black metal

I've already made a blog post about this album. You can find it here, here's an excerpt from my blog, plus a couple of thoughts at the end.

Il Était Une Forêt…

The metal archives hates reviews that take the album “track by track” but I don’t care, so I’m doing just that.

Cicatrices

I play these when I go to sleep, the track “Cicatrices” grabbed my attention. We have those screams at 3:30, then get ready for it, that riff at 4:29? I always sway my head and shoulders along it, it sounds like everything is falling apart, and it’s just oh, so beautiful. I swear I’m gonna create a hall of riffs that every time I hear, I need to stop everything I’m doing and vibe to them. You just can’t listen to that 4:29 without paying attention to it. Plus the piano that joins in at that part. F-uck-ing. Just wow.

Veux-Tu Danser

The intro is haunting. Baby sounds, and little baby song chimes. I love it when artists sample stuff about childhood, and when they sample it well, it works amazingly. Like that one time Lifelover sampled “Emil i Lönneberga - Bom sicka bom” at the end of “Nackskott”? Just haunting, to hear a happy innocent song play in such a gut-wrenching album. I’ll make a post about bands sampling cool stuff.

Apparently the track translates to “Do You Want to Dance?” (hah!) after that riff in Cicatrices? I’ll take you up on that offer!

All in all the album is haunting, beautiful, brutal, and of course depressive. I will be looking like this when I read the name “GRIS”

Anyway it's been almost two months since I've listened to that album, I still come back to it. I started appreciating the other tracks as well Le Gala Des Gens Heureux and Profonde Misanthropie are great as well. I cannot seem to describe it for I lack the necessary knowledge and terminology but good god is a depressing.

Also wow I just looked at the translation of the track names:

1. Once upon a Forest...
2. The Reception of Happy People
3. Scar
4. Do You Want to Dance?
5. Deep Misanthropy
6. The Dryad

Bandcamp, Metal Archives, Youtube

I've always wondered why the Cthulhu mythos were never incorporated into black metal. It has anything that I would expect out of the genre, rituals, horrors, madness, etc.

And The Great Old Ones do a great job of painting exactly that, I wasn't into Post Black Metal, sure I had the odd singles here and there, but I never really listened to a Post Metal album. After listening to this, I even got to listen to Ausserwelt by Year Of No Light, and the two artists seem similar.

I even consider" Al Azif" to be a DSBM record, it's so bleak. Since I don't understand much about song structure apart from "Good riff", I'll be taking a look at the lyrics.

At first we got the lyrics for "Al Azif", it describes the story of the person who wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon a book that details everything about these ancient gods. In that track, our character, Abdul Alhazred, goes fucking insane. We got lines like

Al Azif

In this desert for 40 days

Voices tell me the ways

...

Sitting on the edge of a dune, they dictate to me

Like whispers of Jinns they force me to write

...

Incantations to invoke these gods

Cursed bible, obscene words

Alone in the desert I lose my sanity

And I write the end of humanity

No place to escape

I'm no more than a shape

...

Now they found me in the crowd

Invisibles, they devour me

I would end up in a shroud

No one can help me

For me these seem like DSBM lyrics, they're bleak, they're desperate, they're dreadful.

Listen to "The Truth" and you will find yourself screaming "I'm not crazy" in no time.

The Truth

I know we are not alone

Operating me will change nothing

Ignoring the king on this throne

And one day he will destroy everything

I'm not crazy

When they open my head

I prey they will never discover the truth

And now unto my last favorite track from this album, "My Love for the Stars (Cthulhu Fhtagn)". Ok so, I really never thought of Cthuluhu as a "victim", or I've never thought about how he might have felt being locked up.

My Love for the Stars (Cthulhu Fhtagn)

Am I too ugly,

am I too ugly for them?

My green and slimy skin,

it bothers them?

...

I swear never to love,

I swear to never look to the sky.

Forever I only keep their

light in my eyes, in my eyes.

If you want to hear me talk about riffs, then obviously I'd choose "The Truth" intro, up until 1:40. And I didn't forget 3:30 in "Al Azif". Yeah that's about it for now, I've listened to this some 3 weeks ago, wait till you hear about "TEKELI-LI" or "EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy".

Also if you have made it this far, and can't seem to get enough of the first track "Al Azif", make sure to listen to the Pre Prod. Version I find it very interesting that the track's "Essence" is till in there, even the great riff is there.

IMO the (now) perfect blend of Black Metal and Americana. Wayfarer have been trying to interpret Black Metal on the grounds of Wild West vibes for years now. And this record now nails it.

I am regularly surprised how well BM mixes with other musical styles.

https://tidal.com/browse/track/320653548?u

Link is the opener The Thousand Tombs of Western Promise. Also check out The Cattle Thief

Great album cover by the way.

This actually sounds pretty good. I don't know much about blackend speed, but I'd love to hear of any records similar for this, and I know that this has VENOM all over it, still I'd love other bands.

Favorite Tracks:

Chapel - Satan's Rock N Roll Chapel - Alcoholocaust Chapel - Motorcult Chapel - Hellrazors ["And we're busting out of hell!"]

With Hellrazors being my favorite favorite. This style, sounds different, that intro riff, doesn't seem to belong to this record. Can't quite put my finger on it. Still great track

Also what I might think is similar to this is Slaughtered Priest - Speed Metal Attack and Slaughtered Priest - Eternal Goat Reign (Both are very popular tracks, huh? Nice)

Super underrated band. Excellent vocalist. This isn't my only obsession song of theirs, just the most recent. They are "safe" as per some quotes of the band leader I have come across.

https://dodsferdofficial.bandcamp.com/music