The finale to my UK Black Metal Week that started HERE. This is it, the end, the concluding chapter to five days of subterranea. This is your cut-out-and-keep souvenir mix of the occassion, one which I hope you'll cherish and keep close to your now pitch-blackened heart forever
As with the week itself, this mix is not intended to be an exhaustive comprehensive overview of everything – a three CD mix wouldn’t cover the demands of that - instead, the tracklisting has been chosen to flow and create a sense of movement as any decent mixtape should. Enough of the presentations and theorising, here’s total music.
Tracklist:
A Forest of Stars - Chapter One Sorrows Impetus (Opportunistic Thieves of Spring, Transcendental Creations)
Wodensthrone - Black Moss (Loss, Bindrune Recordings)
Luggaldimerankia - Inducing the Deepest Core of Morbidity (Within The Very Depths of Depravity, Demo)
Sleeping Peonies - Mist and Sea Spray, Mermaids Singing Far Away (Rose Curl, Sea Swirl, Todestrieb)
Hateful Abandon - Lungs (Famine, Todestrieb)
White Medal - On`t Borough (Agrbrigg Beast, Turgid Animal/Seedstock)
Yes, even this week I have a Fast and Furious Friday Feature to throw down, or should I say especially this week, because over ten years after it was recorded there is still little in the Black Metal pantheon (which is to say in any musical pantheon) that can rival this track for pure unbridled misanthropic hostility.
The Birmingham duo of V.I.T.R.I.O.L. (Dave Hunt) and Irrumator (Mick Kenney) formed Anaal Nathrakh in 2008 and are continuing masters in producing catastrophic industrial strength Black Metal ultraviolence. If Atari Teenage Riot made black metal, this is how they would do it. This album was released as we ticked over into the new millenium and there are still very few pieces of music that can match the ferocity with which this track sucks up energy and multiplies the intensity tenfold with each new wave it smashes down upon the listener.
The Supreme Necrotic Audnance from the album Codex Necro
Ealdulf have produced one of the most spirited and subtly inventive black metal albums of recent years. Featuring three members of the depressive ambient entity Self-Inflicted Violence, yet sounding sufficiently different that you can tell they are separate entities. There's some of that mournful melancholy associated with the depressive genre (if you must, that's never sat right for me - helplessness and Black Metal are not compatible energies, or lack thereof) but those emotional tones are used to colour a music operating on a grander scale, and the combination is incredibly effective. From the very first moments of the self-released Hrimcealde Sæ you can just feel there is more going on with this band than the forested album cover would have conveyed on its own; it opens with angular stabs of bass that sound like Martin Hannett is sat in the producers chair goading some kind of urban dystopian aggression out of them, then the sheets of treble shift into the foreground and all the BM influence comes rushing back over the top, driving drums rush along and pull the heavily tremeloed rhythms guitars up towards a faster more trance inducing state. The vocals have a good range between screeching and guttural bass There are echoes of some of the great viking/pagan bands such as Enslaved or Falkenbach in the heroicness of Mod Geondhweorfeð (The Memory Of Kinsmen), but the constant presence of a thick bass tone keeps their sound with a foot along either side of fantasy and reality, their songs are possessed of a grip a grounded grip round their throat that stops them getting too flighty, even when the lead guitars lean back and soar off into pealing solos, and that constantly lean, taut, pulsing rhythm section still keeps the whole thing locked down. very many standout moments and tracks on this record; a few more to finish before an example: Three minutes into the relatively folky Oft Earmcearig (Bereft Of My Homeland) there's a pause in the music, a weighted silence then a savage sped-up StoogesDarkthrone riff in the distance of Eald Enta Eeweorc (The Ancient Work Of Giants), overlaid with vaporising sheets of misty guitars, and the epic introduction to the climactic Ofer Waþema Gebind (Over The Frozen Waves) like riff comes crashing through the silence barrelling towards a rocking finish than gets time-stretched down to its conclusion; and the encroaching canter of
Like I said at the start, a band with a surprisingly subtle yet devastatingly effective sound and the tightness to execute it with style. Absolutely essential.
Ofer Waþema Gebind (Over The Frozen Waves) from the album Hrimcealde Sæ
Coming from the savage misanthropic old school of the more deathly incarnations of Mayhem, Darkthrone Skaldic Curse take their version of Black Metal right down into the pits of filthy, claustrophobic primal noise, yet on both albums have employed a clean production technique that gives a separation to the instruments and allows far more clarity into this world that Deathcrush ever offered, including a distinct bass sound that throbs and bumps around the lower reaches of their sound and fills a space that never seemed empty so before. They are one of the more challenging bands I've got this week; their most recent album World Suicide Machine refusing to fit into any current tropes and combining lengthy complex structures with that clean sound alientating many fans from either by crashing the two forms together under the murky (simplified) sonic aesthetic of blackened death metal; a hostile mix of misathropic aggression that is wielded with agility.
One of the most creepy, convoluted, Lovecraftian horror emulating bands ever comes from Middlesborough - The Axis of Perdition. More specifically they are influenced by the game Silent Hill and over three albums, and ep and a demo to begin it all, they have contributed a peerless body of work, and the list of bands they have been involved with is immense. More than essential in any Black Metal collection, they totally deserve a place in my Legends list. Pendulum Prey (Second Incarceration) from the album Deleted Scenes from the Transition Hospital
"Black Metal is an ethic"
Nathan Watson, Barad-Dur
Barad-Dur is a solo artist, Neithan from the Northwest, named after Sauron's tower in Lord of the Rings, and the lyrical themes of the band are centred around fantasy, as well as Norse mythology; as well as these inspirations, the influence of the music of Burzum can also be clearly felt, in the brittle wintery fuzz guitars and haunting melancholic ambience of the synths, and during this year's self-released album Regulus features two occasions of delicately epic folk music amongst the buzz. It's a combination of sound and literature he sees transcending the sonic sphere;“To me, Black Metal is an ethic as well as a musical form. Through Black Metal I can convey my innermost thoughts. By this I do not necessarily mean in words, but through the music itself. I believe that the music as a whole should be used to convey feeling, whether this be anger, pain, hatred or loss.”
The idea the Black Metal is more than a musical genre, but a lifestyle or way of thinking has been posited by other bands already this week, so does he see it as a positive move, that so many artists are forgoing any real connections to the original sounds of which his own music is so indebted to? “I prefer to see a wide range of influences rather than everyone settling on one common style. We, in the UK, are in a good position to do this. A strong history of metal - here, I feel it is apt to make a reference to Venom. What would an interview on UKBM be without mentioning one of the most famous first wave bands? - and a wealth of influence from the early Scandinavian scenes are a recipe for some truly original music. Add to this elements of native folk and other non-metal musical styles and you are left with a very diverse set of influences.”
Throughout the interviews conducted for this week I've been turning up polar opposite answers to the notions that there are any kinds of quintessentially British or English Black Metal sounding strains of Black Metal at the moment, but Neithan isn't so convinced that there has been a significant wave of any one kind; “Within the underground bands, I haven’t noticed a shift for one main reason. The UKBM scene seems to be pretty diverse, with a lot of bands crossing over and taking influence from other musical genres from crust through to post rock. This is essential in order to avoid stagnation. In terms of the more well-known bands, I would say that there are a fair amount of UKBM bands playing melodic or symphonic Black Metal. Also, there seems to been a resurgence of bands identifying with their ancestral and cultural heritage. As I have found most of the UK bands I enjoy through trading, I’m afraid I cannot say too much more about other, more famous bands.”
Though there is a strong Norse element to his music, I asked him whether the closer environment of the British countryside is something which informs his music? “More recently, nature and the environment have influenced what I write. Obviously, living in England means that it is mainly the English countryside that I experience, but I would not want people to think that Barad-Dur’s music is limited to appreciation of just this country. My appreciation of nature spreads further afield. Heritage and the associated national pride is an interesting point. I would only write about England’s cultural heritage form a historical point of view, and even so this theme is of no great importance to me. I find more inspiration in other themes.”
In advancing some of the more ambient elements of Barad-Dur, Neithan set up a drone label called Frozen Tendril - as an outlet for work he can't consider in Barad-Dur, and to release the work of other artists he sees potential in;“Although Black Metal is generally seen as a type of music produced by solitary groups or individuals, support from like-minded people is always appreciated. It is good to know that people support what you do and wish that you continue, as this isn’t something you would hear often from people outside of the ‘scene’ I have found people from other underground scenes to be very appreciative too, not only sharing a passion for extreme music but also for the DIY ethic.”
There are no you tube rips to post up to give you examples of his work, but you can jump over to MySpace where he has several tracks up on his player. If I was going to pick one to post here, it would be Summoned, for the reverential piano run that appears halfway through, and ghosts through the centre of the mix, building into a quickening flurry of classical accompaniment to the furrowed guitar work. Go listen HERE
One of the most appropriately named bands in the British scene, Fen say that their primary goal "is to draw the listener into a windswept and desolate landscape, bereft of hope." I'm not sure it needs the last emotional qualifier, but their music is an extremely powerful entity, which I am sure is capable of inspiring a range of emotional responses in a wide audience. Last year's Malediction Fields album has been a slow grower on me, taking almost a year to really sink in it is finally proving itself an equal to the works of Wodensthroneand Winterfylleth in the sonic personification of its environment - the wide open space and misty vistas of England's fenlands are thoroughly invoked in the bands form of hybrid post-rock black metal. In January Fen release Epoch, their second full length album and one which should do for them as The Mercian Sphere has done for Winterfylleth in the field of UKBM and add them alongside Alcest as a major force in the romantic shoegaze genre of black metal. The rehearsal track of A Waning Solace posted on their MySpace has an excellent mix of synth melody and atmosphere, rasping and clean vocals, ambient guitar playing that builds to a rushing torrent of riffing and percussion, indicating their new album will be a move away from the more earthy feel of their previous record and up toward a spiritually elevated music capable of communion with the natural elements surrounding it, and a sublime harnessing of ancient and beautiful forces.
Fen's guitars/vocalist The Watcher, bassist Grungyn and drummer Theutus all play in Skaldic Curse (more later) along with Scapula who once played in Akercocke. The keyboardist Æðelwalh also plays in Wodensthrone.
A Witness To the Passing Aeons from The Malediction Fields
"The 'Black Metal band' should exist only as an attempt to conjure up some fraction of it, otherwise said band should not exist at all."
Andrew Curtis-Brignell, Cäina
Andrew Curtis-Brignell has been releasing increasingly complex and singularly minded albums as Cäina since 2004; from the ragged, harsh early demos through 2006's full length Some People Fall, to the more diverse influences and elaborate compositions of Temporary Antennae; “The way I personally define Black Metal has shifted and developed over time. Ultimately my preferred definition is largely attitudinal or atmospheric rather than musical/generic, and that's purely because it's the most utilitarian way of thinking about it. There are often vast stylistic chasms separating many of the bands that are comfortably tagged as Black Metal, far more so than within any other genre of metal, so it only really makes sense to me to consider Black Metal as a mode of thinking or feeling rather than a specific way of playing your guitar or using your voice.”
There are no other bands quite like him in the UK at present; there are bands that are marrying post rock elements to their Black Metal, but Cäina's uniquely emotionally provocative combination of sounds sees him remain starkly isolated from everyone else around him. The suggestions of a coherent sound that a scene might develop around fills him with revulsion; “If a group of bands from a small group of islands decide to all sound like each other, I would question the need for any of them. Individual strength of idea and execution is the only creative currency that means anything nowadays – to paraphrase Morrissey, The Scene is Dead. As a small child, the idea of being in the Cubs or Scouts filled me with revulsion. In the same way I would take no pleasure whatsoever in belonging to some Onanistic, self-congratulatory boy's club as an adult. To me, those who are proponents of 'metal warriors together against the world' sentiments (regardless of the scale, whether it be in a wider scene or in a cliquey branded 'Circle') are merely displaying herd weakness and do nothing except mark themselves out as ones to be avoided at all costs.”
Individual strength is something he possesses in abundance; there;s no greater conviction executed than on his recent 3-track EP, in which he talks of burying churches upside down; of reordering and redesigning the kinds of power that a black metal performer should be able to wield, the greater extent that their vision should be able to encompass. Of all the defamatory lyrics black metal has produced, none has had the imagination to twist a whole building round out of the earth and smash it; a strong metaphor for the approach of his music. “There are compositional stylistic markers and lyrical signifiers that are unique to Black Metal, but I think these are secondary to that Black Metal 'feeling'. Kids on forums may have the time (and short-sightedness) to endlessly debate whether such or such a band is BM, but for me if it has that 'feeling', it's Black Metal. Unfortunately that atmosphere, or attitude, or feeling, or however you want to say it, is quite hard to put one's finger on. Not wanting to be too pretentious, but for me, the Black Metal feeling is really that little stir of dark energy that wells up inside you under certain musical, ritual or artistic conditions. It should be added that almost none of the bands who could be said to belong to the genre actually manage to evoke this, but it's a bit of a Plato-nic thing, I think – the 'Black Metal band' should exist only as an attempt to conjure up some fraction of it, otherwise said band should not exist at all.”
Considering the existence of Black Metal's direct relationship to environment is one of the foundational idelogies of the genre. One of the questions I am posing throughout this week is whether the British countryside is having a unique effect on the sounds being created, whether it is as conscious a creation for British artists as it was for the Scandinavians, and whether environment plays an integral part of the Black Metal sound and psyche: “I'm wary of such generalisations, but I think the type of person who creates successful Black Metal is usually the type of person who would emotionally if not practically reject the homogeneity and claustrophobia of urban society and feel more kinship with the natural world, so in a way I suppose that would be an innate aspect. I certainly fit into that mode (even if I don't necessarily create successful Black Metal). Actually I've just moved out of an apartment in a large city to a house backing onto a national park, and I love it. The view out of my back window is about a foot of snow covering the hills and moors as far as the eye can see. The view from my front window is the village, and the road that leads to a larger town. I like the back window.”
Despite all suggestions to the contrary, Andy is not quite the loner that all this may mark him out to be. He has been recording new material with a group of disgustingly heavy and aggressive sounding US artists for his new album Hands That Pluck with a line-up involving Imperial (Krieg), Vermin (Revenge/Blood Revolt) and Rennie Resmini (Starkweather). Scheduled for release in the first part of 2011 on Profound Lore the sound will be a return to the rawer more primitive sound of his early days, with Andy affirming that “I'm never going to make another album under the Cäina name quite as soft'n'fluffy as Temporary Antennae.”
With a return to an arguably less enlightened, yet equally transcendentally potentiated sound, does he feel that there is still an extra element of frisson that Black Metal is still capable of provoking, regardless of how many extra influences a band's sound involves; “Absolutely. However, as I get older I'm actually starting to reject a lot of more 'experimental' work, and gravitating back to my first love, primitive and primal stripped-back Black Metal. As I make a rather bastardised form of BM myself I never really listened to a lot of the former anyway – too much like a 'busman's holiday' – but to be honest I think the last time I genuinely connected with another genre-cocktail band was a good couple of years ago. It's like alcohol. When I was growing up, I wanted outlandish, disguised booze (... and ... with a ... mixer), and lots of it. Nowadays I want a scotch on the rocks once in a while, and that's it.”
Here's to a fiercely advancing future of whiskey fuelled feral buzz from the hands of this man.
London's svelte, velvet suit wearing Faustian influenced Satanic dandymen Akercockeused their sleek image as a foil to the barbaric Satanic rituals of their music. Still recording and performing, they get the title of UKBM Legends for their highly elevated, inventive and sublimely executed interpretation of Baphometic black metal, presented and performed in such a combination that it can never be repeated.
“The eternal evil atmosphere. Without that, it is not Black Metal.”
Arrrrrrrach, Ghast.
Ghast are going to be the most monolithic of the bands featured this week, the ones exerting the slowest bone crushing pressure as opposed to the treble heavy lashings of many of the other bands. Theirs is a style that owes as much to Doom as Black Metal, but as we've already seen, Black Metal is as much about the personal intentions and headspace which the music is recorded in, as the sound that eventually pours from the speakers. Their lyrical themes encompass realms of fantasy, but also dreams, wakefulness and hypnogogy, and paranoia – all good dread Doom topics, but imbued with an essentially black metal oriented spite, as bassist/vocalist Myrggh elaborates “Black metal is the most negative form of heavy metal; it emphasises the sound and aesthetics of fear, death and evil. Black metal works for me because it allows me to externalise these feelings and gives me something tangible I can point at, rather than allowing them to fester internally. I suppose that, to a great extent, is the purpose of art.”
Amen to that.
Guitarist/vocalist Arrrrrrrach, is slightly more abrupt with his assertion that their form of Black Metal simply involves “Atmosphere and aggression”
Amen to that.
The savage bleakness and minimalism of their sound sets them at odds with almost the entire wave of current bands I've come across. Environment playing as large a part in the genre's sound as it does, is it because of their location in the industrial town of Swansea, under the rugged mountainsides of the Welsh countryside that engenders such a gritty morbidity.
Drummer Kz: “That is something you can’t escape, music is made by humans, and humans react to their environment. Some Black Metal bands make a big deal of this, and to others it is simply obvious and not worth pointing out.”
Myrggh: “You could argue that black metal should be against nature and should deny environmental influences. Look at early Mayhem: its more about striving towards the death of everything than appreciating the forests. I wouldn't argue that though. Environmental influences? Yeah, why not”
I pose the notion of a distinctly British Black Metal sound developing around the country, to which Kz: is quick to refute “No, although there maybe a cheap computer sound that you could associate with some current British Black Metal, but overall, I think bands are doing different things.” So do they not feel there are any unifying elements or themes simultaneously, or co-operatively, stimulating many bands across the country, other than a coincidence of a lot of interesting music emerging that is garnering attention, or is that again, simply a convenient media editorial fabrication?
Arrrrrrrach: “I'd say that when we started, we made a conscious decision to be more miserable and rough than everyone else, so it's fair to say that my/our perceived lack of these elements in the scene was something that helped shape what we are.”
Myrggh: “People often complain about journalistic tagging, or labels, but we need them to allow us to place things in context. Its how we make sense of the world - create stereotypes, make assumptions. It's impossible to singularly attend to every new piece of information (i.e., including new bands you've heard). Therefore label of UKBM is inevitable and necessary. Perhaps there is some motivational effect in feeling part of a scene, which facilitates the creativity of bands within it, but also causes a herd mentality amongst newer bands. Look at other scenes in their early days - bands start out sounding different, but as a scene is increasingly identified a 'sound' develops. If there is a particular sound, we're not part of it.”
So is there nothing recognizably British in Ghast's music, or would that even be something important to them?
Kz: “We don’t try to sound like a British Black Metal band, we are aware of sounding like ourselves, however I can also recognize a British Doom sound in some of our material.”
Arrrrrrrach: “I mean, I think we listen to a lot of British music, older northern death doom, trad doom and all that sort stuff, as well as stuff from elsewhere that was influenced by it. I'm pretty sure there is a distinct British way of harmonizing, which I fucking love and want to continue, but not because it is British, just because it is so mournful.”
Myrggh: “I'm not concerned what other British bands do, as long as it's not consistently shit. I was concerned about 10 years ago when Thus Defiled used to be considered the frontrunners of UKBM - those were sad, sad days.”
Their new two track EP, Terrible Cemetery has just been released on Todestrieb Records and features one short 8 minute track and one expansive twenty minute saga, incorporating every element they've described int his discussion – evil overbearing atmosphere weighing down like a doom claw spread over a ritual anticipating the delivery of its sacrifice. The vocals are pitched just under a hysterical shriek, flung wild and feral into the night sky as the music traverses its dynamically planned course across slow climbs and rapid descents, big bursts of power riffing that casts shadows over the faster, blurred tremelo shredding then down, grinding into blown out bass noise sections where the momentum carries the track forward but everything else seems to stand still. As essential an addition to the UKBM canon as their previous 2008 demo album May The Curse Bind.
Evoke Spiritless Hell from the album May the Curse Bind
"So, what is the point of this whole piece?
Hateful Abandon is not a Black Metal band. What are we?
Come see."
Martin Brindley, Hateful Abandon
I sent over a few questions to Martin regarding the themes of this week, UK Black Metal, cultural heritage, and where he saw his band in the pantheon of the genre. His answer can only be read in its entirety, and I'm not afraid to admit certain parts even made me feel somewhat naive and foolish, but at the same time showed me in no uncertain terms that this is a man with artistic vision that doesn't suffer indignity or triviality. Before we get to his own words, here's something of an introduction:
Hateful Abandonbegan as the work of Vintyr (Mart Brindley) under the monikorAbandonwhose sound consisted of intensely violent, harsh noise-BM in the 2004 album Never Ending Black Torrent of Death. The addition of Swine in 2006 marked a change in direction into a murky netherworld of Dead Can Dance, Joy Division and Cure invested down-beat noir-metal with the album Famine (or Into the Bellies of Worms). Now on to H.A. Mk II, the urban imagery of their new look is more in keeping with their new sound which has left Black Metal, or any kind of Metal at all, far behind, yet resonant with their past is the fire of conviction that is one of the central tenets of Black Metal, a trait that does most definitely exist in Hateful Abandon; very creepy, very desolate sounding. It seems that a certain strain of the UK's black metal population is forging an exaltant passion for a more recent English history, a parallel counterculture setting itself out entirely seperately from anything that has gone before, by virtue of a disconnection from any scene or focal genre. refreshing, and enjoyably confounding for any kind of traditionalist. They may be one of the slower moving bands around, but when they can produce such an unorthodox sound as their Famine... album, and in the new tracks being posted from their forthcoming album, then it's well worth waiting for. The new album is due imminently, with a rough demo up on their MySpace page, along with news that it is taking longer than anticipated. They've been playing live this year, most recently in Norwich a video of which appears below the interview, so the possibility of things coming together and finally making a big dent in people's consciousnesses some time next year looks strong.
In discussing his band's inclusion in this week I insisted that their origination in black metal and development through post-black metal 80's x-wave/post-punk bands out to their current sound made their inclusion essential as an example of the kinds of developments the genre is capable of producing, specifically within the UK. Here comes Martin's response:
I have spent the better part of an hour looking at your questions and deciding how to answer them, the reason for my difficulty lies in how we are represented (now globally, because of the internet). A lot of people that have heard of us have done so because of either the debut album “Famine...” or because they know of our past, and in Tom’s case other present, band/s (Basilisk, Swine and Salute respectively). The obvious ties to Black Metal are present for all to see.
However, H.A. (Hateful Abandon) is a different beast entirely, the reason I feel that I need to make the difference plain is both out of respect for Black Metal and also H.A. as an entity.
You see, we have been ‘lumped’ into a sub-sub-category of music that neither of us are happy with. That is to say ‘Post-Black Metal’. It’s easy to see why this is a simple, almost lazy way to describe our music. Our debut album has a very real influence that most would agree has stemmed from our Black Metal past projects. You see, the first record is a cathartic brain-fart of all the ideas, both lyrically and musically, I’ve been unable to do recording on my own from the last 15 years. Some of the lyrics, for example, are very personal. Being inspired by at last having someone I could work with that totally knew how I wanted to express myself was, and continues to be, overwhelming. The result is a mishmash of half improvised, half jammed music that simply came from within.
We didn’t think about ‘genre’ once during the recording process and let the album just naturally bleed itself out. So, on the debut we have a lot of songs with half snatched riffs, a backbone of spiky bass guitar and lilts of tone similar to what some would call ‘post-punk’. In reality, far from this being planned it was just the most basic way to work fast and keep the emotion intact.
So, the record came out 2 years ago to this very day and we have grown as a unit since, with both members now fully committed to writing. We have now ditched the ‘guitar’ completely, and have forged a new sound that is neither ‘this’ nor ‘that’. It is bound to confuse and confuddle the lazy journalistic types and frustrate the weekend warriors into a state of brow-knitted frenzy. We hope it entertains and delights as many as it disgusts. Nothing has been released yet, but you’ll see us on the road next year. It’s a new start, as they say in the Independent Sunday supplements.
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Appalled to see we are mentioned alongside the new ‘shoe-gaze Black Metal’ movement. I’ll make this simple, we are absolutely appalled. I don’t understand why nowadays music HAS to be ‘Something Black Metal’ or ‘Something Punk’etc. Why can’t it simply be an influence? I would HATE to think of H.A. being associated with a watered down crossover version of Black Metal and another form of music. That’s how I see this up and coming trend, as two types of music watered down. If you’re recording Black Metal, do it pure. Do something new by all means, but play Black Metal.
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That kind of segues nicely into another question you asked me, about UK Black Metal. I have to be honest; I’m out of the loop. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like, but that’s not much use to you. I will say this, it’s far better than it was when Basilisk started back in 2002. There was literally nothing around then at all. If I have to namedrop, I’ll say whatever state UK Black Metal is in, it’s made infinitely better by the existence of Caina and Instinct. But I fear I do them a disservice by attaching the stigma of ‘UK’ to describe them, they deserve much more than that. Also, with both of these projects I hear a lot more going on in the sound to describe it as simply ‘Black Metal’. I think Black Metal, and actually Metal in general, has lost not only its soul, but its shock value and ability to provoke as well, unless you’re in an environment that is very naive and religious nobody seems to bat an eyelid. I am certainly now totally desensitized to its provocation; maybe I’m the naive one...?
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Your question about environment is interesting, with H.A we are constantly inspired by the old disused warehouses, dilapidated wastelands and cracked pavements of the United Kingdom, it clashes beautifully with the green, leafy, twee idea of England that most people seem to have. Ok, that England does still exist (for now) but look hard enough and you can see the decay. Civil unrest, the credit crash, and the approaching end of the World are other constant muses for H.A 2010. Don’t try and save the World, it’s already dead! Sit back and watch it decompose with H.A as your soundtrack!
So, what is the point of this whole piece? H.A is not a Black Metal band. What are we? Come see.
In 2006 Zithuan Labyrinth began as the one-man band of Nostalggia, releasing seven demos worth of primitive necrosadistic noise explorations before adding members and expanding to Luggaldimerankia. Between 2006 and 2008 several ultra raw demos were released in a handful of copies each, then in late 2008 the line up was joined by Plague on vocals and Zithuan Labyrinth became Luggaldimerankia – a black metal inflected noise band of psychological and anti-cosmic themes. Early 2010 saw the first full Luggaldimerankia recorded demo, Within The Very Depths Of Depravity, and again, kept it release to almost single figures. Over the following months several further demos were recorded with suitably necro-deviant oriented musicians as well as a split cassette release with the awesomely named ambient/drone project Black Goatskin Robe on Black Blister Worship Productions.
The MySpace has been reasonably active; after posting a 10-download limited track titled Sacrament from their demo Decaying Chamber Session(which they snuck into a military training ground to record in an abandoned bunker) they posted another song on MySpace from their impending debut album Swallowing Shapeless Echoes Of Eternal Despair entitled Primitive Baptismal Torture Rite Amidst Swollen Bark Of Dead Yew. I recently wrote about their latest release on the blog, the short bursts of experimental harsh ambient titled Black Vomiting Mass, which is available to download for free.
Luggaldimerankia are the kind of band for whom you use the word 'song' very loosely - they are the UK equivalent to WOLD in texture and primitive energy (a Wold even being an English term for a series of inland limestone hills, geography A-level fans!). Both bands share in their sound, a similar coruscating torrent of feral dissonance, though in Luggaldimerankia this is less utterly inhospitable than WOLD's Canadian wilderness; the milder climates of England tending more toward an upward stargazing ritual and downward crepuscular filth, rather than the pure and thorough cleansing the sub-zero temperatures induce.
I've posted the track Inducing The Deepest Core of Morbidity from Within The Very Depths of Depravity: the bestial cover art is certainly more Noise than Black Metal, illustrating the crossover this band embody, and censored for the sensitive souls (....or anyone really!) over at YouTube.
When I started putting this week together I was very tempted to throw in a Cradle of Filth track off Vempire or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein and hail them as one of the legends of UK Black Metal - I mean, you've heard of them right? But then I remembered where Dani's troupe always fell over the edge into cheesiness or self-parodying pantomime, embarassing themselves, and no doubt the face of UKBM at the time. Hecate Enthroned had a similar sound - a symphonic melodic form of the genre - without any of the more theatrical trappings, the vocals are almost identical to Dani Filth's, that high pitched hysterical shriek, but the music behind them burns with deadly serious intent running cold and severe, like the harshest of seasons.
Recorded under the auspice of a full Winter's moon in January 1997, this is The Spell of the Winter Forest from the album The Slaughter of Innocence, A Requiem for the Mighty
"I do have a great admiration for the more eloquent end of vicious verbal assault"
Mister Curse, A Forest of Stars
A Forest of Stars are a truly unique proposition amongst their peers: a revolutionary, progressive, experimental gentleman steam-punk black metal band. Even their website is borne of an entirely novel way of thinking. Where their first album, Corpse of Rebirth featured the sounds of high tea and tinkling china their new Opportunistic Thieves of Spring leaves such grounded earthly concerns in the past, blasting out into the cosmos on a psychedelic trip out into tranced rhythmic percussion and introspective passages of boundary pushing music that often leaves little trace of pure black metal in its wake; to which vocalist Mister Curse says “These days, black metal is just a term – however, I haven't lost sight or touch with the genuine, churning urge to fight back against the mediocre and weak of will. I'd say our music fits somewhere in the ethic (ha!) of black metal, though we tend to float around the periphery. We are simply, or not so simply, shall let others decide on that one, a band that makes dark music, and I'm happy to say that many influences have been stirred into our rancid little cauldron.”
This elevation above and inclusion within the base elements is something to whichPianoforte playing percussionist for the band The Gentlemanadds “My interpretation of black metal is not something pure or orthodox, its an amorphous thing that changes, shifts, moves and absorbs all influences around it, that doesn’t have boundaries. Granted, there is a certain feeling, an atmosphere that tends to unify, but black metal is such a wide spectrum, that say, Ved Buens Ende sound absolutely nothing like Sort Vokter and yet they can both be put under the same broad heading.”
Broad indeed is the church of A Forest of Stars; the scope of this band's ambition is phenomenal; the leap from the field-recording embellished blackened post-rock drone of the first to the stately enlightenment of the second is grander than that even sounds, and there is really no other band that sound like them; they exude a certain Englishness, through their Victorian outlook, and folk influences, yet also figure a heavily tribal percussive element too, if the Incredible String Band or Jethro Tull produced a black metal opus this might be what it sounded like.
“Whether we like it or not, being English means we will always have a sort of, well, “English” feel to our work, not least because of the personalities of the people involved.” says the Gentleman. “We just write and play the music and it comes out like it does – there’s no calculating how “English” or “Eccentric” it should be, it just always seems to end up that way.”
Along with the very heavy primitive tribal element in the percussion, and a cosmic krautrock rhythm, there are distinctly English influences in the band's sound that are not included in any other countries sounds; most notably 80's new-wave and post punk, and an almost industrial P-Orridge/Whitehouse abrasive, aggressive stance to the lyric delivery.
Curse responds “From a lyrical perspective, there is a great deal of confrontation evident in my spiel. This is simply down to the situations I have been faced with throughout my life and the ways in which I have had to deal with them. I have to call a spade a spade. Having said this, I do have a great admiration for the more eloquent end of vicious verbal assault. A little venom never hurt anyone(!)” The Gentleman picks up the tribal reference; “the percussive/tribal element comes from me having played and been involved in Arabic/Tribal/Bellydance movements, haflas and events for the last 10/12 years. As a drummer (well, not in this band anymore, but you know what I mean), I love the completely different approach to rhythm and wanted to incorporate it into what we did. Nobody objected, and so there it is. Nothing more, nothing less”
With such far flung influences, drawing conclusions as to the environmental aspect of the bands sound, yet there is still, a rural influence to be heard, but not necessarily one which specifically informs the music as explicitly as other bands. The Gentleman: “Perhaps it does, but not intentionally. At least it wasn’t meant to be intentional, but when I think about it, it probably has; after all, we do write the vast majority of the music in the Dales, with greenery of one type or another all around us. Nature is a powerful, driving force that creates and controls everything we do (and is not to be confused with The Force™), how can that not influence on one level or another? Unless, of course, you choose to deliberately ignore it, which can lead to very interesting results (see the excellent Axis of Perdition, for example).”
Curse: “Personally speaking, although it may not come across particularly in the lyrics a lot of the time, my physical environment has a tremendous effect on my general outlook and my creativity (or lack of it). Stick me in a stone circle or under a cromlech and my aura will certainly be improved greatly upon that which it would be if shoved in an inner city bus queue. I suppose I'm stating the bleeding obvious, but still... So yes, to answer your question, I would say that to my mind at least there is a great pull towards unsullied nature evident in real black metal (to use the term loosely once again). Heathen pride and all that. Never could identify with propheteering.”
From the album Opportunistic Thieves of Spring, here's the official, magickal mysterious sideshow video for Raven's Eye View (Louis Le Prince Edit).Check out the pressure drop in rhythm around 6 minutes, then the slow interstitial layers of extra percussion, instruments and melody lines which runs into a sweeping change of tempo again as choral, operatic vocals sweep in across a heaving tidal riff, sewn together with plaintive flute before it slams to a close.
Wodensthrone are possibly even more heavily into their English heritage than Winterfylleth. Their 2009 album Loss was recorded in Romania under the auspices of Negura Bunget's Huppogramus whose own band is deeply immersed in harnessing their environment and imbuing it with a sense of nationalism (controversial debatable controversy again). The band members used to be known by their real names, but gave themselves Anglo-Saxon names in the band to reflect their deepening interest in ancient ideology, concepts and spirituality (Brunwulf, Wildeþrýð- who also plays guitar in Winterfylleth - , Rædwalh, Árfæst - of Axis of Perdition and Pulsefear - , Gerádwine, and Hréowsian). There is as much Forefather to their influences as Wolves in the Throne Room; combining the antiquated, rural and classical with the modern hypersensitive ecological characteristic of this current heathen/pagan movement. That Cascadian sound is present, specifically in the drumming where they eschew the flat drilling of Scandanavian blast beats to employ the lighter, more elastic expanding and contracting style of the temperate forest bands of modern America. In addition, Wodensthrone have an almopst claustrophobically tight constriction of their lead guitar work, tightly coild and winding round each other like ivy round oaks, there's a rich gravitas to their way their songs proceed, a very weighty intensity that belies the complexity of the more post rock influenced arrangements; their sense of anticipatory repetition; recalls the subtle tweaking of riff forms across Krallice tracks, the way the melodic lines rise almost to the point of peak, the cycle round to the starting point that seems like it's shifted up a level, incrementally pushing the tracks forward until everything blurs in a kalaedescopic haze.
Justifiably one of the key big three Heathen bands along with Winterfylleth and Fen
Those That Crush the Roots of Blood from the album Loss
Forefather is brothers Athelstan and Wulfstan. They call their music "Anglo-Saxon Metal", and dislike being referred to as Black Metal, but they are arguably one of the progenitors and pathfinders for combining the music and folklore of Britain's ancient heritage with modern Metal, and therefore, whether they like it or not are getting the first post into the legendary bands of Black Metal Britain you should already have flowing in your veins. Wassail!
When Our England Died from the album The Fighting Man
White Medal is the feral Black Metal incarnation of Yorkshire based George Proctor - previously of power electronics aggressor Mutant Ape. Proctor also plays in Gammal Sed - a mysterious duo who released one violently feraln black noiscape cassete titled Blót earlier this year - but there is little information regarding either to give much away. White Medal put out a demo cassette titled Abrigg Beast, on UK/Italian label Legion Blotan and a split 7" with Skullflower, both in March 2010.
Agbrigg Beast was recorded and produced with Andrew Curtis-Brignall, of Cäina, who describes this band as "The best UK Black Metal band currently active". Very much sharing the heritage element of Winterfylleth, the lyrics are sung and intonated, despite the rasp, entirely in a Yorkshire dialect, the lyric sheet to the album includes the full story of Agbrigg, seemingly the tale of a wild wolf maraudingthe titular village, but the music is an entirely different beast; the guitars tear jagged shapes with a punkish fervour, and though only ever partly distorted, have a real force to them. The chord progressions shift from the downtuned atonal up to major keys in On't Borough and The Last Days that add a shockingly fresh melodic bouyancy within a very brief running. There's a very crusty influence at work bringing the equally location sensitive Amebixto mind, though White Medal is still vehemently a black metal band. There's a nice minimalism to the whole deal, the brevity of the songs, the monochrome bastardised St. George's Cross of the artwork; a cover which invokes the album's subject matter yet debases it in tradional metal fashion. One of the highlights of the year, and hopefully not the last we'll hear of this intriguing project.
The tape is available from George Proctor's Turgid Animal label for just £4, or the US based Seedstock Records have now released these five tracks on vinyl, along with two extras, modified artwork at a slightly pricey $25.
