While I can share a deep and voided affinity for all of the compositional and experimental variations of and progressions from black metal (hell, I wrote the promo for the new Locrian record), when all the breath is done, I want nothing more than to curl around the thick black bile of the violently simple kvlt strain. I find myself returning again and again to the earlier sounds that sprung from the graven-wombs of the second wave (Ulver’s “Nattens Madrigal” is the only album I need to take to the afterlife), to the uglier war-monikered plagues in this (thank Lucifer) post-third wave world. And while I would most certainly die at the chopping block, as a heretic, in a coven of elitists, I often come back to certain albums I feel never quite got the notice they deserved.
Feel More Pain After The Jump!
Such is the case with the grim mountain sized tombstone that was The Black’s “Black Blood,” demo. On the one hand, while this horde formed in 1991, in the eclipsed prime of every beast from Beherit to Immortal, as one terror-inducing listen will confirm, on the other, this thorned album excels into the black. The possessed strike of the first guitar riff in the opening, “The Book of Leviathan,” contains more hateful honestly than half the wasted vinyl that has sludged in the wake since. Each piece is a well defined sonic assault, that makes no bones about the midnight conjurings that produced these hymns. And even to the wolves who sniff out weakness amongst the pack, if there was ever a group who wielded synthesizers as a weapon still valid to the cause, The Black is surely it.
While an album with this index, imagery, and semiotic, may seem stuck in the sands of cliche, the release came out decades before record collectors in NY began photocopying the life affirming aspects of Black Metal, and American Apparel used corpsepaint to peddle t-shirts to trust-funded coke habits.
In fact, you can’t quite grasp more authenticity than to have a group co-founded by, Jon Nödtveidt,who also conjured another little known act, Dissection.
These are seven bits of pure kvlt madness. From the gutteral, almost Abbath-like, vocals that hail “Black Blood,” to the, in my mind, very timely, Swedish sounding ode, “The Goat of Mendez,” to the almost Ulver-esque intro to, “The Black Opal Eye,” few and far between truer pieces of work have been bled into the ether.
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/01-Book-Of-Leviathan.mp3|titles=THE BLACK Book Of Leviathan]
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/04-Black-Blood.mp3|titles=THE BLACK Black Blood]
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/06-The-Goat-Of-Mendes.mp3|titles=THE BLACK The Goat Of Mendes]
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