Blut Aus Nord – The Mystical Beast of Rebellion
The French scene continues to explode with a form of hateful black metal that all the kids pay top dollar for on Ebay. “The Mystical Beast of Rebellion” is my first experience with Blut Aus Nord, and I must say that I can really connect with the blatant simplicity as this album scorches with black metal purity. The riffs center around a stripped down, play the same chord for one measure affinity that is made out to sound very diseased with the dissonance of well placed, and evil harmonies that scream over the top. This element sounds more like an air raid siren, than an actual guitar “riff”, which skillfully creates mental visions of an ancient, dark and dirty Europe, firing off a siren to warn the people of an air attack. Instead of bombs, filthy carrion drop corpses filled with plague on the now alerted souls that suffer and die below them. Even with the obvious direction BAN’s music follows, one can’t help but become entranced in the hypnotic wash of drum machine programmed mayhem, and dense guitar sound that is further uglified by a screaming style that mimics the intensity of torture. If you reject the technical flair that has seemingly infected the black metal scene, “The Mystical Beast of Rebellion” is a fatal wound in the side of commercialism, to drag this potent medium of malevolent expression back down where it belongs… far underground. Blut Aus Nord is about as bleak and hateful of an entity you will find, and I’m completely impressed with the light erasing brilliance that smolders from this album like a bubbling pit of tar. – Marty
OAKEN SHIELD
Worm Gear 