Hellébore / Organisation Calvaire – Table Rase

Anybody remember the Canadian black metal band Hellébore that I wrote about a while back? That cassette was really neat and left me wanting for more, but noting new seemed to spring forth from them. Until that fateful day when I came across Mr. V from the French experimental un-orthodox black metal project Organisation Calvaire, who whispered softly about an amalgamation of old and new ways of the dark sonic arts. And now the time is here to finally hear what that most unholy of collaborations has begotten!

La Sonorité Jaune – Soundtrack For Breathing Structures / Parallel Soundtracks

Dark and dreary atmosphere, slow menacing drones, inhuman and industrial sounds, and an ending of madness and depravity… This is my sonic safe space!

Organisation Calvaire – Impardonnable | Urbansvart – Translucide

Alright, before I scramble together a list of the best whatever albums of last year, let’s take a quick little listen to two French black/prog? metal project I’ve been meaning to have written about quite a while back. Organisation Calvaire and Urbansvart by Kalvr!

By the way, what was the deal with 2015? For some reason I’ve never put any mind to the year albums were released last year so I can barely remember any released in 2015… I know it’s been a good year for experimental music, but it feels like nothing was released. But, maybe I’ve just gotten a brain tumor and had a music memory lapse.  Forget it, let’s listen to Diapsiqui- I mean Organisation Calvaire!

Å / Ecoute la Merde – 7″ split

Oh right, I’m supposed to write stuff here, sorry ’bout that, been a bit lazy lately.

I had a conversation recently with a friend about band names, and we got on to the topic of the frequent usage by bands of “exotic” letters, like, Ö, Æ, and Ø. A lot of bands use them liberally, and often use them to replace letter like, A , E, O, making their names quite fun to say using the correct pronunciation. All of these “exotic” letter come from the Scandinavian alphabet, however, a specific letter has been left in the dark and there is almost no bands that use this letter in their name; Å.

I like the letter “å”, it’s very aesthetically beautiful, the sharp geometric lines of the “A” with the perfect halo crowning it. Very nice! It also has many different meanings to it, just the letter alone. It can be an exasperation of ultimate pleasure, or of defeat and hopelessness. Beautiful and meaningful, why haven’t more bands used it?

Well, I know of a label, and also a band, both called Åderlåtning, which is Swedish for bloodletting. The label is Swedish and focusing on obscure, small editions of experimental tape music, and they are great! I recommend you give them a gander here! The band is a dark ambient/industrial act which I haven’t listened to any extended period, but they were pretty alright I seem to recall.

A while back I came across a video on YouTube of a live recording of a one man project called simply Å. It was pretty standard HN stuff with a good sound to them. But I didn’t find much information on them and I have since lost the video and trying to find it again seems pretty futile… Also I think they were from Italy. Flash forward to last week and the Lithuanian label Terror got a 7″ split in their distro, and what do you know, one of the two artists featured on the vinyl was named, simply, Å. Needless to say, I immediately ordered a copy!

I did some research(checked Discogs) and found that this Å is a HNW from France, and has been quite productive on a couple of labels. The most frequent being the French AnarchoFreaksProduction. This split I got was released by AnarchoFreaksProduction and Underground Pollution Records, and also features Ecoute la Merde, another quite prolific HN artist.

Both tracks are straight up harsh noise walls with little variation, Ecoute la Merde being the most sonicly diverse. This is not very nice music, but boy is it powerful! It feels quite weird trying to describe and compare HNW records, since they all, for the most part, are so similar to their sound, but if you know what harsh noise wall is you already know what you are getting into. All in all, solid HNW by good artist, and if anyone has a spare copy of any Å albums out there, I’d be happy to take care of them!

Discogs/AnarchoFreaksProduction/Underground Pollution Records

Overmars – Born Again

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Overmars is a quite interesting metal/sludge/doom/electronic/among other elements of different genres band, from Lyon, France, which formed in 2001 and have released a bunch of splits and two full-length. Born Again was released on the now defunct label Appease Me…, which has released some editions of Blut Aus Nord: The Work That Transforms God, Thematic Emanation of Archetypal Multiplicity and the first releases of Monolithe’s albums. It’s a shame the label has closed but fortunately Debemur Morti became the new home for Blut Aus Nord. Born Again has also been released as vinyl on the label Bipolar Dictatorship and as digipak on Crucial Blast.

Overmars consist of three stable members (and a bunch of other members), one of which is a member of another band called Veuve SS, which is a small, decent punk/hardcore band with a quite nice sound to them. But I won’t talk about them (not yet at least…).

Shrine of the Northern Blood, Epitome VI: The Eye – Supremacy

Time once more to bask in the glory of Vindsval and dream of what once was…

Supremacy is Vindsval’s second and last release as The Eye and perhaps one of his last “traditional” sounding black metal albums before he returned to the sound with What Once Was… and Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With the Stars. Supremacy is heavy on machine drums and synthesized sounds and have a quite mellow overall feel to it.

The CNK – Ultraviolence Über Alles – Übercharged Edition

The CNK(The Cosa Nostra Klub) formed in 1996, after Hreidmarr got kicked out of the band Malevilance for being too bossy, and after he got kicked out he stived to create the “dirtiest, meanest and most borderline black metal band ever.” At the time there weren’t many electronic metal bands available in the French metal scene, and gained a small notice when they released their first album Ultraviolence Über Alles in 2002. But since they didn’t have a steady line-up they couldn’t preform for quite a while, and disappeared. Until 2007, when they finally got their members together and released the album L’Hymne à la Joie. Now they have signed with the great label Season of Mist and re-released Ultraviolence Über Alles.

Shrine of the Northern Blood, Epitome IV: Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Ages

This is it. This is the album that made med fall in love with black metal for ever! This is the greatest record there is, and will always be. Ever since that faithful day I stumbled upon it on my hard drive, my preception of black metal, and all music, was forever changed. I saw the dark light of the majesty of Vindsval.

It was released 1996 and it would take 13 years for Blut Aus Nord to perfect the sequel, and wise Odin, did the live up to it!

The fantastic drumming from W.D. Feld, which already on this album shows the unique syle of his, is absolutely sublime. The otherworldly melodies from the keyboards and guitars plays a much lager role than in other BM bands. Fucking awesome riffs and the way the guitar and drums flows together is nothing short of genial. And not to mention the brutal growls and choir, prefect!

This is also the only release from Blut Aus Nord to have the lyrics published. Fully packed with slaughter, talking ravens, dwarfs and revenge most glorious!

Memoria Vetusta I is my benchmark for all old style/true black metal, and to this day some bands have come close to the majesty of this album but no one have surpassed it, and I think no one ever will.

If you call yourself a black metal fan and have not listened to this album, you are a hypocrite and should be punished! If you don’t like it and it makes your ears hurt, you can just shuffle back to your fucking manufactured pop drivel and Biber fags, and leave the real music to the real people!

1. Slaughterday (The Heathen Blood of Ours)
2. On the Path of Wolf… Towards Dwarfhill
3. Sons of Wisdom, Master of Elements
4. The Forsaken Voices of the Ghostwood’s Shadowy Realm
5. The Territory of Witches/Guardians of the Dark Lake
6. Day of Revenge (The Impure Blood of Theirs)
7. Fathers of the Icy Age

Label/Encyclopaedia Metallum 

Murmuüre – S/T

A french esoteric/ambient/raw black metal album from the whispers of a unknown Frenchman. This is probably the one and only album that will be relased by Murmuüre.

Based on a single hour long guitar improvisation, then edited and re-worked for 3 years. The drums is a mixture of programmed drums and some live drumming. Vocals were recorded during a cathartic trance at a sacred place in the forest, with a mini-disc recorder. Being almost inaudible in the music, they’re strictly conceived as a vocal sigil technique, a vehicle for intent. To summarize, this man does not do something half-assed!

The album is heavily atmospheric and features some insanely distorted guitars and leaves you enchanted in its fantastic soundscape. Right from the start of Primo Vere, with its sharp whistling bells,  you get lost in another plane of hearing. The harshness, brutality and depth of the guitars on Reincarnate is absolutely spot on, and is a prime exampel of the absolute splendor of black metal!

Torch Bearer is a calm and cold song to wind down the chaos and prepare you for Amethyst. At this point the resemblance to Sunn O))) is almost undeniable, but Murmuüre goes a step further and the excellent drums lifts Amethyst and L’adieu Au Soleil among the style of post-black metal, á la Pyramids and Nadja.
It all ends with Disincarnate and the sound of flies and Rigsthula of Blut Aus Nord.

This album is a must for any fan of raw and atmospheric black metal!

1. Primo Vere
2. Reincarnate
3. Torch Bearer
4. Amethyst
5. L’adieu Au Soleil
6. Disincarnate

Buy/Encyclopaeida Metallum

Shrine of the Northern Blood, Epitome III: Blut Aus Nord – Ultima Thulée

The first album released after the name change from Vlad. It is very much in the vein of the works released during Vlad and he has recruted W.D. Feld on the drums and keyboard.

Before we get to the album itself, we have to take a short history lesson to better understand some of the possible controversy surrounding certain themes that may be brought up while talking about BM and the frozen north. The name of the album is a term originated from old European literature and maps and is used to describe a region to the far north. Modern interpretations identify Ultima Thule as Norway, Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands and Scandinavia. While the term used to stand for the northernmost region on the map, the Nazi occultists believed in a historical Thule/Hyperborea as the origin of the “Aryan race”. This belief originates from the thoroughly discredited Oera Linda Book “found” by Cornelis Over de Linden during the 19th Century. Since then the term has been associated with Neo-Nazis and National-socialists even though it has nothing to do with those horrendous values.
Here in Sweden the term Ultima Thule is quite controversial because of a band named after it and the band’s supposedly racist themes and lyrics. They gained a following from right-extremists and considered by the public to be racist because their frequent use of Swedish patriotism(every Swede knows it is wrong to be proud of our land). But the band themselves denounce that they are racist and to have a neo-nazi affiliation.

But enough attention the the hateful spewing mongrels and back to the wonderful music of Blut Aus Nord.

Any fan of old and true black metal will love this release; the pounding drums, the sweeping melodies and excellent vocals makes the album one of the finest examples from the french wave of black metal.
The Son of Hoarfrost starts of the album and immediately they start of with some notes from a mystical keyboard, and that will be the thing that sets the album far above mediocrity. The song itself is solid and incorporates all the elements to show in the album.
The Plain of Ida is immensely beautiful with a almost church like organ playing wondrous melodies of vast landscapes of esoteric beauty, while Vindsval sings of tales long lost. This is one of the highlights of the voyage and a must listen!
My Prayer Beyond Ginnungagap is a ambient piece, filled only with the harmonics of a forlorn prayer and by Odin, is it soulful! It is also the only song to have the lyrics printed.

Every respectful black metal fan must own this album and it is a good start to get in to the masterful works of Vindsval!

I. The Son of Hoarfrost
II. The Plain of Ida
III. From Hlidskjalf
IV. My Prayer Beyond Ginnungagap
V. Till I Perceive Bifrost
VI. On the Way to Vigrid
VII. Rigstula
VIII. The Last Journey of Ringhorn

Buy/Label/Encyclopaedia Metallum