Colorful in its use of chromatics and melody, this trippy demo travels the listener to places behind the wall of sleep by mixing black, death and speed metal in a morbid atmosphere.
Structures are in the speed metal tradition of introduction-lurk-accelerate-mosh! Yet this demo instead of relying on tradition, LIVES and BREATHES tradition, here everything becomes faster and more extreme while at the same time every song is unique through the smart use of the different techniques and the manifold influences that comprise this album.
In fact, what draws attention here is the broad spectrum of influences. For example, on the first track, they pay tribute to Powerslave by Iron Maiden and even the cymbal/high hats spread pharaonic dust over the tomb tritone intervals and the oriental melodies, the fourth chords which sound super heavy and the sustaining sound of solos from beyond the mix over the chaos create a dreamy terror of Lovecraftian mysticism. Leitmotifs return and leads echo of eternity in the Egyptian underworld – the song even ends like Powerslave, offering a glimpse of the delusions of power of the man-god ruler of Khem.
Yog-sothoth vocals rip as the German speed metal assault is pushed to the limit, obliterating itself and transcending genre to become blackened death metal while the occasional arpeggios build up a dreamy climate with the spectacular vocal performance which makes it quite clear:
Those guys feel it to the core of their being.
So many vocal screams overdubbed with the heavy analog distortion make everything more atmospheric, and subsequently stratospheric when the few melodic notes come out of the gnashing solos, breaking the murky aura of graveyard necrolust.
Sonic terror arises from the abyss with every drum beat, even the snare is strategically placed. The old school, untriggered sound proves to be fitting of this morbid music. Maybe, on a surface level, the listener might realize something that is misaligned in metal that has ‘good’ production.
Afterwards, one might also notice what is sick with the ‘underground’ poseurs, since instead of merely copying superficial aesthetics, Poison make their own and once you think that equilibrium is reached, an imaginative bass intro makes things interesting again. Each song has a distinct sonic character by now. How often do we encounter that? You can imagine that Poison were buried under an ocean of NWOBHM, speed, thrash and death metal tapes that made them develop their sense of aesthetics and mature naturally.
Apart from honoring its influences, this band is great for not being afraid to go fully weird and unorthodox by pulling off a strange and oddly timed Samael – Mordor riff and then unleashing a blizzard of tapping soloing on Slaves of the Crucifix – the holy grail of extreme metal madness. It reminds me of Slayer doing things more experimentally on some middle-to-end of the record songs such as To Cleanse the Soul and Temptation, releasing those sparks of genius that instill enthusiasm in the listener. This observation is not from a technical viewpoint, but rather from an album architecture one. Quite often, putting the solo in the front of the mix can draw the spotlight and affect the imagination of the audience, by making it sound alien to the rest of the song.
A funeral doom acoustic gives way to muddy distortion for the final track and throughout the record the influences appear so many and crumbled together that they mix well. Maybe this is their trick, and it works; after all, the devil is in the details.
In the end, some metal hybrids can be successful, insofar as they communicate the metal spirit.
And this demo is metal as fuck.
Tags: death, Into the Abyss, iron maiden, Poison, Powerslave, samael, slayer, speed
Been listening to this for decades, you guys just find out about it?
No we just didn’t have the time to review it.
One of the few artifacts from the “first wave of black metal” that is actually worthwhile.
Most of those “cult” 80s albums and demos are pretty bad after a few listens and the novelty factor of “wow this is really extreme for 198x” has worn off. Mayhem and Dark Throne made a lot of these bands more famous than they had any right to be by exaggerating their influence and making a virtue out of obscurity.
You missed the most obvious point – 4 songs in 33 minutes. When that’s your scope you have to think outside the box a bit to make it interesting.
What a ridiculous comment.
First of all, there is no such thing as “First Wave Black Metal” [a term probably invented within the past 15 years by internet posters who listen to Wolves in the Throne Room], there is only Black Metal and different sonic styles/variations of it emerging from different regions and eras.
Second of all, Mayhem and Darkthrone did not make these bands “any more famous than they had the right to be”, such acts labeled by revisionist millenial forum posters as “First Wave BM” were for all intents and purposes the most prominent acts embodying what “Black Metal” was at the time before the Norwegians released their first albums circa 92, regardless of what one personally makes of their quality in hindsight.
To be fair and avoid straw-manning, I will clarify that is not quite clear to me which sort of “First Wave” bands you are attacking with this post.
If the point you are trying to make is something along the lines of protesting NWN!-type people who fetishize random generic Indonesian demos from 86 as being forgotten “classics” or accordingly the hordes of 10th rate Nowadays Blasphemy clones we all know too well, then of course I do not disagree. (Although I will point out the weaker nature of some of the post-94 releases and acts of the Norwegian scene, in addition to equally if not significantly greater voluminous quantity of bland/weak “2nd Wave”-influenced stylings from DSBM/Blackgaze to Sargeist/Satanic Warmaster/Judas Iscariot boredom, and accordingly wonder aloud why some people put all the blame on 80’s Metal?)
However if the point you are trying to make is something along the lines of “Bathory, Sodom, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Sarcofago, Beherit, Blasphemy, Profanatica, etc. are all overrated and boring because they don’t have the same flowing pretty sound of Blackgaze or Nowegian BM” then my only response would be to LEAVE THE HALL.
https://i.imgur.com/JkNL3Mb.png
Black metal did not really exist as a genre until the Nords. We used it to refer to Satanic music that was more melodic than the norm (Mercyful Fate influence perhaps). The Blasphemy revival began later, really, when people started to look toward roots, often forgetting about Bathory, Hellhammer, Sodom, Sarcofago, and Merciless.
At the end of the day, the main point to take home is that Bathory, Hellhammer, Sodom, Sarcofago, and yes even Blasphemy (in spite of the NWN! over-hype, legions of imitators and tranny memes) all rule, regardless of what genre label you want to stick on them, and those who downplay their influence or excellence simply because they don’t sound exactly like Darkthrone or Burzum are being silly.
Are INRI or In the Sign of Evil really that good? Might be good as background music if you’re washing the dishes but how often does anyone actively listen to these records? They pioneered some techniques that others did much better after them, making them kind of redundant. Blasphemy’s dull grindcore. Hellhammer are okay but Celtic Frost raised the bar. Are Celtic Frost even black metal though? Dark Throne and Burzum borrowed a lot of riffs from them but they’re not satanic. They’re more a mix of doom metal and thrash which created a protean form of death metal.
Which brings me to the point – the original vision for the Norwegian scene, as articulated by Mayhem, Dark Throne and Burzum, was to return death metal to its original form. Simpler, more primitive, rawer.
Which is why black metal petered out pretty quickly after the Burzum/Dark Throne heyday because these bands were already copycats to a large extent – they innovated just enough to appear fresh-sounding but so much of the substance of it was retro and nostalgia based so it could never be the starting point of a new style of metal. Which is why evolution of extreme metal stopped there. Bands that jumped on the bandwagon when A Blaze in the Northern Sky landed never got that – i.e. Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon, Dissection – which is why they are really a different genre to Dark Throne and Burzum. Death metal level technicality and symphonic power metal elements don’t belong. They betray the original vision.
Dark Throne lost it too when Transilvanian Hunger came out and they forgot about their original vision. TH is a terrible album. The fact it’s rated so highly confirms my suspicion black metal diehards are fakes. Nobody actually enjoys listening to that album but because it focuses exclusively on elements that were unique to the Norwegian scene it is elevated to a holy status and everyone has to pretend it’s, like, really deep man or something. It’s an album for insecure metalheads who wanted to pretend they were as cool and edgy and druggy as the ravers in the techno scene at the time. At least Dark Throne got their act together on subsequent records.
Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is pretty boring too after the first 2 songs. They never lived up to their own hype. Their understudies outperformed them. At least when they do blast beats they do them in the proper black metal style – not overly fast and with a bassy snare sound. That ultrafast snappy snare sound is grating, which is the opposite of what black metal should be. Blast beats are only atmospheric at the correct speed, which is what Mayhem, Dark Throne and Burzum understood implicitly; the pretenders just treated it as a metric for “brootality” the same way death and grindcore bands did. Which is why they are mostly shit.
For such a lauded genre, the black metal canon is incredibly small. Which is probably why so much bullshit is spoken about it’s supposedly mystical dimension.
“Are INRI or In the Sign of Evil really that good?”
Yes.
“Might be good as background music if you’re washing the dishes but how often does anyone actively listen to these records?”
I mean I don’t keep a log checking how frequently I listen to an album, but those records are certainly not “background music”, at least no more or less than Extreme Metal in general. INRI is chock full of great riffs, is there even any way to listen to something like ITSOE without “activity”?.
“Blasphemy’s [sic] dull grindcore.”
Blasphemy =/= 21st century “War Metal” that apes Blasphemy’s exterior aesthetic
When I listen to Blasphemy I hear much more Bathory than I do Grind/Core elements (which are certainly present to be sure).
I believe I once saw someone around here a few years back (maybe on the forum) make the assertion that Blasphemy’s music is more oriented around Rhythm than Melody, or aimless blasting sensation over memorable riffcraft. While that could perhaps be a legitimate characterization of Conqueror/Revenge and certainly most nowadays “successors”, that could not be further from reality with regards to Blasphemy themselves.
Blasphemy are just as much a “riff”-based band as Slayer or Morbid Angel. The problem seems to be that their most famous release – FAOD – has probably the murkiest production sound of any of their official recordings. On the Blood Upon the Altar demo, the live albums and even the 2001 Reh it’s a lot more clear what the guitars are playing when they aren’t near-completely buried under the drums like in FAOD.
That said I do overall think FAOD is Blasphemy’s best release, due to it containing all their best tracks and the most forceful display of energy and inimitable classic atmosphere. It’s just worth keeping in mind that people casually semi-listening to FAOD on YouTube may be part of the reason for such lazy critiques, due to the turbid production job which the band themselves were actually somewhat displeased with.
“Are Celtic Frost even black metal though? […] They’re more a mix of doom metal and thrash which created a protean form of death metal.”
I would be fine with classifying them as BM, although I ultimately don’t care that much and see sub-genre boundaries as being more fluid than people generally seem to think. Doom/Thrash isn’t a bad alternative of describing their sound, I think I may even have called them something to that effect at some point in the past.
“Which is why black metal petered out pretty quickly after the Burzum/Dark Throne heyday because these bands were already copycats to a large extent – they innovated just enough to appear fresh-sounding but so much of the substance of it was retro and nostalgia based so it could never be the starting point of a new style of metal.”
What “retro/nostalgia” Metal bands was Burzum “copycatting”? Besides the obvious Bathory “War” plagiarism, the rest of the first 4 Burzum albums don’t really sound like any Metal before them, and I can even understand where some people are coming from when they claim Burzum overall wasn’t really “Metal”.
“Which is why evolution of extreme metal stopped there. Bands that jumped on the bandwagon when A Blaze in the Northern Sky landed never got that – i.e. Immortal, Emperor, Satyricon, Dissection – which is why they are really a different genre to Dark Throne and Burzum.”
I actually agree with this assessment to a certain extent.
For a while I’ve personally flirted back and forth with the notion that “Epic”/Keyboard/”Flowing”/Pagan/etc bands are in some sense a distinct “genre” [or at least phenomenon/musical phenomenon] than raw/dark/black/hateful/satan BM; although in my view that is not necessarily always a bad thing just different [which shouldn’t be too surprising to people familiar with my taste].
I actually already have a rough idea for a potential article sometime in the future addressing my personal thoughts relating to how extreme metal “stopped evolving” around this time…
“TH is a terrible album. The fact it’s rated so highly confirms my suspicion black metal diehards are fakes. Nobody actually enjoys listening to that album […]”
hahaha there’s nothing I find more hilarious in online music/movie discussions than when someone makes the accusation that people with divergent opinions are actually secretly pretending when they say they enjoy something the accuser does not. what an amusingly paranoid way of viewing the world.
“It’s an album for insecure metalheads who wanted to pretend they were as cool and edgy and druggy as the ravers in the techno scene at the time.”
Unrelated but 90’s Techno rules. Completely different “energy” from TH and BM in general though, although there are certainly some interesting similarities that could be noted.
“At least Dark Throne got their act together on subsequent records.”
LOL which post-94 Darkthrone albums do you think are better than Transilvanian Hunger?
“Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is pretty boring too after the first 2 songs.”
Laughable entry-level take, are you the sort of person who claims there’s only 2 real songs on Reign in Blood?
“For such a lauded genre, the black metal canon is incredibly small. Which is probably why so much bullshit is spoken about it’s supposedly mystical dimension.”
Even if the “Black Metal Canon” is as small as you claim it is, what would that have to do with the “mystical dimensions” that may or may not surround the works themselves comprising the canon?
Quality over Quantity, Musical Elitism 101 my homie
“What “retro/nostalgia” Metal bands was Burzum “copycatting”? Besides the obvious Bathory “War” plagiarism, the rest of the first 4 Burzum albums don’t really sound like any Metal before them,”
The Det Som Engang Var album is pure Hammerheart-era Bathory worship, with a few Celtic Frost riffs chucked in. Burzum did add in a lot of non-metal influences on later albums to the point where it is almost noise rock or shoegaze.
Maybe people do like Transylvanian Hunger but I suspect they’ve just listened to it so many times they are indoctrinated by it. Panzerfaust and Total Death are better.
90s techno was great, but it’s music for partying not listening to.
“Even if the “Black Metal Canon” is as small as you claim it is, what would that have to do with the “mystical dimensions” that may or may not surround the works themselves comprising the canon?”
I think people focus on black metal as an ideology or way of life or that it evokes some mystical connection to the land etc to deflect from having to write about the music, which is fairly lame for the most part. Image and lyrics become more important than the actual sounds.
“To be fair and avoid straw-manning, I will clarify that is not quite clear to me which sort of “First Wave” bands you are attacking with this post.”
Vulcano, slaughterlord, tormentor, sarcofago, onslaught, Sodom (early), Kreator (first album) sentenced (first ep), sepultura (first ep/album), morbid, bulldozer, mortuary drape, rotting Christ, blasphemy, exorcist, mystifier.
All on the spectrum from shit to acceptable. None of it interesting really.
Bands like slayer, venom, hellhammer/celtic frost, bathory were thrash/heavy metal bands who happened to be satanic.
Mercyful fate were never black metal. If being satanic was the only criteria deicide should be included.
So you’re right, first wave black metal never really existed, but it has survived as a trope which should be wiped out because it creates a false lineage for second wave black metal which was itself a fabrication outside of dark throne, burzum and mayhem, who stumbled on something original. Everything else in the second wave was just marketing for failed death metal bands.
“(Although I will point out the weaker nature of some of the post-94 releases and acts of the Norwegian scene, in addition to equally if not significantly greater voluminous quantity of bland/weak “2nd Wave”-influenced stylings from DSBM/Blackgaze to Sargeist/Satanic Warmaster/Judas Iscariot boredom, and accordingly wonder aloud why some people put all the blame on 80’s Metal?)”
The problem is most of the Norwegian/Scandinavian/second wave stuff was shit too. This is actually music most appreciated by people who didn’t like extreme metal really in the first place but were a little bit too late for the middle eighties power metal scene and they had to pretend to like death metal. When black metal came along it was basically a satanic version of the Virgin Steele dungeons and dragons shit they wished they’d been around for so they went full retard on it. A band like Immortal is basically a band trying to destroy extreme/death metal by bringing horseshit into it.
I like metal but barely! – this site’s schtick
Into the Abyss is a regular album, not a demo