Time to return to the Members' Top Ten, and sample three more of Frownland's selection. Well, two, as I already reviewed one last year...
On to number six, where we find a band who had the dubious distinction of being the ones whose album launched my “Love or Hate?” thread...
A Blaze in the Northern Sky --- Darkthrone --- 1992
I don't recall being very impressed with
Transilvanian Hunger. but has my newfound semi-appreciation of/tolerance for Black Metal changed that I wonder? Thanks for that, Frown! A ten-minute opener? Still, at least there are only six tracks! Sounds pretty evil I must say.... dark mass evil. And here come the guitars in overdrive. You know, looking back over my “Love or Hate?” thread, I see I actually enjoyed that other album of theirs. Had it not been for the vocals I would not have given it the first Hate rating. But of course it's the same here; dark, screechy growled vocals I can't make out at all, and I must admit, the music, thus far is not a patch on
Transilvanan Hunger (heh! TH! Never noticed that before!)
Yeah, not a lot to write home abut here.
Second track is a lot better, has a nice sort of anthemic, marching feel to it. Speeds up later, but still pretty good. Yeah, you know, this is getting better as it goes along. Mostly. It's loud and raw and vicious, and I have NO idea what's being sung, but I'm kinda grooving to it. “Where cold winds blow” is pretty badass I must say. Yeah, if you want your Black Metal brutal and uncompromising, this is probably where to start. Bitchin', with a sideorder of Satan.
And so on to number five, which is apparently labelled as one of the most challenging, difficult albums in the genre. Sounds like fun!
Obscura --- Gorguts --- 1998
“Experimental and dissonant melodies”, they tell me. “Strange rhythms”, they tell me. “A work of great depth and vision”, they tell me. “One of metal's most techical and complex albums”, they tell me. We'll see. Lot of stopping and starting, bit annoying. Vocals are of course not what I like, but other than that, meh so far. Hmm, sounded like violin there. Maybe I've been working too hard... Holy good f
uck! We're FOUR tracks in and I haven't really heard anything much I can remark upon. I haven't heard
any challenging rhythms, experimental signatures, technical changes. Of course, I'm not a musician, so maybe these are more detectable and obvious if you play, but I just don't see it personally.
Okay, “Clouded” is a much, much, much slower track, more like Doom Metal, plodding along at a snail's pace, but I have to say the overall feeling I'm getting here is boredom. It's just ... there's nothing to keep my attention. If this were a Torture Chamber album it wouldn't really work, because I don't hate it, I just ... it just makes very little impression on me. It's like someone roaring to get my attention and I just don't want to make eye contact. Noisy, chaotic, loud, yes. Interesting? No. Not to me. There's some good guitar histrionics in “Subtle body”, to be fair, but nothing else impresses me. I'm just glad that's over.
Yeah, got nothing out of that. I wasn't repulsed, scared, just bored. I could not separate one song from another, and I certainly could not and will not remember any of the tracks on this album. The last one though had the most appropriate title: “Sweet silence”. Amen!
Like I say, Frown picked for his number four an album I extensively reviewed last year in Metal Month II, Mastodon's
Blood Mountain, so I'm not going over that again thank you very much. That takes us to his top three, which we'll be tackling on Wednesday.