It was a toss up between this and the fantastically titled Fucked on a Pile of Corpses. As you can see I chose the former. And this was because as much as I was amused by Monsieur Bower's supreme take on black metal, lo-fi and noise I found IIIrd Gatekeeper (hEADdIRT, 1992 / CD), well a tad more enjoyable. There, I said it. And to clarify things, by enjoyable you by no means are to deduce that this is easy listening. The rhythm section here remains basic and un-intrusive - it can be dynamic where it has to be, such as in Saturnalia where you get the tension-building drum rolls, but this only happens sporadically. The driving impetus is provided through Bower's restless guitarwork which serves as a platform for oneiric explorations across different scales and melodies. It's a seemingly spare setup compared to your typical rock ensemble but it works wonders; sheer sonic dissonance meshes seamlessly with repeated guitar phrases (some of which tonally flirt quite conspicuously with Sabbath's early dirges) to produce a hypnotic confluence of sound from which it is almost impossible to escape. An album with some serious repeat playing time potential indeed.
"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?"
- Stanisław Lem
If the pessimists are right and Western Civilisation really is destined towards decay and oblivion then SPK's Leichenschrei (Thermidor, 1982 / vinyl; The Grey Area, 1992 / CD re-issue) is but one of its most piercing death throes. Epitomizing the cold, almost inhuman, texture of industrial soundscapes, its an album that channels a vision of a future than nobody wants to live through. At times it even feels claustrophobic and distressing like you're caught in some sort of existential Kafka-esque nightmare. They even, notoriously I might add, provide instructions on how to make napalm embedded in one of the tracks as if to accelerate the inevitable decline. As far as industrial is concerned this is what pretty much did it for me; this is where I finally got it.
The offspring of a febrile underground pregnant with creativity and hunger to make something out of the ordinary, Necromantia's demo tape (Self-released, 1993) remains a most convincing testament to that enormously productive, and influential, period of black metal. Atmosphere was the name of the game and this band had it in spades. The warm bass-lines, commingling with the early usage of keyboards, make the absence of a traditional guitar unnoticeable and setup a hair-raising nocturnal feel for the compositions which was the band's calling card back in those days. Totally indispensable stuff if you're into the early Hellenic black metal scene.
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