To state the bleeding obvious, Black Metal as a musical genre, has always been a strange beast. On the outside it has a look of menacing insanity. Intense visuals and controversial blasphemous overtones that one would expect to hear the Fallen One, Lucifer himself pour out of the speakers. But the opposite is true. In most instances it sounds banal, juvenile and is almost often a parody of itself. Seriously, how many more music videos can one watch of a bunch of pansy, pasty faced dweebs in their ‘corpse paint’ running amok through the cold forests of Europe singing incoherant screeches into ram skulls? And all the while, said dweebs think that by playing as fast as is humanly (or otherwise) possible makes their music ‘Heavy’. Power and dynamics are thrown completely out the door. Melody is about as welcome as your local vicar and song structure is as rancid as a nun’s twat. In short, it comes across as weak and lacking any sort of musical substance.
But for the gazillion wannabes trekking the snow covered extremities of Northern Europe, the blood spattered cream always rises to the top. And at the top awaits Satyricon.
In this age of the digital download, music has become a disposable commodity. No one takes the time to fully ingest an album… to learn its secrets, to listen out for notes and all sorts of musical nuances. It has to be a pretty special release to keep one interested for more than a few listens yet Satyricon’s ‘The Age of Nero’ has hardly left the iPod. This is the finest Black Metal release since Celtic Frost’s brilliant Monotheist of a couple of years ago. In fact in places, it reminds me a lot of Frost’s stylings.
‘Last Man Standing’ has an awesome Celtic Frost groove and feel. Throughout the course of the track one keeps expecting to hear the mighty Tom Warrior gives us his obligatory “Oooh!”. The track has such an old-school Black Metal feel permeating throughout. Killer riff which repeats and repeats over a steady and slow beat. Just insane mosh material here!
There is hardly a weak moment on this album which kicks off with three gems, the brutal ‘Commando’ seeps menacingly into ‘Wolfpack’ and when you’re barely coming up for air it all leads wonderfully into the first single ‘Black Crow On A Tombstone’!
This is all beginning to reek of ‘Album of the Year’ for yours truly, and that’s a stench that brings a smile to one’s face.
