Twilight Actor To Star As Infamous Black Metal Killer Varg Vikernes.
A star from the teeny Vampire flick is to star as the former Burzum frontman.
Tag Archive for 'Black Metal'
In the last two decades a bizarre and violent musical subculture called Black Metal has emerged in Norway. It has its roots in a heady blend of splatter movies, heavy metal music, Satanism, Pagan mythology and adolescent angst. In the early-mid 1990’s, members of this extremist underground committed murder, burned down medieval wooden churches, and desecrated graveyards. What started as juvenile frenzy came to symbolize the start of a war against Christianity, a return to the worship of the ancient Norse gods, and the complete rejection of mainstream society.
American documentary photographer Peter Beste has spent the last eight years working in the milieu of this insulated and secretive community. Beste’s access and insight into this community has been without precedent, resulting in an amazing photographic journey. Beste has earned the respect and trust of this impenetrable, suspicious and often elitist society. True Norwegian Black Metal is a visual testimonial to this subculture. Peter Beste and editor Johan Kugelberg have created a unique photographic narrative that explores black metal from a truly visceral perspective.
The book will include 126 Norwegian Black Metal Photographs; an introduction by Metalion of Slayer Magazine; Essays by Editor Johan Kugelberg and Peter Beste; 3 Panel foldout black metal time line by Tara G Warrior; 32 page section of old black metal ephemera including rare and obscure photographs, flyers, letters, and interviews.
Regular hardcover edition can be purchased for $38.40 on Amazon.
Check out more of Peter’s photography on his website or his MySpace.
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.
Former Celtic Frost frontman Tom Gabriel Fischer has announced the formation of his new band, TRIPTYKON. Check out the group’s logo at this location. The first audio sample, a track called Cucifixus, can be heard on Triptykon’s official MySpace page.
Commented Fischer: “Triptykon will sound as close to Celtic Frost as is humanly possible, and the album I am working on will feature all the material I envisioned for the successor to [Celtic Frost's] ‘Monotheist’. I desire the album to be a darker, heavier, and slightly more experimental development of ‘Monotheist’.
“‘Cucifixus’ is but one of many compositions to that end. TRIPTYKON is not defined by just this one song, however, just like Celtic Frost was not defined by ‘Totengott’ alone.”
Fischer announced his departure from Celtic Frost last month, citing “the irresolvable, severe erosion of the personal basis so urgently required to collaborate within a band so unique, volatile, and ambitious.”
“I have always seen the ‘Monotheist’ album as a mere beginning, and a tame one at that,” he explained. “My mind and spirit are full of energy, creativity, and ideas. Celtic Frost had become the unreserved focus of my life for the second time. I was looking forward immeasurably to working on the next Celtic Frost album. To me, it needed to be darker, heavier, and more experimental than ‘Monotheist’.
“And yet, Celtic Frost consisted of three individuals, and I was only one of them. In the end I had to concede to myself that there was no other option.”
Fischer added, “Artistically, I did not want to leave Celtic Frost at all; I have never been happier with the music and creativity in the band. I saw ‘Monotheist’ as only the first of hopefully several distinctive albums by this group. I thus plan on continuing exactly in the artistic vein of Celtic Frost. I had very a distinct vision of what the next two Celtic Frost albums might consist of, and I intend to eventually fulfill this vision and complete these albums with a new group. I would also like to continue touring and perform the music I have written in Celtic Frost over the years for audiences all across the globe.”
It was reported earlier in the year that Celtic Frost was putting together an album tentatively titled “Monotheist Companion” that will feature unreleased songs from 2006’s “Monotheist” sessions and rearrangements of tracks from the album. The disc is tentatively due in the summer.
Vox Populi