Arv ‘I.D’ Metal Age Records 2006
This band are another one of those ‘Who?’ acts. They are so under the radar it beggars belief how the label is promoting them, if at all. Metal Age have always seemed illusive, but I suppose the music is more important than the trappings of a label.
The album starts with some banshee wailing and soft keyboards that inevitably crumble under the imminent heavy guitar assault. A slight Cradle of Filth, resemblance thankfully disintegrates as the vocals growl their animated mutterings into the air. The sound is clean and polished, allowing the fast sections to remain as affluent as the chugging slower moments. Arv, do not sound like the icy austerity of Darkthrone, nor do they bow towards
the symphonic elaborations of Dimmu Borgir. In fact, Arv do not have a brazenly Black Metal sound that one can easily acclimatize to. Here is a band with an agenda of their own, and the music rushes through so many levels of intensity. With more traditional metal moments interspersed with the savagery of a European Death metal band. The heavy as fuck production will fracture your skull if played at full volume. For the most part the tracks are hard as nails, in your face Black imbued extreme metal with a cold, darkly spine. There are also glimpse of Emperor at their technical best, tighter than a homophobes arse in a queer convention, and issuing catchy riffs like parking fines on a busy London street. This is an album that will grow on you every time it is played. Such is the strength and quality of the songs here. I dare you to play the track, Removing the Mask, and not be awe struck by its mesmerizing riffs and complete ashen atmosphere. The nearest comparisons I could cite would be Gehenna in their deathly era colliding with Hypocrisy. A splendid hybrid of dense flesh cutting Blackened music. I quite dismayed why this band are not that more established. The label must take blame for this. Its no use being slightly known in Eastern Europe if your not known at all in the West. For fans of Nidingr, Slavia, and Pantheon I.
 
Beastcraft ‘Baptized In Blood And Goatsemen’ Black Seed Prod
The third full length from what is to me, the greatest Norwegian Black Metal band of the current era. A bold statement you may remark and one that the music can substantiate.
Everything about this band bleed the purest form of the Black Metal spirit, from the cover art, the band image, the lyrical content, and most important of all the alarmingly foredoomed, hair raising Black Metal tumult. Of course it is harkening back to the timeworn creative impetus of Darkthrone, a plundering of all that was unsanctified from the base musical constraints of the Transylvanian Hunger album. This repertoire alone would sustain a band in the current over populated genre, but Beastcraft have a certain character of their
own, a breathing emotive essence that lives within the music’s core. To listen to this album is like being dragged though the flames of Mammon’s funeral pits, and into the ice caverns of Dantes inferno. For all the fast, barking vocal utterances, simplistic guitar arrangements and paint by numbers arrangements, it is the slower tracks that really empower Beastcraft with a surreal climate of otherworldly moods and solid musical delivery. The quite spellbinding Blackwinged Messiah [also to be found on the split 7” with fellow Norsemen Urgehal] or the equally seductive, The Beast Awakens, a plodding drowsy track lumbering in a wonderful pallid melody. There is no grand design to the music, no complexity to flounder upon the receptive ears of the faithful. The beautiful brimstone smitten music is in its honesty, in the music’s flawless orthodox take on a form of music that has enthralled in its many guises since the late sixties incantations of English act Black Widow. Just close your eyes and let the music take you to the very bowels of Hades where you will behold the rivers of boiling pus and squirming maggots. Here the great worm writhes and feasts on the open wounds of the condemned. Hark the liquid fire, the stench of rot, and the very face of death perched on the edge of sorrow. This album is for all who still cherish the olden times when Black Metal awakened the senses with invigorating extreme music.
 
Blood Tsunami ‘Thrash Metal’ Candlelight Records
There are few Black Metal luminaries that compare with the likes of Bard Faust, [ex-Emperor, Stigma Diabolicum, Thorns] the stickman here. His legacy is equal to fellow Norwegian luminaries, Hellhammer, Dead, Samoth, Snorre Ruch, Euronymous, Vikernes), all who as a collective made the Norwegian Black metal phenomenon what it was and is today. Bard served a 10 year sentence for the murder of a homosexual man. He lured the victim deep into the forest before stabbing him 14 times and leaving him dead. Now that’s all in the past, and so quite frankly is the music here. Like a Bay Area/Teutonic collision of pounding razor sharp Kreator riffamania and technical precision Testament, the album
blasts off and continues to roll over numerous sound bites from the past. There are glimpses of Slayer, Exodus, and Destruction, yet this album has none of the virulent smoking atmospheres of the former thrash Gods. Being a modern twist on a past theme brings the inevitable modern sound bites, Arch Enemy, The Crown, and a very Göthenburg death metal edge. The 10 minute Godbeater, is the closest real Thrashing authenticity on this release, and the track is an instrumental. Overall, Blood Tsunami kick ass, chew you up and spit you out. If treated like a retro regurgitation of all things done, then it is a very enjoyable album. Unlike the re-birth of Black Metal, Thrash will never sustain its momentum. It has come and gone, and its limitations cannot be amplified as this would lose its timeless form. Many point towards a Thrash revival but it will never last that long. So inevitably bands such as this have a short shelf life in my opinion. Always relevant, but never essential.
 
Kaosritual ‘Svapt Morgenrod’ Vinyl LP Blood Chalice
What a finely presented release. A splendid lour cover, a poster, a lyric sheet, and the most important Vinyl. You just cannot beat vinyl, its grooves crackling with an unnatural ghostly emission.
Kaosritual are another band that have appeared out of the Black Metal fog, and features members from Norwegian acts, Celestial Bloodshed, Grenjar, and Mare. The 4 tracks here are glacial primitivism set to unnerving demonic soundscapes. The initial pounding skins and ominous guitar strums splintering into a ritualistic musical experience. Here the archaic sound bites evoke a mesmerism of fog wrapped in ash and deserts of flies rotating upon
chalk scrawled incantations. The pure Black Metal thread that holds this quite stunning slab of vinyl is pure to the ears and has a hypnotic hatred issuing from the disturbing, yet soothing narcotic atmospheres. It always amazes me to hear a band playing a seemingly worn out style of music and yet sounding so invigorating. There is a great damp, squalid atmosphere emanating from the hollow guitar strains. The vocals are scalding rasps of menace, spitting their chanting bane into the stifled air. Kaosritual have a unique style and the music’s creative muse is one of mesmerizing intensity. Like fellow countrymen Daudr, Mare, or the truly awe-inspiring Beastcraft, this band have a very flamboyant recklessness that makes them quite unique.
 
Min Kniv ‘Av Ask’ demo tape 2007 Fossbrenna Creations
A marvellously grisly demo that is wrapped in a time capsule dated 1993. Here is a band who have embraced the fine art of menacing, deeply atmospheric and bewitchingly anaemic Norwegian Black Metal. The cheap and nasty cassette, tacky black and white Xeroxed cover, the dire sound, all collides to enrich the whole crude, yet phlegmatic experience. Musically, Min Kiv are a bastard offspring of classic era Forgotten woods and Burzum. A marriage made in the very vivid shimmering flames of Hell. The perverse vocal shrieks hint at those ice dripping bands [Burzum, Dead era Mayhem], the music a reflection of the melodic yet rampaging bands of the classic early nineties era. From the first track the scene is set with a rough and ready Black Metal demeanour, but it is the following, untitled track, that raises this demo into another level of complete underdeveloped Black Metal perfection. The muffled drum thud is demolished with a guitar fuzz reeking of phosphorous and lime. Midway, the dreary mood befalls a slow guitar section that drags you through a winter forest, stripped of its colour and an eerie solitude permeates the air. This demo epitomises
the classic Norwegian Black Metal style.
 
Nattefrost ‘Drunk and Pisseskev at Ringnes 2004’ Fiskegrateng Rekordz 2006
Here’s a rather hard to find demo live outing from Carpathian Forest member, Nattefrost (Roger Rasmussen). With two studio albums already released, namely 2004's, Blood and Vomit, and more recently, 2005's, Terrorist (Nekronaut PT. I). This 6 tracker features no material from Blood and Vomit and four from Terrorist. The sound is good, like a pub gig taped from the mixing desk. You can hear the odd punter yell, the odd mistake in the guitars, all the flavour of that live audio experience is here. Nattefrost follows a similar
method of simple, melodic and catchy Punk fused Black Metal as fellow countrymen, Taake. There is no keyboard theatrics, no lengthy winding arrangements. With generic sing titles as, Cunt bloody Cunt, and Nekronaut, its hard to accept the band as pure Black Metal although the overall feeling here is equal to hearing raw live outings from, Urgehal or ‘Dead’ era Mayhem. This is a release that is so underground it will probably never see the light of day. For a copy try contacting HelveteskommandantNattefrost@msn.com 
 
Skuggehiem "Vinterrikets Konge" Frossbrenna Creations
Hammering Norwegian Black Metal with the guitar work hauling the sound from complete chaotic mess to sustained gut clawing malevolence. The barrage of tumultuous percussion seems to be going one direction, and the guitar arrangements another. It’s a strange collision of icy Black Metal that swirls about the middle of the ears, setting your perception of what is to follow off balance. Once the driving insanity of the drum-work settles into its uncompromising aural blitzkrieg, the guitar work becomes quite mesmerizing. With the standard Black Metal bark vocals searing the atmosphere with their malicious mumblings, this demo deploys a riveting competence for creative aural flagellation. The calamitous first track hits the mild intro of the second and from the momentary calmness bursts forth more of the same maddening Blackened dementia. Clean vocal chants make an appearance here, adding a pagan atmosphere to the raw primitivism. Suddenly the brazenly aggressive music here becomes more dynamic, more substantial. From the billowing distortion appears some cohesion to the initially splaying musical melee of rugged vehemence. A Viking style
instrumental takes its entrance here, a guitar section that serenades the ears with foreboding intent, a doom clad Nordic hymn to the frost veiled forests. This serenity spills into a keyboard calmness, the demo’s ambient middle part where the senses are given time to recover from the previous aural carnage. With the tolling of bells, the fury returns in the form of the blustering fourth track. By this stage of the demo, the creative quality of the music becomes ever more noticeable. Here is a band armed to the teeth with great songs, fine purposeful guitar arrangements, and a main sound that drags the raw essence of Burzum into the present era. The demo meets its end with an acoustic guitar piece. A seductive, enshrouded moment that beckons the keyboards to once more evoke their eerie presence. The soft crashing waves of the shores of the underworld transformed into hymns of the abyss. The sound quality is good, not too muggy, quite clear and audible.
 
Slagmaur "Svin" CD Black Hate
From a well presented digi pack, I placed the cd into my timeworn player. A lazy guitar arrangement and plodding drumbeat awakens the first track, Nekk Brekk Support, a keyboard backdrop sliding though the mesmerizing guitar patterns and from this point onwards it’s a strange old journey we are taken on. It’s a twisted, sour experience that manoeuvres the mind into a trance like state whilst alleviating the senses from its sludge like mood. The hypnotic arrangement to this first track is bizarre to say the least, an industrial like march into oblivions gawping jaws. Track 2, sustains the mid-tempo grind, the distorted vocal moans enhancing the mind bending guitar chords. Like Voivod imploding in a musical
myriad of Khold. Slagmaur are certainly different. The music being both very enjoyable and unnerving. There is none of the ball cracking disdain of Gorgoroth, nor has this any of the majestic dynamics of Dimmu Borgir. This is Black Metal born from a Clockwork Orange movie, perverse in its singular vision of bass heavy plodding metal. The whole album is a collage of undulating, slow, chugging, thick guitar chords and post Black Metal progressive undertones. If you can imagine the Kovenant swallowed by a Doom cloud and spat out through a black and white collage of faceless humans and iron clad edifices. This is a very hollow, chilling musical experience that during its final moments drains the mind of all its resolve. Quite unique, and quite rewarding. The band have another album out, titled Skrekk Lich Kunstler, a release I will endeavour to hunt down in the near future, no doubt.
 
Tragediens Throne "Cold Depths" CDR
Featuring members of Slagmaur, this six tracker maintains an up-beat mid era Satyricon style of Black Metal dynamics. Melodic, mid tempo guitar strums, a tight crisp production and an up-beat atmosphere bolsters the songs here. The first two tracks follow a rugged death like style not to far away from the solid guitar delivery of Hypocrisy.
The track, Through the Fields of the End, is like a reanimated slow burning Bathory track, soft guitar strums and a gentle keyboards haunted by a narrative vocal. It captures the serenity of the forests, the vast Nordic landscapes. This is by far the most impressive track here. The Shores of a Withering Dream, reminded me of the deathly pallor of doom act,
Sadness. The whispering vocal, the sorrowful synths, the slow almost faltering drum plod. The songs have been degenerating into this base level from the start. A no doubt deliberate slide into utter despair. The final two tracks fire some warmth back into this release. The up-beat atmospheres of the initial tracks resurfacing here. This is a modern, lively Blackish demo, with a very proficient set of songs.
 
Ulver ‘Shadows of the Sun’ Jester Records
Formed in 1993, Ulver have travelled a most winding path. From Nordic Viking inspired beginnings to flamboyant electronica. And in between the two, dwells some pure arse thrashing Black Metal and abstract musical soundscapes. For those of you who are aware of Ulvers quite impressive back catalogue then you will already know this new offering is not going to offer any of the magnificent raw Black Metal of the past. The modern edge to Ulvers sound reflects the ongoing progressive personal journey reflective of bands like Kovenant, Arcturus [who may not record again], and undoubtedly Manes.
This is the bands ninth album, an incredible feat considering they evolved from the early
Norwegian Black Metal alongside more acts of note who have recorded half as much.
Featuring the Oslo session quintet, and such instruments as Viola, Violin and Cello, the very serene nature to this album will ease the most troubled of minds. Vocalist, Trickster G. (Kristoffer Rygg/Garm) can lay claim to being one of the most enigmatic and multi vociferous front men in the Black Metal world scene. He featured on Borknagars viciously raw debut album, and on the majestically pompous Arcturus debut. Ulver have evolved into an exclusive arty kind of band where the flamboyance and pure choral sharpness is levelled at you like some ghostly eulogy. Life, the eccentricities of In the Woods, the mood generated here is one of listless tranquillity. The very inclusion of Black Sabbaths, Solitude sets the scene for this whole album. Like drifting on calm seas with not a breeze nor cloud in the sky. The moon is full and the vastness of time is etched on the starless firmament. Garms vocals are spellbinding, the lulling vocal arrangements seem to float on an air of soothing lethargy, evoking a soporific atmosphere draped upon a mantle of archaic repose. There is no hint of anxiety, No rough edge to a perfectly gleaming blade, no sour bite to this sweet brew. Black Metal this is not, and yet without it this could not possibly exist.