Sigh are a band who have undergone a long latency-period for me; the time between sampling their work with interest, and later fully delving into it has been quite a lengthy process. Indeed, I've been meaning to listen to their work for the last couple of years, but never quite found the appropriate moment. Some time in January I finally took the plunge, starting, as I often like to, at the beginning. For Sigh, this beginning is a stylistically interesting and innovative one - only to be expected from a band who later matured into one of the best avant-garde acts in all of metal. Regardless, Scorn Defeat is the record which I have elected to focus on, not just for its musical merits, but for its unique place in the maze of second-wave black metal.
(Artwork from the 2014 Remaster, Hammerheart Records)
Listening to Scorn Defeat is a deeply interesting exercise in similarity and difference in equal measure. The deeply Norwegian-influenced elements stand as a testament to how well ideas and sounds were being transmitted in the tape-trading pre-internet days of the underground, while the massive divergences in style which exist on the record is a testament to quite the opposite; how lavishly, fantastically different the record is from anything else which was being made at the time. Almost conventional one minute, the record has no qualms about suddenly, almost unexpectedly, leaping into something which bucks the black-metal trends which themselves had barely had time to settle and fall into place. Scorn Defeat delivers traditional black-metal evil, yes - particularly well, in fact, with an abundance of crushing and legitimately devilish sounds. Simultaneously, however, the record deploys atmospheric sections and approaches to musicianship which for the most part hadn't been tried before within the genre - at least not quite in this way. While plenty of the components within the work will feel familiar, there is no question that Scorn Defeat is simultaneously a unique work; bringing original flavors to the genre in a way that seminal works like Deathcrush had, before. Interestingly, however, Scorn Defeat does not sound "embryonic" - it is without question a very fully-formed album. While the band sound extremely different today, this retrospect does not leave Scorn Defeat feeling retroactively incomplete in the way in which a record like the aforementioned Deathcrush does; at times like a stepping stone in the shadow of Mayhem's mature sound.
It's position in the grand scheme of things aside for the moment, an equally interesting topic are Scorn Defeat's musical merits in their own right. The record is compositionally fascinating - more inaccessible than some black-metal records, but likewise at times more rewarding to listen to - both confirming and violating expectations subtly, emphasizing the works uniqueness. It's an album which doesn't rely on intensity, speed or being a wall-of-sound to be powerful, instead striding forward with a quirky mid-tempo gate. Swaggering and slithering riffs bolstered by the extensive but non-sugar-coated synth give the album a reeling, supernatural and funereal feel, a tangibly eastern sense of evil meeting with black-metal sensibilities, executed with better musicianship than a lot of their peers. At its best, the atmosphere is engulfing and impressively executed with the accustomed "minimalist extravagance" of black-metal, giving the record an at times crude but constantly vast and impression-making atmosphere of tangled dread, fear and evil, entwined with beauty. Constantly, the spirit of innovation and avant-garde musicianship shines through in the record, setting it apart immediately, and to this day. It is a record which has to be heard to be understood, for it is, once again, a tough record to explain in words - so often the way with records which are islands; who can it be compared to?
Some of the most fondly remembered classics are records which unapologetically blazed their own trail, and Scorn Defeat is certainly such. Combining the emerging black-metal traditions with innovative and unique sounds, the record is one which stands as an outsider among outsiders - it's all the more a fascinating album for it, and one which I would urge everyone with an interest in classic black-metal to explore.
There was a UK band in the early eighties who had albums produced by Algy Ward, Lemmy Kilmister and Cronos, respectively. The other day, I spent quite a while trying to remember which band, specifically. As it turns out, the band I was trying to remember was Warfare. The three aforementioned producers do a very good job of foreshadowing the sort of sound that the band had - nasty and sneering; not standard NWOBHM by any stretch of the imagination, even if they were associated with that movement. Indeed, by the time they reached their third record - the one I'm going to review - the band had most of the leanings of a speed/thrash metal band, with the angry limb-flailing energy appropriate to the style. Regardless, I'm always fond of finding the hidden gems; the bands who gave every bit as much, but are remembered a little less than their peers.
Mayhem Fuckin' Mayhem isn't pretty. It doesn't sound pretty, and by God it has literally no intention of being pretty. Hopefully, that's not what you're looking for. If the people who produced the bands back-catalogue doesn't give a clear enough idea of what to expect, the music itself certainly offers up an instant and blistering mission statement. It's course, rough and nasty. It's a metal-record which other metal-record's parents discourage them from associating with. While plenty of bands in the early and mid eighties were flamboyant and flashy; edgy in some measure, half of them seem innocent and squeaky-clean by contrast to something like this. Mayhem Fuckin' Mayhem seems more at home in a supermarket car park, committing acts of minor vandalism with its thorny, ne'er-do-well peers; Black Metal, Filth Hounds of Hades, Orgasmatron... the albums which never felt like they were for nice people. Personification aside, the record is is one which ought to appeal to anyone with old-school sensibilities. Mayhem Fuckin' Mayhem is deceptively tight and accomplished despite oozing punk-spirit and an unapologetically filthy aesthetic. It's somewhat harsher than both Tank and arguably Motรถrhead, and more musically accomplished than Venom - combine this with in-creeping thrash influences and the result is a breakneck-speed leather clad storm of a record with it's bludgeoning force only amplified by the solid musicianship.
The production of the record is certainly very appropriate; the drums are crisp, but in that organic old-school way, as opposed to sounding artificial. The guitar and bass weave very effectively into one another, with a cruising, rushing sound - a product no doubt both of the influence Venom had on the band sound-wise, and the influence of Cronos as a producer - and while the album has better production than any Venom record of that time, it shares with Venom all of the snarling and rough-edged appeal which production of that style brought - it has that very same manic, raving magic. Indeed, albums like this are certainly as far as you can push heavy metal without it being outright thrash - laying down a sturdy and tasty template, in which many satanic speed-metal outfits and filth-encrusted metal-punk acts would be cast and forged, to this day. Indeed, Mayhem Fuckin' Mayhem is every bit as nasty as a lot of the real hard-hitters of the early-to-mid eighties, but at the same time, it keeps a steady hand on the catchy leanings of traditional metal. At time's it's even melodic, in its own way - or, at the very least, damn memorable and hook-laden. It's an album which isn't afraid to go full-steam ahead, and it makes one hell of an infernal racket as it does so. The best
albums often do.
Cult classics tend to remain cult-classics. That, however, is not to say that one cannot join the cult... and I certainly have. Albums like this are what keeps me excited about metal; the prospect that around every corner, hiding in the bottom of a dusty treasure-chest in a dungeon far away, or perhaps more plausibly in a tattered sleeve in a second-hand record store might lurk something special. Something like this, just waiting to be found. There's always plenty to listen to, if you look hard enough, and I'm glad I looked. Every second spent trawling Metal Archives muttering "what the fuck was that band called again...?", validated.
In a realm flanked on one side by the top-tier mainstays of the genre and on another by the fashionably new and obscure lies perhaps my favourite part of the black metal spectrum at the moment. The reliably expansive, exciting and diverse realm of the black-metal midcard. An area, I would go so far as to suggest many people neglect needlessly. Until recently, I certainly did - jumping straight from the entry-level bands to the flavour-of-the-month ones, without dwelling very long betwixt the two. Judging by the quality of the bands herein, however, it's a mistake indeed to go without exploring a bit more, and that is precisely my plan for 2015; to return to that shadowy land for some much needed filling-in of the gaps - and vast gulfs - in my knowledge of the genre. Pleasantries aside, Fuck the Universe.
Sweden's Craft aren't apt to mess around, and that includes their artwork. "Fuck the Universe" is about as to-the-point as black metal albums ever get - metal records in general, for that matter. Sonically, too, Fuck the Universe isn't an album which spends too much time investing in anything superfluous; it's a deadly simple recipe which works perfectly. It has everything it needs to cleave a path of destruction, but it's a lean and efficient beast nonetheless. Clattering drums and vicious steak-knife riffs with a sand-paper tone to carve at your flesh, whilst flourishes of devilish high-notes which feels like a demonic tongue lapping at the inside of your ear. The album both manages to capture the large-scale and atmospheric properties of the genre, reeling and unspeakable, but also succeeds in reconciling them very smoothly with the deeply visceral tetanus-inducing barbed-wire of the genre's angrier, filthier side. The bare-bones, deeply abrasive sound which Craft cultivate is one which appeals to a wide range of black metal sensibilities, providing frigid cold, but also wrath and misanthropy, even a more devilish element; in short, the band tick a lot of boxes, and in a timeless way, too; this could as easily be a record from almost a decade earlier than the year it came out. It's a very organic album, and a case study in why that very thing is generally good news.
The slow sections in particular - I'd go so far as to call them Craft's signature style - are extremely enjoyable to listen to; few bands manage to wallow so successfully in the undulating pits of mid-tempo hell, but Craft manage with gusto. Powerful cruising sections seethe and slither like a cauldron of barbed serpents. It's almost black n' roll like. Almost. Not so close as to create a potentially jarring juxtaposition between the savagery of black-metal and anything upbeat - a territory which Craft make damn sure to avoid. Mid-tempo is often underestimated, and albums like this demonstrate why it always has a place. The execution of the record is very solid indeed, both in that the musicianship is spot-on, in so far as it's thoroughly appropriate to the rugged edges and sharp splinters which the sound works best with, and production wise, too. The album is brought to a level where it is truly bursting with substance - the thick, loud and scathing tone exhibited throughout delivers a huge amount of force, and embodies the evil of the music perfectly. It's a record where nothing is wasted; each section is enjoyable in its own sake, from the hellish tremolos right through to the thunderous, muscular side of the record in which huge, evil chords are allowed to ooze and dribble with malice; definitely one of it's finest points, and while not to the detriment of the faster sections, the swaggering Celtic Frost influenced exuberance is definitely the aspect that comes to mind when I think ofCraft, and the aspect which has embedded Craft into my black metal vocabulary.
Fuck the Universe is a record which brings together many of the elements which made me realise I enjoyed black metal in the first place - and as a listener, I can't really ask for more than that. Some might preach diminishing returns with music; the most you hear, the less you're likely to be impressed, but for me, I'm finding the opposite to be true at the moment. Black metal sits before me a ripe and appetizing swathe of music which, despite being a fan of it for many years now, holds so much more to explore - so much potential. How much music you can find to enjoy is limited only be how hard you look for it, and I don't know about you, but I find that damn exciting.
