s entire statement regarding the band’s deportation from the US, which is over a page long.

 

The reviews are a highlight. The author doesn’t fuck around with a play-by-play of tracks, but goes straight to a discussion of how it feels to listen to each record. This approach is exactly what I want from a music review; an attempt to make sense of the experience of listening. The prose is awkward at times – ‘[t]he sounds that this tape emits are intense’ – but the intention is solid, and meaning clear.

 

Through the Void is a solid and passionate read, if imperfect. My main complaints are not about the zine as a zine, but rather about the choice of subjects and the performance of interviewees, the latter of which the author is not responsible for. If you like dungeon synth, you’ll likely get more out of it than I did, but I enjoyed reading it, and will definitely be watching for a third issue.

Horrified, Issue One

Price: $6.40AU including shipping (purchased as part of a bundle of 10 zines)

Purchase: from the author

I bought Horrified principally because it is an Australian death metal zine, and my support for the Australian death metal scene knows few bounds (all melodic death metal). Even if you aren’t a fan of death metal, though, Horrified remains an essential purchase, as it is the work of Sam Vince, the mind behind the fucking elite Down and Out zine. There, Vince focuses on his passions for black metal, power electronics, and hardcore. In Horrified, he turns his gaze exclusively upon death metal. I have heard there will be no second issue, which is both a shame and another reason you should be emailing him right now to get your hands on this fucker.

 

Horrified takes its task as focusing on those death metal bands revelling in ‘the deepest and darkest depths of humanity’. The death metal featured here is exactly what I fucking love in death metal; crushingly heavy, disgusting, and unrelentingly dark. That Vince prefers death metal in this vein makes sense. His passion for seething raw black metal and disgusting power electronics shares something with the evil and filthy metal covered here. Consistent with the best aspects of contemporary death metal, Vince sees no purpose in simply yearning for a distant past in death metal, but is committed to those bands finding ways to build on old school death metal today.

 

It’s weird reading Horrified in 2017. This zine was published at the start of 2016, which means it was likely written in 2015. Despite being nearly two years old, it feels surprisingly contemporary. Spectral Voice and Contaminated are both interviewed, and Blood Incantation’s Astral Spells is reviewed. All three of those bands are central to contemporary death metal; Blood Incantation are about to tour Australia, Spectral Voice are about the drop one of the biggest death metal albums of 2017, and Contaminated are signed to fucking Blood Harvest.

 

Alongside these interviews and reviews of bands that have since become relatively large is an extensive supply of other creeps who have remained deep within the underground. Gath Smane and Cryptic Excision are also interviewed, and reviewed bands include Reverie, Impure Consecration, Of Corpse, Encenathrakh, and Patibulum. Importantly, the centre of the zine is devoted to a bunch of photos of decapitated and hanged bodies. With this centrefold and the zine’s macabre cover, Horrified encapsulates the best of death metal aesthetics.

 

The interviews here are really fucking well done. Vince asks extensive questions, with basically no repetition between bands, encouraging detailed and interesting answers. Vince’s questions shift between specific details regarding the band in question, and broader questions about contemporary death metal, and the band’s place within and relationship to the genre. More specifically, The result is that you come away with an appreciation not only of the specific bands interviewed, but of death metal itself as something vital, developing, and diverse.

 

As ever, Vince’s reviews are a highlight. Like Through the Void, the reviews focus more on the feel evoked by a record than a detailed breakdown of the music on offer. Vince, though, has an exemplary command of metaphor. At times, these reviews press the limits of absurdity, but his use of metaphor to convey the effect of listening to a given record captures something more literal prose cannot. Take, for example, the following lines describing the way in which technical riffing emerges from the murky mix of Hebdomas’s Spirytualny Defetyzm: ‘it is like picking a fight over the phone, not knowing how big the fucker you are challenging really is, but once it is there, right in front of you in all of its skullcrushing glory, only then does the realisation of what you are up against begin to fully sink in’.

 

This is essential reading if you’re a fan of death metal, of Australian death metal in particular, or simply a fan of metal zines in general, and want to see a guy at the top of his fucking game showing you how it is done. Vince has given years of his life to zine-writing, and the quality of Horrified is evidence of how fucking hard he has worked at this, and how committed he is to sickening extreme metal. I can give this no higher praise.

V.I.T.R.I.O.L, Issue One

Price: 10 euros including shipping

Purchase: from the author

Most rules have an exception, and to my rule that zine writing is deserving of respect, V.I.T.R.I.O.L is the exception. And what a fucking exception it is. V.I.T.R.I.O.L is almost unreadable, a worthless testament to its author’s incredibly misplaced narcissism. I have dealt with this zine in detail elsewhere, so I hopefully won’t overdo whingeing about this miserable shit again. The main things to note are that the author put on a black metal gig in a cave that included welcome drinks and a dinner break halfway through, and seemed to think this was the peak of ritualistic black metal, and that there is barely any discussion of music, as interviews are devoted almost entirely to the stupid wanker writing this piss telling the band what dumb ideas he has about Gnosticism (‘Let’s talk about nexions…. To me a nexion is a very special place…’).

 

Bands interviewed include Thy Darkened Shade, the pretty fucking boring (musically and intellectually) Hetroertzen, who the author loves, which seems telling, Serpent Noir, Nightbringer, and Ascension. There are no record reviews, but a few accounts of gigs. The gig reviews are mildly better than the interviews, as this prick is required to at least make some attempt to think about the music itself. Even here, wank obscures all – ‘Vassafor’s dark sonorities seem to elevate straight upwards from Tehom’ – as this cunt is constantly desperate to show off how many books he’s misunderstood. There’s some bitching about what types of stage outfit he disapproves of. Who cares.

 

Actually, that’s not true. Dismissing this as something not worth caring about might seem desirable, but V.I.T.R.I.O.L is worse than that. To take the devotion of bands and turn them to a chance to show off one’s personality disorders is a disgrace. Interviewing a band is a responsibility, for it requires that the interviewer be somewhat involved in the process by which bands represent and explain themselves. Many bands get few such opportunities, so these things matter. Turning an interview, as the author does here, into an opportunity to subject musicians to one’s overinflated ego is disgusting. It is worse than a waste: it is to rob a band of their expressive capacity for the author to flaunt his glaring incapacities. This is gross and anyone involved should be deeply ashamed and have the fucking respect to never set pen to paper again.

Possession – Exorkizein

Possession – Exorkizein (Iron Bonehead Productions, Invictus Productions)

Format: cassette

Purchase: Iron Bonehead Productions

Price: 6EU

Listen here

 

One of the reasons I think it important to retain a degree of scepticism towards genre labels is that are not stable terms, referring timelessly to the same set of sounds. Rather, genres are subject to changing trends, and are liable to politicisation, given the legitimacy they can confer or subtract from a band described in terms of a particular genre. Consider, for example, the accusation carried in labelling a band ‘nu-metal’ or ‘metalcore’; these are not objective, unchanging categories, but the stuff of rhetorical contest. Indeed, arguments over whether a band is a ‘true’ black metal band or not must be understood in the same way.

 

Moreover, as norms shift over time, the way this contest operates changes. Though I don’t really give a shit about the band, a good example of this is that in 2005, in the middle of the metalcore explosion, The Black Dahlia Murder were understood as existing within the metalcore scene. Now, with metalcore’s popularity having declined, they are described as a death metal band. I don’t think this means we should do away with genres altogether, for they have the potential to convey useful descriptive information about a band. At a minimum, they can help describe the broad stylistic tradition a band is in, giving at least some approximation of the sound. My point is that we need to be wary of genre labels, aware of their limitations.

 

Possession are a four-piece from Belgium; I assume the francophone part of the country, given the use of a French sample opening ‘In Vain’, the fifth track on Exorkizein, their first full-length. Possession have been around since 2012, and Exorkizein is their sixth release, including a 2015 compilation of their earlier releases. Throughout their career, they have worked with Irish powerhouse Invictus Productions and the magisterial Iron Bonehead Productions, from Germany. One of the most notable aspects of Possession is the maturity the band has exhibited since formation. From 2013 demo His Best Deceit to Exorkizein, Possession have maintained a consistent sound. Many bands take years to find their sound. Possession, though, came into the world fully developed, and have only had to refine their sound over time. The song-writing on Exorkizein is tight, the album in its entirety well-structured, and the production sufficiently clear while retaining enough grit, but Possession are clearly the same band now as they were in 2013.

 

It is this consistency between records that makes it puzzling to see Possesion described as transitioning from a black/thrash sound to a black/death sound on Exorkizein. As far as I can tell, the band has undertaken no such transition. Indeed, for evidence of how indebted to thrash metal Exorkizein is, one needs only listen to second track (and first track proper, following an intro) ‘Sacerdotium’, the second riff of which could belong on any mid-era Testament album. The band members have also been very explicit about their personal passion for thrash: drummer Pz.Kpfw has spoken of his love of 80s thrash, and former vocalist Mestema and current vocalist/former bassist V. Viriakh have extolled their dedication to Beligan black/thrash. I must concede that Possession describe themselves as playing black/death metal, as do Iron Bonehead, whose fucking mental roster is responsible for much of the current popularity of black/death metal. That said, I’m sticking with my treatment of Exorkizein as best understood as existing at the intersection of black and thrash metal.

 

Indeed, treating the band in these terms seems to clarify some of the confusion reviewers have approached Exorkizein with. I think that the cunts behind Angry Metal Guy are wrong about everything, and the treatment of Exorkizein as lacking the brutality of other supposed black/death records like Necroblood’s Collapse of the Human Race rests on an inaccurate conflation of the styles of music played by Necroblood, who clearly derive most of their influences from death metal, and Possession. If we understand Exorkizein, as I think we should, as sitting between black and thrash metal, such criticism is revealed as pointless: it amounts to saying that a record that isn’t death metal is at fault for not being death metal.

 

The broader criticism levelled against Possession’s Exorkizein by Angry Metal Wanker is that it is too repetitive, and ought to have been better structured. I think this is wrong, and it’s a problem that arises firstly because the reviewer is a fucking idiot, but secondly because of the means by which most music journalists access the music they review. For the most part, reviewers don’t receive physical copies of records, but are sent streaming links by record labels with some amount of promo material (full disclosure: I receive promos from a couple of labels, but only use these to find new material coming out, which I only review if I end up purchasing a physical copy). This means that writers, for the most part, are only reviewing a record on the basis of some info provided by the label and a series of audio files. In other words, they are encountering records in their most attenuated form; there is none of the intimacy of scouring booklets, looking at artwork, or physically putting a tape in a tape deck.

 

Experienced as a physical record, Exorkizein reveals a subtle and very intelligent structure. Side A of the cassette consists of tracks 1-4 (‘Intro’, ‘Sacerdotium’, ‘Infestation-Manifestation-Possession’, and ‘Beast of Prey’), and side B of tracks 5-7 (‘In Vain’, ‘Take the Oath’, ‘Preacher’s Death’). All the tracks on side A, with the exception of the intro, open with ferocious blast beats, and these songs are predominantly structured around these blasts. The songs are fast, almost entirely trem-picked, and though the riffs largely consist of powerchords, another clear nod to the band’s thrash metal influences, ‘Beast of Prey’ features some single-note tremolo melodies, too. Side A closes with a reversed sample of classical music, before the tape flips, and side B is introduced through a haunting organ sample, culled from a documentary on exorcism, and the aforementioned sample of French, from the same documentary, affirming the existence of demons.

 

Side B is entirely different to what came before it. Though ‘In Vain’ features some tremming mid-way through the track, ‘In Vain’ and ‘Take the Oath’ are both defined by hook-laden stomping mid-tempo riffs. These riffs are catchy as fuck, and constitute a significant shift in tempo from the first half of the record. The summation of the record, though, comes in the form of ‘Preacher’s Death’, a track that marries up the different styles of riffing utilised on both sides of the album. Though it again opens with a crunchy mid-tempo and features some stomping early-Darkthrone-like riffs, the song also marks a return to the tremming of the album’s first half. In particular, ‘Preacher’s Death’ offers some utterly ripping melodies, as guitarist I. Dveikus tears through some razor-sharp single-note tremolo lines, as catchy as any of the slower thumping riffs that make up much of the album’s second half. He deploys the most notable instances of dissonance on the album, too, in the form of creeping, picked out chords over pounding drums. ‘Preacher’s Death’ is also the longest track of the album, coming in at almost 8 minutes.

 

Listening to Exorkizein on cassette emphasises the clear structural decisions made by Possesion that underpin this album. Though side A and B are split by the use of samples, when you listen to the record on cassette, they are also split by silence while the cassette flips (or reverses, as is the case with my tape deck). This silence sharpens the differences between sides A and B, highlighting the different aspects of the record, which are finally brought together in the closing track. This is hardly repetitive music: it is cleverly structured, with a clear intent underlying how the album has been put together. This dedication to purpose is reflected through the album’s lyrics, which tell a story of demonic possession and the failed attempts of a priest – the Reverend Gabriele Amorth – to exorcise a demon from its host body, before his death (Amorth died in September 2016, which is referenced in ‘Preacher’s Death’), and ensuing encounter with Satan.

 

Possession have sustained a consistent aesthetic throughout their existence: white drawings on a black background depicting scenes of medieval horror and ancient evil. Here, a knight hovers above a cathedral with his sword pointing downwards at it, flanked by Luciferian sigils. Churches, swords, and sigils are hardly exceptional in contemporary black metal artwork but here, as in the rest of the album, Possession are not simply going through the motions, but have made a clear decision in the presentation of the album consistent with their broader vision. It is a disgrace to see such a well-thought through album, evincing such careful dedication in its construction, reviewed carelessly by some dickhead clicking through streaming links. This album rewards attention, not only to the songs, but to the album as a complete package: its lyrics and artwork, and their relationship to the music.

 

Fetid – Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot

Fetid – Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot (Headsplit Records)

Format: cassette

Purchase: from the band (if you’re looking for one, Headsplit had tapes but they’re sold out currently)

Price: $6US

Listen here

 

A controlment roll provides a procedural account of cases heard in the seventeenth century Court of King’s Bench, England’s then-highest common law court. They are, like all the manuscript records of King’s Bench, held at the National Archives in Kew, London. The rolls are split into three sections, the first listing cases heard in each term, the second a brief account of what occurred at each step of each case, and the third a list of each term’s writs; a specific form of court order, generally requiring or preventing a certain practice. I rely on controlment rolls extensively, as I work on the treatment of religious matters in the King’s Bench in the late seventeenth century, and most of my last week has been spent trying to scan as much material as I can from these rolls before I return to Australia.

 

Physically, the rolls are fucking massive. Most are over 350 pages, and each page is about a metre long. Once open, the rolls cover about 2 metres from end to end, and I have to walk up and down their length constantly to scan each page. I usually listen to music when I’m at the Archives; usually on tape, which tends to provide the grounds for whatever record I’m writing about, and sometimes on the computer. With the controlment rolls, I can only listen on my tape deck, given how much I have to move around. The only tape I’ve had with me the last week has been Fetid’s heaving and crushingly heavy demo, Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot, which has also accompanied me on two five hours train rides at the start of the week. I usually do about 8 hours a day at the Archives, and Sentient Pile is just under 20 minutes long, so on a conservative estimate, I’ve listened to this demo over 40 times.

A controlment roll from the 1680s

 

I picked up Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot after watching Fetid bludgeon the Basement in Canberra on their recent Australian tour with Sewercide. Live, Fetid were fucking tight and even more fucking brutal. Their doomy, guttural death metal sounded absolutely massive in a live setting, probably helped by them playing insanely fucking loud. That said, though I came away from the show convinced of the validity of the hype currently amassing around Fetid, I didn’t fully appreciate the richness of their sound until listening to Sentient Pile (over and over and over again). My basic takeaway from Fetid live were that they played old school death metal in the tradition of Autopsy; slow, disgusting, and heavy. I still stand by the comparison, but there’s a lot more going on in these 20 minutes than simply a bunch of Autopsy worship.

 

Autopsy are obviously most recognised for their fucking mental 1989 classic Severed Survival. The starting point here, though, seems less to be Severed Survival than Autopsy’s equally good 1991 sophomore Mental Funeral. The principal difference between these albums, for me, is that Severed Survival, though sludgy and filthy, is also really fucking thrashy; unsurprising, given Reifert’s background in Burnt Offering. Mental Funeral retains the heaving, rotten sound of Severed Survival but eschews much of the thrashiness of the earlier record. In place of this, Autopsy doubled down on the darker elements of their sound, emphasising the creeping trem-lines, dissonance, and overall atmosphere of decay.

 

Fetid are from Seattle, Washington, and though relatively new, drummer-vocalist Jullian and guitarist-vocalist Clyle previously played in Of Corpse, where they released two demos and a split with Sewercide, and a compilation, before becoming Fetid after Chelsea joined on bass. Of Corpse and Fetid are both death metal bands, but Of Corpse traded in fast, grindy songs, whereas Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot is a lumbering, bloated mass of putrid doomy death metal, absolutely fucking soaked in darkness. It’s the work which has gone into cultivating this atmosphere that I didn’t pick up on live. There, I took drummer-vocalist Jullian’s drumming to be the driving force of Fetid’s sound. Certainly, Jullian’s movement between mid-tempo d-beats, crushingly slow passages defined by heaving grooves, and ferocious blastbeats on the demo’s first two tracks, ‘Rotting’ and ‘Coalescing Decay’, provides much of the dynamic force of the record.

 

After all my listens to Sentient Pile, I have a much better sense of the importance of Chelsea and Clyle to Fetid’s sound. Chelsea’s bass tone is ridiculous; this shit sounds like a vaguely (vaguely) melodic lawn mower. Her playing is central to Sentient Pile’s disgusting sludgy sound, and is one of the most notable distinctions between Fetid and Of Corpse, where she didn’t play on any recordings. Alongside Jullian, Chelsea’s monstrous, overdriven bass is responsible for driving the band’s tempo. Either pushing the band forward by matching Clyle’s tremming speed, or sitting back into a crushing groove with Jullian, Chelsea anchors Fetid’s sound. Clyle spends most of his time tremming through low, crawling lines, either grounded in minor chord patterns or churning dissonance. Clyle’s riffs are central to how dark Fetid’s sound is: while Chelsea and Jullian drive the doom-laden tempo, Clyle’s riffs drench this crushing pace in a dank layer of evil. Clyle also shapes the dynamic variety of Sentient Pile, spending more time tremming on the demo’s first two tracks, while relying more on thick chords on the latter two tracks, ‘Foul Remnants’ and ‘Casket Maggots’. Clyle’s and Jullian’s vocals are exclusively guttural and utterly demented.

 

The track titles and the band name match the atmosphere: this is disgusting, dark, and death obsessed. The only lyrics I can make out involve being eaten maggots. The cover of the Australian tour version of the tape I got is some gross pink, and the art consists of some fucking filthy monster. The production here is surprisingly good for a record done on a four-track. It’s raw and nasty, and most importantly, it captures Fetid’s giant low end. If the recording hadn’t captured how heavy Fetid are, Sentient Pile wouldn’t have hit as fucking hard it does. As it stands, this is as bludgeoning as Fetid are live, while capturing even more of their twisted atmosphere.

 

When looking at reviews for Perverted Ceremony’s Demo I, I found some commentary suggesting that labels shouldn’t be releasing demos; that these didn’t deserve to be ‘proper label release[s]’. As is the case with Demo I, I completely endorse a label getting behind Fetid’s Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot. From its crushing low-end, evil atmosphere, and the sampling of the theme from Brain Damage to begin ‘Coalescing Decay’, this is a richly rewarding listen that evidences serious dedication and commitment by the musicians behind it. Fetid are apparently writing a full-length at the moment, so get fucking ready, as taking this demo as evidence, it will crush your fucking life.

 

 

Perverted Ceremony – Demo I

Perverted Ceremony – Demo I (Nuclear War Now! Productions)

Format: cassette

Purchase: Nuclear War Now! Productions

Price: $4.50US

Listen here

 

Charging a band with unoriginality is a particularly boring critique. I’ve suggested before, using Conal Condren’s eminent criticism of ‘originality’ as an analytical category in the history of political thought, that it is meaningless: either everything is original on the grounds that it isn’t exactly what came before it; or nothing is original, because never entirely alien to that preceding it. Condren also offers a more particular criticism of analysis seeking to discern the ‘originality’ of a text: in many cases, the work in question isn’t attempting to be original, and thus to approach it with this analytical category in mind is to immediately obscure the intention of the text.

 

I was poking around on the internet to get some sense of the broader response to Perverted Ceremony, where I encountered this pile of piss on DeathMetal.org. The important thing to note about DeathMetal.org is that it is stacked with pretentious wank, like claiming heavy metal has its origins in the nineteenth century Romantic movement, and includes an FAQ on what heavy metal is, which includes a section on ‘encountering metal’ that provides advice on wearing ear plugs to shows. I don’t give a shit if this site started in 1988. These cunts are over the fucking hill. The site consists of nothing but variations of meaninglessness and it, and its contributors, should be put out of their fucking misery.

 

Demo I was recorded and initially self-released in 2011. The band dissolved shortly after, a result of lacking a stable rehearsal space and a loss of interest in the project.  It was resuscitated a few years ago following renewed interest, and the ever-essential Nuclear War Now! Productions gave Demo I an official release in 2016, which was followed this year by Perverted Ceremony’s full-length, Sabbat of Bahezaël, also released through Nuclear War Now. Anyway, the central critique of Perverted Ceremony by whatever mouthbreather at DeathMetal.org is that Demo I is nothing but a rip-off of early Beherit, particularly Drawing Down the Moon and the Down There… demo, released under Beherit’s brief alternative moniker, The Lord Diabolus. It’s worth noting that listing Down There… appears little more than an attempt to show off the cunt author’s knowledge of Beherit’s back catalogue, since half the tracks on Down There… are actually on Drawing Down the Moon anyway (though one of these tracks, ‘Intro (Tireheb)’, is, as you might have guessed, an intro).

 

There are two problems with the accusation. The first is that it’d be fine if it was true. Not only is black metal a genre which has always thrived on some degree of dedication to tradition, but most of the tradition focuses on the Norwegian scene. Indeed, my initial attempt to attack ‘originality’ as a critical term centred on Erebus Enthroned’s perfect Night’s Black Angel, which is one of my favourite albums and is deeply indebted to the early Scandinavian black metal scene. For how fundamental Beherit are to the black metal canon, far fewer bands have taken their more disturbing and less riff-reliant path. Had Perverted Ceremony simply released a tape of total Beherit-worship, I’d still play the shit out of it. To criticise such a release for lacking originality is to miss the point of it, and to miss a fundamental theme in black metal.

 

The second problem with the accusation of excessive Beherit-dedication on Demo I is that it isn’t true. Sure, Beherit are one of the more noticeable musical influences on Perverted Ceremony’s sound, but they’re far from the only one. Demo I revels in the filthy bass-driven sound of early Beherit, with its distinct dislike of melody. Like Beherit, Perverted Ceremony also rely on mid-tempo blast beats, electing to drag the listener through their disgusting sound, rather than pummelling with blistering pace. Perverted Ceremony also regularly slow their mid-tempo black metal down into heaving filthy sludge. Though Beherit do this at times on Drawing Down the Moon, the more noticeable influence here is probably Demoncy’s doom-laden Faustian Dawn. The wailing guitar leads, like that which opens first track ‘Ceremonial Bread’, are an aspect of Perverted Ceremony’s sound totally absent from Beherit’s, which can be found, though, on Von’s classic Satanic Blood demo. I’ve seen comparisons to Profanatica and Archgoat, the former of which seems more plausible than the latter, but for me, the most obvious influences here, explicitly on display, are Beherit, Demoncy, and Von.

 

Obviously, any record created from these sources of inspiration will be a totally filthy beast, and essential listening for any fan of primitive and disgusting black metal, and this is certainly the case with Demo I. The bass here is even higher than in early Beherit: aside from the squealing Von-like leads, the guitar is almost entirely inaudible, totally drowned out by the painfully overdriven bass. The riffs are incredibly primitive: most songs consist of 2 or 3 riffs, which are basically variations of one another, or just the same riff shifted up or down the fretboard. None of the songs are particularly fast, alternating between mid-tempo blasting and straight out heaving slowness, as on the down-tempo first couple of minutes of ‘Midnight Orgy’, which is not only a fucking ripping track, but a track on which Perverted Ceremony highlight all aspects of their sound, from heaving sludge, to steady blast beats under low trem-picked bass lines, and finally a trebly guitar lead at the end. Gross vocals are croaked out over the top of this fetid pile.

 

What really defines Demo I, though, is the atmosphere, curated not only through the primitive and insanely overdriven riffs, the simple drumming, and the belched vocals, but the presentation of the tape, and the effective use of samples to open tracks one, three, and four (‘Ceremonial Bread’, ‘Midnight Orgy’, and ‘Rites of the Sadistic Necromancer’), and the reversed speech sampled on the outro.  The samples are so effective for they capture explicitly what is implicit in these songs. The filth of Perverted Ceremony’s music matches these tales of ritualistic Satanic sex. The sample opening ‘Ceremonial Bread’ consists of a hysterical denunciation of the uterus and vagina as gateways to hell, while ‘Midnight Orgy’ opens with a prayer to Satan accompanied by the aroused moans of a woman. ‘Rites of the Sadistic Necromancer’ opens with another prayer to Satan, this time to be granted Satan’s lust in the preparation of a ‘lustful offering’ to him. The atmosphere conjured through these samples is one of Satanic panic, of deviant pornography, and sinister ceremonial lust. Perverted Ceremony embrace all the fears associated with Satanism in the 1980s and fucking revel in their stench.

 

It is this specifically sexualised ritual framing of the record that also further separates Perverted Ceremony from Beherit. Though ‘Sadomatic Rites’ references Satanic sex, it’s the only Beherit track to do so. Moreover, Beherit have always felt, to me at least, a distinctly cold and alien band, defined by their rejection of humanity, and the minimalism of their songs, use of weird ambience, and heavy vocal effects. Perverted Ceremony are far from cold and inhuman. Indeed, Demo I courses with carnal vitality. There is a warmth here, though an excruciatingly sickening one. This is matched through the tape’s presentation, which features a comically poorly drawn and vile monster, a medieval woodcut a demon, and a picture of the band members engaged in ritual seated around a pentagram. My copy of the tape itself is on a totally objectionable shade of red.

 

So, Perverted Ceremony are far from some simple copy of Beherit. Rather, on Demo I, Perverted Ceremony conjure seven hymns to the orgiastic might of Satan, which explicitly show a dedication to their early 90s influences, and also a serious attempt to cultivate and sustain a particular atmosphere and theme. Demo I repays listening not only as a homage to what has come before it, but as a dedicated and devoted offering to deviance. It is a tribute to tradition and a singular filthy offering, evoking a feeling of vulgarity that cannot be washed away after listening to it. Why the fuck would you want to wash away something this good, though?

Interview: Ignis Gehenna

When Séance Records released Ignis Gehenna’s Baleful Scarlet Star earlier this year, I jumped to purchase the record before having heard it. Ignis Gehenna is, at present, the solo project of Nihilifer, best known for his position as vocalist and lyricist for the blazing yet sadly deceased Erebus Enthroned. I’ve previously extolled my passion for Erebus Enthroned in this blog, and there was no question that I would pursue Nihilifer’s new project. I was excited for Baleful Scarlet Star, but nothing could have prepared me for the expansive, complex, and deeply sinister record that arrived in the mail. Ignis Gehenna is a black metal band, but on Baleful Scarlet Star has crafted something that advances the genre; a challenging offering that covers black metal’s sonic expanses, and even exceeds them. Though the record stands on its own, and shouldn’t be reduced to simply a product of one former member of Erebus Enthroned, it’s worth recognising that between those two bands, Nihilifer has crafted an exceptional canon of rich and malignant black metal. Australia may lack the density of black metal bands that America and Europe have, but we are privileged to have art of such a standard created in this country. It was an honour to speak to him.

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<$6.66: Hails, Nihilifer! Could you start by introducing yourself, and perhaps explaining what you do in Ignis Gehenna? As I understand it, you’re the only member of the band these days.

Ignis Gehenna: Greetings mate. As can be deduced I’m the sole instrumentalist, vocalist, and lyricist of Ignis Gehenna, at this point in time.

 

<$6.66: From what I can tell Ignis Gehenna began in 2008 as a collaboration between you and Archfiend, which initially spawned the Ecclesia Diabolus demo in 2008 and Revelations of Sinister Rebirth EP in 2010. It’s been 7 years for the mighty Baleful Scarlet Star to appear, a significant length of time, presumably partly a result of your duties in Erebus Enthroned, which broke up in 2015. Archfiend is no longer a member of the band. You’ve mentioned in interviews that Ignis Gehenna existed in some form during this period, but in 2015 you found renewed inspiration in lyric writing, which I take is significant in us seeing Baleful Scarlet Star’s release. Are there any other key elements of the band’s history worthy of recounting, clarifying, or elaborating upon?

Ignis Gehenna: As it grew, Erebus Enthroned did indeed require a lot more focus than Ignis Gehenna. Archfiend is AWOL – somewhere out there in the world. As such, if he established contact tomorrow wanting to continue collaborating on this project, it would be so. It, among many things, remained omitted on the album’s liner notes because they simply weren’t needed to be proclaimed to the world. But the album is dedicated to this good friend of mine regardless of what his path has turned into. Other than many experiences leading to a receiving of lyrics that I felt were the most genuine to myself, nothing needs disclosing.

 

<$6.66: Let me follow up that question about the band’s history. Was there any particular material source of your renewed inspiration? I have seen you mention that you have found inspiration in dreams and visions; did anything bring these on?

Ignis Gehenna: The musical inspiration was an ongoing process. I was constantly writing and re-writing music for a drawn out space of time until I felt it had been completed. As I’ve mentioned, the lyrics all seemed to come as a burst. Flowing down through hitherto blocked floodgates before closing again. It certainly was an inspiring and exciting experience. There were some songs inspired by dreams arising of their own accord like ‘Edict of Blood’. Others were inspired by experiences mostly surrounding ritual work of an ecstatic and ad lib nature. The lyrics to ‘Serpent Oracle’ expanded upon a synchronistic and strange experience involving a wild snake after intensive chant sessions in abandoned old military bunkers on the coast of Sydney. ‘Melas Oneiroi’ was a poetic reflexion on a particular psychological rite seeking to confront the abyss. These experiences felt that they had to be written about in an artistic format and arose at a time when the musical side of composition was drawing to a close.

 

<$6.66: I’m interested in the motivation to maintain this project as Ignis Gehenna over such a long time, and with the loss of Archfiend as a member. What is the defining thread of the project that links the earlier releases with this newer work? Obviously, you’ve been a member throughout, but this is not the only band you’ve been in, so presumably there is more to Ignis Gehenna than it just being the place where you put your solo work.

Ignis Gehenna: This would presume that the album came out of the blue. The music I was writing was always intended to be an Ignis Gehenna album. A lot of time, effort, and focus went into writing it – following one finished album that never saw the light of day. A flyer for it was put on the soon thereafter defunct Satanic Propaganda Records Myspace page, but it never came to pass and I am happy it didn’t as in hindsight it was not the debut full length I would have been proud of. As to why I may have changed the title of the project after falling out of contact with Archfiend – I’d recorded music when I was younger under different monikers and nowadays it just doesn’t feel necessary.  Plain and simple.

 

<$6.66: The earlier material and Baleful Scarlet Star is noticeably different in sound. The earlier incarnation of Ignis Gehenna sounded like a far more traditional black metal band. Revelations of Sinister Rebirth, for me, sounds very much like Watain, for example, though there is more of a focus on melody. It also utilised a lot of classic black metal tropes like choral samples. But Baleful Scarlet Star is far harder to classify. It’s still black metal, but the riffs are far denser, there are elements that are distinctly anti-melodic, as well as some massive melodies at times. I’ve seen it described as sounding like a melodic death metal record in some parts, but I don’t want to suggest that, principally because Baleful Scarlet Star isn’t shit, but there is certainly a real focus on guitar leads. There’s also a much greater use of dissonance. Can you talk us through some of those changes in sound? What led to you towards these shifts? Are they ideological as well as sonic?

Ignis Gehenna: One of the biggest factors most likely at play is the space and periods of time I had allowed the music on Baleful Scarlet Star to gestate and change if it needed it. The older material was written and recorded in a very frenzied, narrow space of time, while the Baleful music had an immense amount of breathing space. Up until recording the album it was solely me and my guitar in my bed room. With drums, bass and counter melodies being played out in my head.

 

<$6.66: On a related note, what were you listening to during the earlier incarnation of the band, and how has that changed in the time between records? Do you see Ignis Gehenna as having specific influences?

Ignis Gehenna: I was listening to a tonne of stuff like Ofermod, Ondskapt, Malign, Funeral Mist, Watain at the time of doing the earlier releases, and I think it certainly rubbed off on my music writing. I was listening to a lot of other stuff then, too, and learning about a lot of other bands and styles, but that form of black metal seemed to be the best way I could express myself musically. I think between then and now my song writing ability has changed. I don’t look back on the old material with disdain or the like, at all, but I can certainly hear a less patient person in those recordings. Sure, there are some influences; musical and otherwise – but I try not to let it dominate my writing and try to be more fluent with my own creative impulses.

<$6.66: A final question on the differences between Ignis Gehenna releases: you’ve physically relocated between 2010 and 2017, having been previously based in Sydney, before moving to Tasmania. Has the transition had any effect on your art, and how do you see the two scenes relating to one another? Tasmania, of course, has produced a wealth of demented black metal.

Ignis Gehenna: The transition certainly has had an impact on my art as well as my psyche and spirit (in no particular order there). Getting the fuck out of the toxic environment that Sydney is has been the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m not interested in Sydney and Tassie’s respective metal scenes, only in a small handful of genuine bands and interesting people I’ve met.  Tasmania and its dark wilderness has inspired and produced my favourite Australian metal release; Orrery – Nine Odes to Oblivion.

 

<$6.66: You’re probably best known for your work in Erebus Enthroned, for whom you handled vocals and wrote lyrics. How do you see Ignis Gehenna and Erebus Enthroned relating to one another? Is there a relationship between your work in both projects or are they distinct?

Ignis Gehenna: Archfiend was the lyricist prior to Baleful Scarlet Star so I won’t comment in any depth about his written works. The emergence of Baleful’s lyrics came at the advent of Erebus Enthroned’s return to the dark – so this was really the next logical creative step for me. Could they have been Erebus lyrics? Who knows. Anyway, that convergence I just mentioned would probably outline a strong and symbiotic relationship between Erebus Enthroned and Ignis Gehenna. Erebus Enthroned’s strength comes from the sum of its parts. Ignis Gehenna’s strength comes from the focus of one conduit.

 

<$6.66: Further to this, you’ve recently performed for the first time under the Numenos Fyrphos moniker, which I understand is the title of your ritual noise act. Can you talk about that project any more, and how it relates to your canon more broadly? Is the sound you produce there something that you’ve considered incorporating into Ignis Gehenna’s sound?

Ignis Gehenna: Numenos Fyrphos is a creative entity that acts as a dark mirror to Ignis Gehenna. It carries the same intent though expressed through completely different music. Being a fan of dark ambient, harsh noise, industrial and surrounding genres I’ve always wanted to create music in that way more amorphous vein. So, as a challenge to myself I created something to perform live (the challenge being the execution of harmony and co-ordination in such layered and textured sound on my own).  I can potentially see it entwining in some way with Ignis Gehenna on recordings.

 

<$6.66: The CD version of Baleful Scarlet Star was released by Séance Records, in Sydney, as were the CD versions of both Erebus Enthroned albums. You’ve also worked with many other labels. Abysmal Sounds handled the cassette release of Erebus Enthroned’s Night’s Black Angel, World Terror Committee released the vinyl of Erebus Enthroned’s Temple Under Hell, Sinister Essence Records released Revelations of Sinister Rebirth, Saluqhtu Archives will handle the cassette release of Baleful Scarlet Star, and Winterreich Productions put out the Erebus Enthroned/Nekros Manteia split, among others. How have you found working with such a range of labels, and beyond that, do you have any preference for the format your music is released on?

Ignis Gehenna: My preference is definitely vinyl record. Erebus Enthroned has been fortunate enough to have its music pressed onto black wax a few times. It has been a pleasure working with most of the labels I have released music through. Suzanne & Adrian who run Séance Records have been like family to me for years. Words cannot express the appreciation I have for their effort, enthusiasm and faith in my/Erebus Enthroned’s work. I also wholeheartedly hail Unhold of W.T.C for his dedication to Temple Under Hell’s vinyl release. His support is never forgotten. Just while we’re on the topic of labels – Revelations was actually released by the South Korean label Misanthropic Art Productions (<$6.66 note: my fuck up, Sinister Essence simply distributed the release in Australia). The man behind this is also responsible for the eminent cover painting adorning Baleful Scarlet Star. Keep your eyes peeled for the imminent tape release of Baleful Scarlet Star via Saluqhtu Archives.

 

<$6.66: On my reading, there’s a kind of ambiguous theology going on in the lyrics of Baleful Scarlet Star, in particular, far more so than the earlier Ignis Gehenna lyrics, which were Satanic in a much more straight forwardly theological manner. Lucifer is a significant theme in the lyrics, as are a range of cosmological references, but there is also this Promethean image of liberation through Lucifer and through forms of violence inspired by Lucifer. This was a theme that was also prominent in your lyrics for Erebus Enthroned, and it almost suggests a kind of atheistic form of Satanism, relating to this kind of Promethean ideal of learning through acquiring forbidden knowledge. Could you talk to us about the ideas underlying the lyrics, and more broadly about the kind of theological, or even anti-theological stance that drives Ignis Gehenna? More specifically, what is entailed in the form of emancipation you seem to call for, in particular in the lyrics to ‘Baleful Scarlet Star’?

Ignis Gehenna: Your personal insight into the lyrics is very apt. I wouldn’t say they express an atheistic form of Satanism, though – rather, a form that has internalised as time has progressed. As these years have gone on, so too has my apprehension of Satanism and the sinister evolved and changed. One of the persistent factors remains to be the sense of striving, restlessness, and hunger to become more. This is intrinsic in how I express the idea of emancipation in the eponymously titled song, as well as how I perceive the ever in flux archetype of Lucifer, Satan and the Devil. These are rites of expression; characterised in poetry – and shouldn’t be spelled out but thought about as you’ve done so.

 

<$6.66: How important is it for you to produce black metal that is Satanic? Do you see the subject matter as inextricably linked to the genre?

Ignis Gehenna: Years ago I would have resounded with a concrete yes. Though if you consider the Satanic to revolve exclusively around worshipping the devil, pentagrams, demons and such I would now say no. But if you consider some other things such as standing isolated in the depths of the wilderness, apprehending that wordless essence; fighting beneath the banner of that which is heretical to current orthodox forms, or anything that engenders that fierce Satanic archetype within the spirit and deep subconscious – then absolutely. The idea of Satanism (to me, at least) should be centred around what the word Satan has meant in many cultures and languages and to embody it. To become the adversary, accuser, opposer, to go beyond and to be the antithesis – this being integral in giving rise to a new synthesis.

 

<$6.66: Though blasphemous lyrics are less the target of this controversy, we have seen some absurd concerns raised over black metal and its relationship to various forms of racism, in particular, in the last few years (see, for example: here and here). These accusations have resulted, most notably, in the cancelling of shows. What do you make of the current climate in which black metal is being produced? Does your focus on liberation entail a political dimension, or do you personally have a political stance towards these accusations against the genre?

Ignis Gehenna: Ignis Gehenna’s music doesn’t carry political motivations. If it did, it wouldn’t be hidden. All I can say is I see much more value in extreme politics in black metal than I once did. I do feel that strong and extreme political forms can be used to manipulate change in the dynamic of society. Where the topics of nationalism, racial identity, and traditionalism carry a baggage and sour taste in the mouth to the mainstream, still – it is in these areas and more that a heretical movement can still be cultivated. The amoral shouldn’t be confused with the degenerate. The degenerate succumbs to weakness. The amoralist tests their strength.

 

<$6.66: You’ve mentioned at various times the importance of ritual to your music. As in, the relationship between ritual acts you undertake and your creative drive. If this is something you’re open to speaking about, what sort of ritual practices do you engage in, and how have they provided you with, I suppose, forms of enlightenment and inspiration?

Ignis Gehenna: My magic and ritual work are personal to me. However, they are ecstatic extensions of myself just as creating art and music is. There are many things I consider to be magical rituals that others may not. All best illustrated as the butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world… I find the most powerful results of magic are intensive insights revealed through influxes of synchronicities.

 

<$6.66: Finally, what are the plans for Ignis Gehenna going forwards? Will we see the band live, and if so, what might we expect from that? Erebus Enthroned wore corpse paint, and the photo I’ve seen of Numenos Fyrphos live included a large pile of animal bones; can we expect a similarly devoted performance from Ignis Gehenna?

Ignis Gehenna: If Ignis Gehenna ever played live I’d probably adorn myself in my own blood as this is the most powerful sacrament. I would like to at least do a first performance in the wilderness (generator powered, of course) in a stone circle with all musicians facing toward a central fire pit – directing all energy into the pyre as the threshold gate and altar.

 

<$6.66: Final words?

Ignis Gehenna: All that needs saying is thank you very much for the most interesting and engaging interview I may have done. I hope my words have answered you sufficiently. Reading your review of Night’s Black Angel is what caused me to agree to this in the first place. In a sea of people that mindlessly spew out “I reckon it sounds like Watain” (even if you did compare Revelations to them hah), it is really refreshing to chat to someone like you.

Fuath Vough – Monolith to the Brollachan Priest

Fuath Vough – Monolith to the Brollachan Priest (self-released)

Format: cassette

Purchase: Prime Ruin

Price: $6US

There are no streaming links available online, but one track can be heard here. Other Fuath Vough released can be streamed here and here.

 

The term ‘uncompromising’ is perhaps the most overused in writing on black metal. A cursory scan of Google will uncover how widely and poorly the term has been deployed. Dimmu Borgir’s obviously terrible Adahabra reveals ‘uncompromising black metal’. Marduk’s unquestionably shit Rom 5:12 is apparently ‘uncompromising’ and ‘exhilarating’, a verdict surely possible only because it was written by someone who hasn’t actually listened to Marduk or any other black metal, or was bribed. The confusingly named Norse, from regional Australia, who play what I can only describe as djent with a juvenile black metal aesthetic that amounts to looking like a cheap Slipknot, supposedly reflect the ‘uncompromising’ future of black metal. If that’s true, then we’re all fucked.

 

Of course, words don’t exist in stasis, for they are not excluded from the meanderings of time. Their meaning fluctuates, the range of objects they can be applied to changes, their normative valence shifts. New words will crop up, while older words disappear, sometimes to be resurrected, but sometimes to vanish from our vocabularies altogether. So I’m not appealing to the idea that it is a violation of the ‘true’ meaning of ‘uncompromising’ to deploy the term in relation to Dimmu Borgir, Marduk, and the fucking gimps in Norse. My problem is that to use ‘uncompromising’ so haphazardly, to spread it so thinly, is to rob it of any utility as part of language. If it is ‘uncompromising’ to sign to a literal major label, in Marduk’s case, or to what is essentially a major label, in Dimmu Borgir’s case, or to have turned one’s career – as both these bands have done – into a business that spurts out generic, soulless commercial black metal every couple of years, then ‘uncompromising’ is a word that carries little force. Perhaps it is uncompromising to decide that the future of black metal is basically nu-metal, as Norse do, but if you think that, then you deserve a public execution.

 

A stricter use of ‘uncompromising’ would allow us to restore some analytical weight to the term, to use it to specify an actual trait in certain bands, rather than to attenuate it to little more than a marketing ploy. Of bands that I can be described as ‘uncompromising’ in such a way that the term carries significant meaning, Ildjarn is perhaps the first to spring to mind. The solo project of Vidar Våer, with occasional contributions from Nidhogg, Ildjarn’s brief career from 1991 to 1996 stands as evidence of an unbending will. Fuck, the band ended because his four-track broke, and he decided that working with any other four-track would deny him the necessary sound. He left Emperor because being in a band required compromising. Calling those cash worshipping fucking dress-ups playing fucks above ‘uncompromising’ robs us of the ability to appreciate how fucking singular Ildjarn was.

 

For how short Ildjarn’s career was, we have fortunately been the recipients of a rich discography. Even if this discography wasn’t so rich, it’d be fine, as long as we still had fucking Forest Poetry. Since the demise of Vidar’s four-track, and Ildjarn with it, we have seen the rise of string of bands inspired by Ildjarn’s primitive and vicious sounds. Vidar notably avoided discussing his influences, but the bands following in his footsteps have tended to be more explicit about how they understand his sound, and how it fits within black metal history more generally. To this end, Bone Awl have been prominent in advancing the idea that Ildjarn must be recognised as a pioneer within black metal for his fusing of black metal and punk, his expansion of influences that lay relatively untapped within the sounds of Hellhammer and Venom.

 

The bands following this path – Bone Awl are likely the largest, but collectives have formed around the Knife Vision and Youth Attack imprints – have tended to have backgrounds equally steeped in hardcore and black metal. It’s important to recognise that these bands all have their roots in Ildjarn – in the formative years of black metal – especially when trawling forums like those run by Nuclear War Now!, where you will encounter some complete knuckle dragging fucking mouth breathers complaining that this ‘isn’t real black metal’, a statement that probably took them 4 hours to type out correctly, and even then still required parental support to proof-read.

 

Of the various deranged sounds inspired by Ildjarn, Canada has been a breeding ground for particularly perverted offerings. The mighty Akitsa have gone a long way to entrenching this fusion of black metal and punk within the northern-most regions of the American continent, and have inspired something of a scene there, often supported by O. T. of Akitsa’s own elite label, Tour de Garde.  Notable among recent bands affiliated with Tour de Garde is Malphas, who have thus far released a pre-demo and two demos of totally fucking weird black metal/hardcore with an unhealthy infusion of electronics and Canadian folk.

 

Malphas consists of two members, one of whom does time in NYHC worshippers Straight Truth, while the other, BYRZYRKSZAQ, is the lone member of Fuath Vough, which I can describe with confidence as the most fucking demented band to spawn from Ildjarn’s remains. Fuath Vough began in 2014, preceding Malphas, and have so far put out two demos, a split with the almost as weird Ancient Stone, and three full lengths, with Monolith to the Brollachan Priest the first of these albums. Of this discography, Monolith to the Brollachan Priest stands out as the most challenging release. Indeed, it remains the only Fuath Vough release not available to stream online, perhaps evidence that, unlike Fuath Vough’s other output, this defies listening to in non-analogue formats. Both ‘fuath’ and ‘vough’ mean hate in Gaelic, and a ‘Brollachan’ is a shapeless monster of Scottish folklore, a fitting band name and album title for this hateful and disorienting offering.

 

The most common comparison I’ve seen for Fuath Vough’s sound, made by both Sam Vince in the most recent Down and Out and Fucked by Noise, is to Paysage d’Hiver, the obscure Swiss band that has made a brilliant career of unique and unrelentingly cold black metal. The comparison makes sense chiefly in one respect: like Paysage d’Hiver, Fuath Vough’s sound is split between black metal and ambience. Like other Fuath Vough releases, half of Monolith consists of exclusively electronic music, and half of black metal. For me, the comparison to Paysage d’Hiver doesn’t go beyond the structural, though. Paysage d’Hiver exists in a clear genealogical relationship to Burzum. Paysage d’Hiver’s sound is cold yet inspiring, a dedication to an untouched winter landscape, now corrupted by modern society, that Wintherr continues to yearn for. Like Burzum, the sound is a tribute to a utopian past now lost.

 

There is no utopia in Fuath Vough’s sound. Though sonically miles away, this is closest in feel to the fucking mental cases of Les Légions Noires; the aural equivalent of an insanity plea. Indeed, not simply an insanity plea. This isn’t the sound of some dull court order that represents an insanity to be discovered behind closed doors, but an insanity plea substantiated by stripping down in the courtroom while screaming and self-harming one’s naked body in front of court staff and other onlookers. This will make you feel bad, and not just in a Paysage d’Hiver pollution-is-causing-the-ice-caps-to-melt-which-is-sad-because-they’re-beautiful kind of way. This will make you feel bad in an even-if-we-had-the-ice-we’d-still-be-fucked-because-existence-itself-is-the-problem kind of way.

 

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m in London at the moment for PhD research, and I’ve been listening to this on my portable tape-deck as I walk around town, where it serves as a decent accompaniment to a town this stocked full of cunts. One result of this is that I tend to pick up the album at random points, starting back wherever I left off when I was last listening to it. I was initially worried this would give me the wrong impression of the record, but having listened to it start to finish as well, the effect is basically the same. This doesn’t get any less unnerving and disorienting whether you begin listening from the start or any other point.

 

There are songs on this apparently, or there is a track listing with the tape, but listening to this doesn’t clearly suggest that. Sparse – really fucking uncomfortably sparse at times – passages of often dissonant electronics, or pounding almost ritualistic drum hits, which give the feel of a twisted take on Burzum’s medieval-inspired synth records, separate incredibly raw passages of black metal, which often descend into feedback, to be followed by further electronics. Most of the black metal passages (songs?) consist of only one or two primitive riffs, which are played over drum beats that offer little variation between blast beats of stomping mid-tempo punk beats. These tracks don’t have clearly definable beginnings or ends; the record simply fluctuates between its two halves, fading in and out, all the while dragging you into the fucking twisted mind behind this. The mix is variable: the vocals are always incredibly high, the guitars quite low, and the drums at times overwhelm the mix, while at other points are barely audible. The production thus matches the fucking unnerving experience of listening to these songs.

The presentation of the album evokes the sounds within. Monolith came in a small photo-copied cardboard case. The notes within the booklet attached to this case are barely legible; the most obvious clue to the ideological position underlying the record is a picture of fucking humanist life-worshipping atheistic Satanist scum Anton Lavey struck through. Fuck Lavey and his munted fucking cult of delusional cunts, obsessed with celebrating their own pointless fucking lives and so-called liberation. The largely indecipherable artwork, which features columns and some kind of sigil, among other things I can’t make out, and twine wrapping of the package, further confirm the weirdness of the record. Fuath Vough has offered something completely other, singular in approach and aesthetic, a record that is both a part of a long history within black metal and a complete perversion of its norms.

 

No harm is done to the term by describing Fuath Vough’s Monolith to the Brollachan Priest as uncompromising. As Ildjarn before, this record reflects a mind fully committed to its derangement. Vince described Monolith as ‘demented and devoted’, and I can think of no better way to describe it. This record is challenging, even distressing for BYRZYRKSZAQ’s utter refusal to offer any of the reference points that anchor most albums; hooks, discernible song structures. Monolith is a fucking twisted symbol of how perverted the future of black metal can be.