Funeral Rain Press Corps

Genre: Progressive Black Metal
Label: Southern Lord

Pushing black metal into further left field regions, while keeping it firmly rooted in it’s origins can’t be an easy feat. But Wolves in the Throne Room seem to do it just fine, perhaps even making it an easy feat after three albums and two demos before Celestial Lineage.
Musically, this album is beyond what many people would call black metal. WITTR are taking cues, it seems, from Isis (whose own Aaron Turner makes chanting appearances on “Subterranean Initiation” and “Permanent Changes in Consciousness”), Xasthur, Leviathan, and even touches of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Junius with some classic American rock leanings, as well as Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Emperor, and even Dimmu Borgir at times.

The artwork for Celestial Lineage is amazing. Photographs, presumably taken near Calliope, depict a peaceful, beautiful rural setting, with Nathan and Aaron in the distance in a falling-down forest on the back cover. The sleeves for the records are equally photographed, featuring mountains, forest, and a deforested area as well. The vinyl itself for both records is some of the blackest I’ve ever seen, the sheen on it is magical, and at 180gm the platters have a good weight.
In all, it really meshes together, the physical beauty of the records and the auditory beauty that is on the records.

“Thuja Magus Imperium” is in many ways a classy black metal song. It starts off ambient-infused and has Jessika Kenney singing wonderful vocals, then Nathan takes over with his blackened lungs and riffs. A wonderful solo happens in it, which in the notes is called the “Black Acid Solo” (a perfect name for it), and it’s performed by Milky Burgess. The main riffs are reminiscent of slower Darkthrone, with a very haunting quality to it that brings Emperor’s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk to mind.
“Permanent Changes in Consciousness” is very much an ambient track, with wind and meditative chanting being the main sounds. There is a wonderful underlayer of percussion and windchime-esque sounds. Lovely, but far too short for such a great ambient gem.
“Subterranean Initiation” starts off fast and hard, keeping the wind sounds but turning them into a gale rather than a breeze. If the more cinematic elements of modern Dimmu Borgir were performed by Celtic Frost, this song might result. Very strong riff structure that moves you along, rather than allowing you to come with it, is combined with beautiful keys. All of this gets stripped away for a short time, however, and we are left with only a bare guitar momentarily, and the song slows right down for about a minute, only to return to it’s Celtic Borgir beginnings. Faith Coloccia does additional chants on this song, with Timb Harris writing and performing the “uprooting string arrangements”.
“Rainbow Illness” is another instrumental, led primarily by keys and possible field recordings. Really good, but again, too short.
“Woodland Cathedral” seems to be the baby of Jessika Kenney, with her taking control of choral vocal performance, arrangement, lyrics, and organ. The woman is amazing, her voice strong and uplifting, while her organ work really brings you down to earth. This is almost in no way a black metal song, other than the undertones of guitar, bass, and drums, which slowly come closer to the fore, which makes it even more of a black metal song, to me. This song really reminds me of parts of the Treasure album by Cocteau Twins.
“Astral Blood” starts off as a total second wave black metal song, with riffing and drumming sounding like a drier Darkthrone, until the keys kick in at least. Then it becomes all Wolves in the Throne Room. Thick vintage tone comes from their amps, and analog synths bubble up; no longer is this dry. Wet with emotion, “Astral Blood” may well be my favorite song on the album. I love the harp/wind section by Zeynep Okyu Yilmaz at the 4ish-minute mark. It’s just so moving, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else. Honestly, this whole song is like that. It definitely pulls at the heartstrings.
“Prayer of Transformation” picks up on the ending of “Astral Blood”, then morphs into it’s own lumbering beast. The entire song moves at a slow pace, bringing a doomy flavor to the occult lyrics. The synths are just brilliant, and what I think is more field recordings make quiet undercurrents throughout. There is nothing extreme about this song, except Nathan’s vocals, but the whole is extremely moving. I could sleep to this, and perhaps have the most pleasant dreams of bringing the dead back to golden life. The ending is great, with the keys and guitars coming up into a crescendo, then dropping off into ambiance for about a minute.

This is where, as the final record begins to click the fact that it is over, you turn off your record player, take off the record, put it back into its sleeve, and put the first one on the turntable again, and take the spiritual and emotional journey once, or even twice more. I could listen to this album, and only this album, for days. It is spellbinding and gorgeous. Beautiful. Perfect.
10 out of 10.

Wolves in the Throne Room on Facebook.

Genre: Black Metal, Depressive Black Metal, Post Metal, Post Rock, Shoegaze
Labels: ATMF

The crushing beauty of shoegaze and post metal combined with the savagery of raw black metal make up the first track off of Everything, “Forever Never Fails”. It’s like a year of pure urgent emotion turned into a five minute and thirteen second long song. And it alone is worth the money for the album.

“Formlessness” comes next, with very My Bloody Valentine sounding music and Sargeist/Craft vocals. If this doesn’t get your heart moving, you’re probably dead. It differs from “Forever Never Fails” primarily in the bass work, lending it less of an urgency and more of a solemnity. Oddly enough, it is also exactly five minutes and thirteen seconds long.

“Absence of Contrast” contrasts nicely with “Formlessness”, it’s piano lines and bass setting off a nice throb to inhale opium to. “We All Fall” takes a more post rock feel despite the savagery of the vocals. Spoken words make an appearance as well, an interesting and nice change up. “Nothing/Everything” takes a more depressive black metal via shoegaze feel. The keyboard work here is exemplary, taking more of a lead then a coloring overlay.

“Her Dress as a Poem, Her Death as the Night” flows with a deep melancholy, deep bass carrying you through an ocean of keys with waves of guitar crushing you down, under. This is utter depression in musical form, and it’s beautiful and cathartic, another song worthy of being worth the album’s price. I just wish it was longer.

“I am the Veil” would feel like an indie rock song if it weren’t for the key drones in the back and the blackened vocals. The keys come forward as pianos and make it even less indie rock and more post metal/depressive black. “Cold Spring” is totally the opposite, going straight for post metal/shoegaze from the start, a heart stopping vocal performance that upon repeat listens continually drags you through varying emotional states.

Despite “Cold Spring” being a great song, the final track “Rain” trumps it easily, and is one of the best songs on the album. Guitar feedback and keyboards blend over a slower, higher pitched bass line, with sung vocals making a brief appearance. The song as a whole has a feeling of a triumphant ending, which it is for the album. Wonderful.

As a whole, Everything is a gorgeous album that takes the listener through many parts of the emotional spectrum. There is joy here, there is sadness, there is anger, and there is even love. But it all takes on a melancholic darkness that is hard to shake off after listening. I highly recommend getting this, especially if you’re a fan of My Bloody Valentine, Autumn’s Grey Solace, Jesu, Darkthrone, The Cure, or Cry.

10 out of 10.

An Autumn for Crippled Children on Facebook.

Genre: Progressive Black Metal
Label: Debemur Morti

Blut Aus Nord, also known as France’s Darkthrone to some, are a fantastic band, and have been since their inception, and this re-release of their somewhat underrated 2001 album shows them at some of their most unsettling.
Odd riffs, fast drumming, and a very distinct lack of bass guitar tones (they’re really buried in there) gives the sound of very grim black metal, but it’s the avant-garde aspects of the band that are really starting to show their colors with this album, and even more so on the bonus disc.
The second CD is consisting of “The Fall: Chapter 7″ in three parts, and it’s at times extremely raw and violent black metal with parts very much an avant-garde shoegaze black metal (think of a more depressing and creepy Alcest or even Netra without the trip-hop). From what I gather, this second disc was recorded recently, for the re-release of The Mystical Beast of Rebellion, and it’s worth the price of the album alone.
If only more new black metal sounded this fresh and mind expanding.
8.5 out of 10.

Genre: Black Metal
Labels: Misantrof Antirecords, Orkestral Promenade Productions

Second wave of black metal via inspiration from Carpathian Forest and Darkthrone, Profane Prayer unleash a very intense album that’s perfect for fans of old school 90′s TNBM. It’s got practically no real bass sound, machine gun drums, and a really necro guitar tone are lead by a very intense and violent sounding vocalist.
In other words, it’s fuck near perfect! And for 10.99 including worldwide shipping, or for free as a download, you can’t really go wrong.
My favorite tracks are “Apocalyptic”, “The Widow”, and the title track.
8 out of 10.

Profane Prayer on Misantrof (download album here).
Profane Prayer on Facebook.
Profane Prayer on MySpace.

Hat are somewhat new to me, and after listening to the newest album Vortex of Hate I had a couple questions for the Norwegian duo, including the importance of True Norwegian Black Metal and Web 2.0. Answers are below, enjoy.

For starters, let’s introduce readers to you. Who is in the band, and what instruments do you two play?

The band consists of Undertrykker and Nevresch.
Nevresch: Guitar, Bass and backing vocals.
Undertrykker: Vocals, Drums and guitar.
Both of us write music, but Nevresch is by far the more productive of us.

What kinds of effects, if any, are you using on your instruments and vocals, and what kind of recording equipment do you use?

Nevresch: There are no effects used on the vocals. On the guitars we used a Zoom pedal, and for the recordings we used a Audiofire 4.

You two have been at it for awhile, since 1993, but with a 10 year hiatus. Why did you take the break, and what brought you back together to create more music?

Undertrykker: The break came because of school and life in general. We moved away from where we grew up and didn’t really have much contact with each other in this ten year period. When we met up after all this years we started discussing music straight away, and we were pretty much into the same music. I had made some riffs, and when I showed them to Nevresch he liked it a lot. We then decided to get a rehearsal place and things progressed from there.

Being a “True Norwegian Black Metal” band is sometimes less important nowadays than it was in the 80′s and 90′s. What’s your opinion on the TNBM tag?

Undertrykker: Hat is not a TNBM band, this is a tag used by Carpathian Forest, Nattefrost, Taake and some other bands as a stamp for the “True” Norwegian bands. We are not a part of that community. Being Norwegian and growing up with Darkthrone and the other great bands of the early era has of course influenced our view on what black metal should sound like. I don’t really care what country bands come from. The most important thing is whether or not they make good music.

In today’s modern world, Web 2.0, social media and social networks are taking over the way people see and interact with almost everything. How is Hat utilizing this to help spread your music?

Well we do have a MySpace page. We use this to promote our music. We are probably not the most active band on MySpace, but we do answer mail on a regular basis.

Where do the members of Hat look for inspiration? Other bands, movies, or just inside of yourselves?

Undertrykker: I get inspiration from all sorts of things. My favorite thing is to sit at public busses and just listen to all the stupid conversations common people tend to have with each other. I mean why waste your breath on talking about the weather every day of your life..

Nevresch: I get inspired in the mental state of purgatory. Inspiration has its upsides and downsides. I have to act on it, but it always brings me into katatonic chaos.

The songs on Vortex of Death are not primarily in Norwegian. Is that intentional, or do you use English because it fits the mood of the song better?

We don’t have an intentional plan that the songs should be written in English. On our first album The Demise of Mankind four of the songs are written in Norwegian, on Vortex of Death two of the songs are written in Norwegian.

Lyrically, what is your primary focus? Is there a particular theme to Hat’s lyrics?

Undertrykker: My primary focus is the annihilation of the human race. I have always been a misanthrope and my lyrics show this. I am also very fascinated by death and the suffering of others, so this is another topic that tends to reappear. Hail the mass murderers out there.

Nevresch: Annihilation and anti cosmic prayers.

Do you two work day jobs, or are you career musicians?

We both have day jobs.

What other bands are you currently involved with?

Nevresch: I have a project called Det Vidaapne Gap. It is a project in development. This is not the traditional kind of Black Metal. I prefer calling it Introverted Apocalyptic Metal. The whole composing drains me, so its a prolonged process.

For those that have never heard Hat before, who would you compare yourselves musically to?

The reviews tend to mention Gorgoroth, and other second wave black metal bands.

Finally, is there anything else you’d like to add to this?

Check out Abyss Records, they have all the Hat merchandise available: t-shirts, patches and of course our albums.
Thanks for your interest.