Crude black and white artwork, totally illegible band logos... ahhh, yes, this is primal black metal, boys and girls.? Grenjar (Norway) takes side A with the brilliant "An Eldre Kunst", which is precisely the kind of back metal that I adore: Midpaced, pounding, hateful, and raw as shit.? I have to confess that the recording is way harsher than I'd prefer, but I'll live with it for songwriting this powerful.? In my opinion black metal is almost always at its coldest and most spitefully oppressive when it's fairly slow and persistent, just like this.? The rhythm is simple and never shifts, just beating you again and with a 4/4 dirge and a little added dissonance, while the vocals fight their way up from the background.? There's a ton of tinny high-end to the recording, so the bass, drums, and vocals are all resting under an almost excruciating veil of harsh treble, but like I said... the song is fuckin' great, so deal with it!? Kargvint (Germany) takes side B with "Stimmen Aus Der Tiefe" and follows a very similar road of harsh and repetitious black metal, though there's a little more variation in tempo and it sounds like there's some violin or something in there as well.? The overall speed is a little faster here, with the drums taking a more basic and restrained path than the guitars.? The screaming vocals are a little more prominent in the mix, and the guitars are actually sort of hard to decipher since they're so noisy and the violin (or whatever) melodies are pretty prominent.? I love the way things slow down towards the end as the vocals get really unhinged and just go nuts with tortured, reverberated screams.? Very nice.? As mentioned the sleeve is a somewhat crude black and white affair that's professionally printed but has a basic layout with dirty images of desolate landscapes and a couple of corpsepainted faces and whatnot.? Grenjar includes lyrics (in Norwegian), but there's not much to go on otherwise.? The inner sleeve is hand-numbered of a mere 300 copies and I believe this is already out of print.? I'm really into this though, and I'd like to hear more from both of these bands.? This is definitely my kind of black metal.? Awesome.
[Lyderhorn]
Running time - 12:00 (approximately), Tracks: 2
[Notable tracks: both bands are awesome]
Lyderhorn Records - [email protected]
