black metal

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.