The Batlord

For obvious reasons, Absurd's music has often been overshadowed by their history of murder and Nazism---drummer Hendrik Möbus is perhaps the second most infamous person in all of metal, after Varg Vikerness himself. But if you can separate the reprehensible artists from the music itself, you'll find a special band who is legitimately notable for their (occasionally) quality output.

This was originally released as an EP, but I'm using the expanded, remastered version, which is basically a full-length. Earlier in their career they played a scuzzy, punked-up version of black metal, and later a much more melodic form, but here, rather than your standard, Norwegian style of tremolo-laced, dissonant, Darkthrone worship, Absurd play a primitive black metal, not at all that far removed from Mayhem's Deathcrush album, albeit with a more epic, warlike touch. It's no less unpleasant though, and if you like your black metal ugly and sloppy rather than just plain unlistenable for the sake of being unlistenable, then this is not to be missed.

I imagine Wpnfire might be highly interested, assuming he can ignore the lyrics; of course they're sung in German anyway, so I can't even be sure how much of it is legitimately National Socialist---though "Crux Gammata", which is technically an instrumental, is clearly impossible to deny as it's just the band riffing over samples from Hitler speeches. Those riffs are just so ****ing heavy and brutal though, and if you're the right kind of terrible person---like me---the samples add a certain flavor of wrongness that is just too intriguing to be cast aside. How this album was ever allowed to be released in Germany, with it's strict censorship of Nazi imagery and speech, is beyond me, though it was subsequently banned in 2010.

Regardless, lyrics and band history aside, I legitimately consider this a great release that I'd take over 95% of any other black metal albums. And since this thread is about albums you should hear before you die, I figure this is a corner of the metal universe that should be explored by any metalhead, even if only to say you did.




P.S. And yes, that second cover has swastikas.

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