SYLVESTER ANFANG II "COMMUNE CASSETTEN" (Blackest Rainbow)

A short LP follow-up to last year's massive brainfuck on Aurora Borealis, which was one of my favorite records for 2009. This time the Fang are in a more organic mindset, turning in 6 songs across 40 minutes and turning the intensity waaaaay down. This sounds like what it most likely is-a bunch of long-hairs getting together in barn and jamming out. Gone are the AMT-worshiping torrents of electric guitar scuzz damage, replaced by hand drums and lackadaisical chord strumming alongside an attitude of pointless meandering. It's much more in league with the band's original incarnation, the more occult themed Sylvester Anfang (and yeah, they're different. look it up.) Here you're reminded that this is indeed a commune of people living together out in Belgium dabbling in drugs and the outer fringe waste of extreme psychedelia.

The goal of "Commune Cassetten" seems to be a demonstration of natural improv without the need for things to build up to anything. It's probably the result of lots of editing and a shitload of late night stoner jams, where ability is thrown away in favor of chasing down a feeling and a place in time. There's nothing epochal about what's happening here, but there are the beginnings of something transformative if you're receptive to it. You are lulled into a very easy going sort of space-there's a lot of disconnection on display here but nothing approaching real dissonance or atonality. Even the more wicked bits are played with a sense of calm; this is a group so in tune with one another that the process of making music becomes an endless walk through the night and the fire. Nothing is verboten; everything is allowed.

The songs themselves all hover in a very Krautrock place. Constant keyboard drones hover in the background and sometimes take center stage, leading into a hypnotic trance state while soft and robotic drums propel everything over the hill. Guitars rarely reach distorted levels but solo endlessly, moving all over the neck hitting both right and wrong notes with equal aplomb. The bass lines are the key here, locking everything down and holding these bonfire revelations to the loosest grasp of reality; if you figure that the rumbles are closet to the earth then it all makes that much more sense.

Sylvester Anfang II are one of my favorite groups in modern psychedelia; this record just serves to whet my appetite for more, perhaps something harder and more damaged, perhaps something more drifting and removed from this earth. Only time and whimsy will dictate the group's next major manifestation. Until then we're left to bask in the damage and try to make sense of it all, or surrender to it utterly. Whatever you feel like, i guess.

OBTAINED ENSLAVEMENT "SOULBLIGHT" (Napalm)

Obtained Enslavement's third album, and by far their most accomplished working within the confines of symphonic black metal. I'm frankly bewildered as to how a band would even write and rehearse music this involved, especially an underground entity like this. For me this record pretty much represents the apex of the symphonic black metal style. There were some other strong efforts by more well known hordes in the genre's infancy but the style quickly became bogged down under its own arrogant pomp, devolving into the comical style of black metal practiced by the likes of Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth (trust me, this album is worlds away from either.)

"Soulblight" saw it all coming together, a logical progression from the previous outing, "Witchcraft." As i have yet to find and hear their first album (Obtained Enslavement material is VERY hard to come by) i can't speak yet as to the evolution from that point. "Witchcraft" was an excellent album on its own, the only problem being a sort of disconnect between the black metal elements and the symphonic ones. It was an album slathered in baroque Renaissance ambience; the piano and keyboard arrangements were at times overwhelming. Such a division made the album more challenging than it maybe needed to be. On "Soulblight" the band took the time to rein in the orchestral flourishes and meld the music a little more subtly. All of the piano and keyboards were still present; now they were married closer to the guitar lines.

The whole thing is ridiculously complex but never in an alienating, progressive sort of way. All of the songs are longer explorations and the guitars lead the way throughout, all high end melodic skree and crusted over dustwinds of scathing white hot distortion. It's an earful, to be sure, although the rare moment of respite surfaces, like the gorgeous clean guitar lines in the title track or the simple barreling hypnothrash breakdown in the middle of "Nightbreed." Pest's vocals are at their absolute best; this is probably my favorite performance from him since Gorgoroth's "Under the Sign of Hell" (one of the greatest, most uncompromising black metal albums ever.) Here he sounds like he's choking on bile and dirt, coughing up blood and anger with each sickening ululation; combined with the "elegance" of the arrangements it creates a striking dichotomy that i have never really been able to wrap my head around.

I think that dichotomy is what i like best about Obtained Enslavement. Even though they were writing this really involved, layered music they were still raw as fuck, and never more so than on "Soulblight." The whole thing is an unrelenting juggernaut of dirty sound engineering. The drums are way forward in the mix so you hear ever double bass thunk (it saddens me a little that you don't really hear this sort of drum-centered production in metal anymore), the guitars are so hot you can hear them clipping out the tape, resulting in all sorts of small unwanted distortions, the bass is a goopy mess of rancid fuzz and sludge. Throw Pest's vocal agony over the top of everything and you've got a volatile mix of ear-shredding elements. There's really no polish here; this is seriously underground black metal.

After listening to "Soulblight" i get a much better picture of why some fans felt betrayed by the style of black metal that Obtained Enslavement went on to dabble with on their final album-almost all of the symphonic elements were abandoned, leaving a much leaner, more minimalist-leaning band bent on exploring the connections between lust, thrash metal and the roots of rock and roll. I love that final album, but it is very different. If you're looking for full sound immersion, though, "Soulblight" is a masterwork.

CHURCH OF MISERY "HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY" (Rise Above)

The back of the inner booklet reads, "NO DRONE. NO POWER AMBIENT. LET THEM EAT DOOM." And so Church of Misery dish up a heaping plate for your consumption and if you don't clean that fucker they're going to shove the rest down your throat. I find it interesting that Church of Misery seem to be taking a direct potshot at Boris with this album, because Church of Misery sounds exactly like their art-minded brethren if they weren't so, well, art-minded. This is classic rock rewrit with a harsher sound, but all the moves are there and unchanged. There's an obvious reverence for the style and there's no doubt that Church of Misery love this shit and have a blast bashing away at it, coming off like some alternate universe Ted Nugent on steroids where every amp is cranked to 11 and fretboards get so damn hot fire shoots off when a solo gets played. It's rock and roll, and because it's rock and roll from Japan, everything is maxed out to the ridiculous and every extreme is embraced. It's part of why i love Japanese music so much.

The formula is the same as it's always been for the Church: pick some serial killers, write some lyrics, add some sampled police and television reports and rock the fuck out. Since their inception they've changed in sound and style; "Houses" finds them continuing along the path charted out on "The Second Coming." Everything is way in the red, the songs are faster and more intense and vocalist Hideki Fukasawa absolutely rips his lungs apart. I doubt the guy is even going to be able to speak in a few years, he's shredding his throat so raw with this band. As impassioned as his delivery is it's a little one-dimensional and sometimes i miss the old vocalist-his incredibly laconic, syrupy stoned always clean vocals made a nice dreamy counterpoint to the tales of violence. But that was Church of Misery phase one, when they were more concerned with nodding off than rocking out. This is phase two, where it's tearing-faces-off time every hour of every day.

The songs are deceptively involved. There aren't many riffs or movements per song (except for "Blood Sucking Freak", which is about mentally disturbed "Vampire Killer" Richard Chase, where the song cycles through quite a few disparate riffs to illustrate Chase's volatile and nonsensical mindscape) and it seems like you've heard them all before, but if you listen more closely you hear all sorts of little flourishes and intricacies and begin to see just how much outright musicianship these guys are putting into everything. It's a consummate display of prowess done with extreme temperance and subtlety and reinforces just how good of a band this really is.

Everyone sweats it out hard, but the real star of the album is bassist Tatsu Mikami. The guy never stops. He runs his bass through a shitload of effects and basically comes off like a "Live at Leeds" era John Entwistle, always moving, holding everything down while essentially playing a 48 minute solo at the same time. Geezer Butler would be proud, no doubt.

Also keeping with tradition, Church of Misery turn in one classic cover, this time thrashing through "Master Heartache" by Sir Lord Baltimore. Jesus, what an obscure fucking pick. Just another example of the actual rock pedigree lurking behind this glorious, indulgent mess plate of rock stew. Grab your damn fork.

DROWNING THE LIGHT/EVIL "A REFLECTION OF THE PAST/WHERE THE SUN WAS NEVER BORN" (Hammer of Hate)

Incredibly terrible split release from two underground legends. I wonder if Hammer of Hate even thought twice about releasing this; how it escape anyone's idea of "quality control" is beyond me. The sad thing is such small, personalized labels really have little choice once money's been invested. DTL could have turned in a recording of Azgorh taking a shit and it probably would have seen release, just to recoup some costs.

Unfortunately that comparison isn't too far off the mark. Drowning the Light's side is some of worst-recorded music i've ever heard. There's low fidelity and then there's this garbage. It sounds like someone threw a 1985 Tascam open air recorder in a cardboard box, filled it with mud and then placed it outside of the practice space with a few blankets over it while the band ripped through five songs. It's a fucking embarrassment and no amount of weak whining about holding true to old school black metal ethos could possibly justify releasing a recording that sounded this bad. Vlad Tepes had some bad sound, yes, but never this inaudible and the songs were so good that you quickly got past the lower sound quality. DTL's five songs here aren't awful (in fact, this is a more consistent release composition-wise than some previous works) but they're so poorly captured that they're more or less unlistenable. It comes off like the work of meager amateurs rather than the fruit of well-versed black metal historians. There's no shortage of huge melodic riffs here but the whole affair is so tinny and awash in room noise and unwanted reverb that it sinks into a rancid pit of worthlessness.

Evil's side fares a little better in the sound department but not much better anywhere else. For Evil (which is a terrible name) black metal begins with Burzum's first album and ends with Darkthrone's "Transylvanian Hunger"; too bad the impeccable awesomeness of those two records doesn't manifest itself anywhere in Evil's delivery. Again, the amateurish quality of the band is shocking. These guys have a discography only slightly less vast than DTL's and have been together for almost two decades; by this point in time they should be playing together as a seamless unit. Instead they sound like two nobodies who met a few months ago and decided to start as "true" a black metal band as they could. The drummer deserves special attention for his inability to keep up with the pace of the songs; too many times throughout these tracks they just fall apart into loopy ill-timed gallops until the drummer finds the pace again. It's jarring and a little pathetic and bogs all of the material down. The only track that held even a spark of interest for me was "Wolf's Blood," whose main riff is very reminiscent of Urfaust (never a bad thing) and almost hypnotic. It's followed by a second riff as cliched and obvious as the first one was cool, though, so the song goes out on a sour note.

I really expected more from both bands, and it's been awhile since i've been this disgusted by any record i've listened too. A totally inessential release.

DEAD AS DREAMS "THEIR STEPS BECOME UNBEARABLE" (Goatowarex)

Extremely perplexing Bay Area black metal, in that i'm not sure if i'm supposed to take the music on its own merits or judge it for what it so obviously is-a Weakling clone (i will not say "tribute") band. From the logo design to the lettering in the interior artwork to the band's fucking name ("Dead as Dreams" being the title of Weakling's one, mighty album) this is the work of one artist totally smitten with the legacy of another.

Weakling were a confusing entity in their own right and to this day i'm not sure if the band was meant as a joke or some sort of black metal juggernaut conceived of a different aesthetic. Certainly "Dead as Dreams" is an amazing, staggeringly involved and complex piece of black metal romanticism, an infinite hymn made up of five songs that still best almost any other music they're compared against. The album was a masterwork; beauty and progression woven hand in hand resulting in a record that was impossible to absorb in a single sitting. It's one of my own favorite albums, too, but it's so singular and visionary that any attempt at emulation could only seem postured and juvenile.

And so it is with Dead As Dreams. While the music itself is excellent, well-played (at times even attaining that elusive time-stretching quality so sought after in black metal of this type) and suitably epic (this is one 24 minute song) there's a lack of any sort of personal flourish or emotional investment that begins to manifest itself as a sort of artistic, intellectualized emptiness. When you're just trading on someone else's ideas there's really not much you can bring to distinguish yourself. I'm not sure why Dead As Dreams chose this direction, especially since there are some great moments on this record. It's intense and gargantuan throughout its exhaustive runtime and there are some instances of true beauty, especially at the 14 minute mark when acoustic guitars make an entrance and the whole track begins to evolve into a triple harmonized requiem descending into a pit of sorrow. It's the music though, the choice of notes and melodies, that make those distinctions possible-not any sort of personal/compositional connection with the material.

I understand loving certain bands. I understand how there are "those" records that mean more to you than anything else, and i understand filtering those influences into your own art and feeling a deeper connection to those sounds. I did it on the Dreamless album (Centaur's "In Streams" is still a major record for me) but never once did i feel like i was just ripping Matt Talbot off. I don't know how the guys in Dead As Dreams could possibly convince themselves they AREN'T trying to copy Weakling step by step. It's an exceptionally well-done magic jar act, but much like that evil, soulless spell it's just a habitation, an occupation, a wandering trip through someone else's unique dreamspace. You can pass yourself off to some, but those intimately acquainted with the subject will see the disconnect.

ARCANUS TENEBRAE "ODIUM IN HOMINES" (Drakkar Productions)

Crude and obscure bedroom black metal heavily indebted to the Black Legions, with the shadowy spirit of Belketre looming most ghastly. This is an extremely simplistic record, one where atmosphere and idealism factor in much more than instrumental ability or compositional skill. Almost every riff is horribly chromatic and drenched in fuzz. Guitars are way up front and the drums are poorly played at best, many times so off the beat that the song becomes a weird sort of drunken, loping loop, recycling on itself woozily until momentum brings everything rolling together again. This is an ancient style of black metal, what many would refer to as "kult" but not necessarily true.

Drakkar is one of the most interesting labels in that they have been around for a long, long time and have released some of the genre's most significant milestones. Vlad Tepes, Vermeth, Mutiilation and Torgeist all had defining releases on Drakkar and in the passing years the label has always remained true to that low-fi, alienating sound while going on to unleash albums by some of the more technically accomplished black metal bands (Grand Belial's Key, Watain, Impiety.) What has become unclear is whether the "Black Legions" sound is now nothing more than a joke or an extreme reverential nod by a band like Arcanus Tenebrae. As poorly played as the majority of this album is, i have the sneaking suspicion that the musician responsible is actually quite accomplished as an instrumentalist-you can hear slight echoes of it on tracks like "Pest" and the massive guitar layering of "Hateful Blackness In The Horizon" and the outro dirge. There's a deft hand at work there and it seems as though the rest of material is being played in an intentionally amateurish fashion, presumably to attain a more primitive and necro" sound. This speaks to the worst of black metal, a style of art that's nothing more than a genre exercise. As interesting and recidivist as this album is there's the feeling that it's just an intellectual demonstration, a tour through some fanatic's record collection, a tribute to the Black Legions that's as accomplished as the previously reviewed Drowning the Light effort, "The Blood of the Ancients."

If it isn't an elaborate and well orchestrated musical hoax, then this is an amazing trip through time. The idea that someone would still be making black metal like this without any genre touchstones is almost unfathomable. Either way, it's a confusing and engaging piece of work. If you like your black metal rough, jagged and fucking cold, then Arcanus Tenebrae is an entity worthy of your attention. If distance and dissonance are off-putting to your ears, then stay very far away. I personally commend the oblique and challenging nature of this recording but proceed with a wary caution-the time of the Legions has well since passed.

SUN CITY GIRLS "PIASA...DEVOURER OF MEN" (Abduction)

A soundtrack for an as of yet unreleased film. Being that 16 years have elapsed since the recording of this soundtrack i'd say it's likely the film is never going to actually see release. Too bad because judging from the stills it seems to be a monster movie about some sort of horrific Rodan-esque creature terrifying an island populace, all done in stop motion animation. And if the soundtrack is any indicator, it's probably totally fucked.

Unfortunately with the Sun City Girls you can't really use the music as an indicator for anything other than what they felt compelled to do. The various compositions might or might not reference what's happening on screen at any given time. If taken as a whole then the soundtrack makes more sense and that's why this album works so well as a proper release by SCG, rather than a commissioned project. It's certainly one of their more cohesive efforts, having a true sort of musical identity rather than jumping all the fuck over as many of their releases are wont to do. This music all seems given over to far east ethnic exploration, bringing to mind China and the Asiatic areas specifically. Whether that's SCG's actual intent is beyond me; i'm not a world traveler nor an expert on indigenous folk musics so all i have to go on is the general feel i get and the images that music seems to evoke. I see streams of color and a dense city plaza drowned in busy moving bodies, crowds and sweat and throngs. Smoke rising from side-alley bazaars and hungry children leering at you with knives in hand and malice in thought. The stench of shit and death and cruelty hanging in the air. The very idea of foreign-ness, the feeling of not belonging, of being totally out of your element and thrust into something dirty and weird and scary. If i let the film stills enter into it then i'm reminded a bit of the native landscapes of King Kong, a dark and strange place where wonders previously forbidden to modern eyes lurk behind walls and demand sacrifice to be summoned up.

I'm impressed that SCG were able to conjure up all of this, but not at all surprised. This is an amazing group that has always shown boundless creativity and i wholeheartedly feel that any album of theirs is worthy of purchase and exploration, no matter how fucked up or uncompromising. They're simply too good at what they do to have a single uninteresting record. Maybe the film will actually see release someday but until then this soundtrack is cinematic enough. The images it's crafted in my imagination might even be better than the film itself.