These Oslo rockers list their influences as Black Flag and Black Sabbath. End result: I lost track of how many great riffs happened on this record. Great vocal performance, stellar artwork and a really organic production. Recommended!
Wolf's Lair Abyss seems to get short shrift in the Mayhem discography, and understandably so. It was the follow-up to a record that couldn't possibly be followed up (De Mysteriis dom Sathanas) and preceded one that bitterly divided the band's fanbase (Grand Declaration of War). You can feel both of those albums trying to pull Wolf's Lair Abyss to their side. In the futuristic touches of the intro and the cold, mechanical production you can hear where the band is headed but in many of the riffs - most notably much of "Ancient Skin" - you can clearly hear where they have been. I think Wolf's Lair Abyss is better than just a transitional album though. As with every Mayhem release there is a lot of thought and creativity put into it and they have certainly never been afraid to take risks. Bonus points for a stellar layout on the CD from Mr. Stephen O'Malley himself.
Yet another entry in Lasse Marhaug's infinite discography. This release finds the Norwegian noise maven collaborating with organist Nils Henrik Asheim in Oslo Cathedral. It could have been a nearly nonsensical pairing but we find Marhaug in a gentler-than-usual mood here, generally avoiding the harshness that he is usually associated with. I really like the interweaving of the analog and digital domains, two eras finding ways to complement and augment the other's world as they move through soft drones to shattering crescendos, searching, searching, searching...
Fucking BLISTERING political grind from Norway. I think that 625 or somebody was supposed to put this out on CD but it looks like that never happened, so I ripped the LP. The crowning achievement here is the 10+ minute "Klæbukrønikene" which spirals upwards to a jaw-dropping climax. Dude seriously wrote a 10 minute grind song that's great from start to finish. Who does that? If there is better grind currently being played by anybody anywhere, I am not aware of it.
Of all the Black Metal bands that came out of Norway in the '90s, I think Aeternus is the most underrated. In fact in over 10 years of jocking this band furiously, I cannot remember offhand anybody ever saying "Yeah, I've listened to that them!'. Aeternus does a lot of things and does them all well. There are distinct elements of black metal, death metal, doom, viking metal and folk music. Right now you're probably thinking "Dude, almost every band ever has claimed to mix a million styles, and they're all either lying or terrible". This is true. But all those bands weren't Aeternus. I can't think of a single band that really sounds like this. The drums are punishing, the vocals are commanding and fucking IMMENSE, and the writing displays a keenly developed sense of structure as well as an eloquent, mournful melodic slant. The only knock on it is the muddy Greighallen production that was par-for-the-course at this point. ...And So the Night Became in it's entirety is majestic and monolithic, and feels like a mere fraction of it's hour-long runtime.
