MetalSucks

Am I the only one here that thinks that American bands shouldn’t be allowed to wear corpse paint? There should be a law in the metal books that states it. There’s some rules that us American metalheads must follow, like the famous “Don’t Wear Your Own Band’s Shirt Law,” for instance. It doesn’t apply to Europeans and that’s okay, they’ve got their own set of laws. It applies to us, though, and when you break it, people get to talking.

Well, I think that corpse paint should fall under the “Must Never Be Applied To The Face Of An American” law. I think it should be punishable by excommunication from the community. I’ve got my reasons.

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Chocolate chips pancake. Black coffee. Burnt toasts with butters. No fruits. Empty calories ist krieg.

Speakings of “Empty”: this ist inspired by my friends, Satan Rosenbloom. May it sends you to an early graves.

-NC

Emperor, Prometheus – The Discipline of Fire & Demise (Candlelight, 2001)
Ihsahn – Vocals/Guitars/Synths/Bass/Programming
Samoth – Guitars
Trym – Drums
Produced by Ihsahn

Screw you guys. Emperor don’t need your stupid list of the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century. They probably don’t give a fuck about how they’re remembered, and not just because they’ve had convicted arsonists, murderers and flying elves in their ranks. Emperor had achieved legendary status long before Prometheus – The Discipline of Fire & Demise was conceived by main man Ihsahn, so perhaps the only place to go was bigger, grander, more complex. Lucky for Ihsahn that his bandmates Samoth and Trym were busy getting their blackened death metal project Zyklon off the ground – there are very few checks to Ihsahn’s grandiose ambitions on Prometheus. The album is the sound of a master metal craftsman, lost in his own imagination, polishing and tweaking and overdubbing until every last detail gleams like obsidian.

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Since its inception in the late ‘80s, black metal has been one of the most rigid genres in terms of evolution and change. While bands like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, and Behemoth trumpet the genre through its larger than life, orchestral origins, black metal’s “elite” have gained their notoriety through either a) being a part of the original church-burning generation and altering their sound as little as possible or b) miming the original church-burning generation as closely as possible, right down to the tape hisses and wall of buzz saw guitars. But after nearly two decades of existence and reverence in the metal and music worlds as a whole, many bands have moved away from their restrictive lo-fi roots and come to embrace different influences, resources, and inspirations. The band that has best exemplified this move from their base to the outer limits is Enslaved, one of Norway’s longest running black metal bands. Before American upstarts Nachtmytsium made it cool to melt your Burzum and Pink Floyd records together, Enslaved were dabbling in the dark power of psychedelia on Below the Lights and ISA. Though those who take black metal seriously insist that sticking to their guns has been the key to longevity, its shifts in sounds and ideologies has been what’s kept it alive. Those shifts have been most solidly illustrated by Enslaved, and has resulted in one of the most impressively consistent discographies in metal, right up through their latest genre-bending triumph Vertebrae.

Grutle Kjellson, Enslaved’s bass player and lead vocalist, has been with the band since the beginning. In an interview he was kind enough to grant MetalSucks via phone from his home in Norway, he talks about the importance of looking forward creatively, what influenced Vertebrae, working with longtime bandmate Ivar Bjornson in Enslaved and their experimental metal side project Trinacria, the overall importance of Pink Floyd on his band’s sound, and the fans that only want to hear songs off of their early ‘90s demos at their shows.

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There’s a long history of a front man striking out on his own, with results both equal (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Morrissey, King Diamond, etc.) and horribly inferior (hey, didn’t Bruce Dickinson make some solo albums?) to their original band’s output. So in theory, Ihsahn – the former/current front man of Emperor, one of the essential jewels in the True Norwegian Black Metal crown – had the odds against him: his post-Emperor output had varied from an aborted project with Rob Halford to being in a goth-metal band with his wife to giving guitar lessons in his hometown. His decision to wait 5 years before releasing a solo album was seemingly odd, and results were mixed. But with this year’s angL, Ihsahn’s second solo effort, do we finally get an idea of what that dude from Emperor has been up to as opposed to what that guy Vegard from Norway has been doing in between shoveling his driveway and helping Bjorn learn his minor scales. With enough blackened majesty to remind us why we loved him in the first place alongside new influences to keep the record from being a rehash of his former glory, angL is a layered, intense album that unfolds with repeated listens while still managing to impress from the get-go.

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I somehow missed this story until I was browsing Metal Injection last night, but there’s been another twist in the saga that is the young band Abigail Williams. A statement on the band’s MySpace blog reads as follows:

“We’re currently working through the pre-production stage of our yet-to-be-titled full-length album due out through Candlelight Records later this year. James Murphy (Daath, Resurrection, Rise) will be producing the effort set to be tracked this Feb/March in Florida. We’re excited to announce that the drumming on this album will be handled by the legendary Trym (Emperor, Zyklon). Our previous drummer, Zach Gibson, has recently parted ways with the band and we wish him the best of luck in the future. The current lineup also features the return of original keyboard player, Ellyllon. A new pre-production demo titled ‘Floods’ has been posted on our page, which features Zach Gibson on drums, but will be re-recorded by Trym on the actual full-length release. Let us know what you think!”

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