Mütiilation – "Satanist Styrken" (Self-Released) 1994

If you thought Darkthrone were the epitome of Zero-Fi Black Metal,then you......understandably....haven't heard Mütiilation. A French(!!?) Black Metal outfit who released a bunch of cassettes in the mid nineties,until they were fished from the muddied pond and honored with a release of  one of their many unreleased albums on Vinyl and CD. It still sounded as if it was recorded in an oil drum rolling between lanes on the M25 london orbital,but you could charge money for this!....a career beckoned until,band leader, Meyhna'ch.....as he called himself, probably Cedric Arnaud or something equally as bland in real life.....until Cedric, declared himself Dead, and the group ended.

He wasn't really Dead of course, so this led to the re-animation of Mütiilation, as a solo project for Meyhna'ch in 2001.

Tracklist:

A1 Skoger Av Onde Drom
A2 My Last Night Among Those Times
A3 Eternal Empire Of Majesty Death
A4 Infernal Holocaust In The Mourning Dawn

DOWNLOAD from a french musical hell even worse than french reggae HERE!

Darkthrone – "Land Of Frost" (Self-Released) 1988

 

Whereas someone like,...say...Jandek,has a vision of life as a grim pointless reality; our Norwegian buddies in all those Death/Black metal groups,live in a fantasyworld almost as life unaffirming and silly as a Christian UFO Death Cult....but with better music. Especially when its as lo-fi as this jolly jaunt into the permafrost of the arctic Tundra of  Metal.

They think they're frightening us but their ,frankly, daft, game of thrones world is nowhere near as Horrific as the life as portrayed in any Jandek recording.

That Scot Walker album with Sunn(((o is probably the way to go for these growly long-hairs. A Jandek Death Metal collaboration would go a long way to lessen the silliness somewhat.

Not unlike that Metal collaboration album with Mark.E Smith (Mutation?), who continued to frighten the crap out of a bunch of very muscular Metalheads for the duration of his appearance.

Nevertheless, I do like a bit of Ferric-oxide cassette based Black Metal,with the production values of Danny and the Dressmakers.

I could listen to that all day as long as they don't do that growly barking thing they have a tendency to stoop to from time to time. Keep the vocals deep in the background please boys,and no suicides or murders please....not big, not clever.

Tracklist:

A1 Land Of Frost 3:57
A2 Winds Of Triton 1:53
A3 Forest Of Darkness 4:32
A4 Odyssey Of Freedom 3:26
A5 Day Of The Dead 5:23

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Venom – "Welcome To Hell" (Neat Records – NEAT 1002 LP) 1981

The only thing vaguely 'Punk' that came out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,(north-eastern England for the geographically challenged,and Americans) was Sting,who must have come from the Posh end of town due to his undetectable local accent, and Penetration,who I had the questionable pleasure of reviewing their debut LP in the school magazine. "Moving Targets",pressed in a luminous vinyl that sounded like my stylus was dragging through cotton wool. Beneath this novelty pressing plant piss-take I could detect the unwelcome advances of something that sounded like....gulp!... Heavy Metal!?

The person responsible for this affront to my Punk Rock credibility was the geezer pictured on the rear of the sleeve with long curly locks and sporting an unusual waxy complexion. It was one Fred Purser, later to join Newcastle NWOBHM legends Tygers Of Pan Tang ! Of course my review slagged Penetration off as irrelevant metal throwbacks,dismissing their obvious talents to turn out a decent backing track to Pauline's attractive folky and not unpleasent timbre. If i had bought it on black vinyl it probably would have revealed a rather fine punky metal hybrid, but such is the impenetrable mind of a teenager that it would have made no difference.....in fact why I bothered,buying,or listening to it at all after reading the review in Sounds was a minor miracle.

The other major act to have crawled out of the Hell that is Newcastle,and hugely influential they turned out to be, was the world-changing force that was 'Venom'. 

What these Satan worshiping Geordies unleashed on the planet would ultimately dwarf Punk Rock......merely by naming their second album "Black Metal"....now where have I heard that before?

The interesting thing is that they don't actually sound or look like any Black Metal band that we would encounter today. Technically, they have approximately the same musical talent as a headbanging Sid Vicious. They obviously wished they were Motorhead,but lacked the sense of humour to pull it off..

Check out this review from Kerrang no.8 1982 :

"What a pity the second album release on Neat had to be Venom's effort. "Welcome to Hell" is this music I ask? Rather a series of loud noises and hoarse croaks backed by no production at all. I don't like giving new bands a hard time, but what can you do when the product is so bad. As for your Satanic imagery lads - I'm frightened out of my wits (yawn)"- H. Johnson, Kerrang No 8, February 1982.......

Dunno who this H.Johnson was,....Holly Johnson meybe?.....but it was a popular point of view back in the day,and i kinda understand....NWOBHM it is not.....another label Venom don't deserve.

Apparently the band replied in Kerrang no 11,accusing the reviewer of being too old to understand.

This album was undoubtedly a pivotal release in Heavy Metal history.Dumping technical expertise,crisp production values and the screechy vocals,then inventing Speed and Thrash Metal all in one go;but noticeably not Black or Death Metal,for which they are most often credited for. Reviled and loved in equal measures upon its release, it would come to be seen as the first extreme metal album of all time, paving way for the deluge of metal sub genres that followed. Not that I can tell the difference between most of them,especially Death and Black Metal.

As Billy Joel said, "Hot Funk, Cool Punk,It's all Rock'n'Roll to me!"......Could have been said by the Lemster himself, as we all know that Motorhead invented all modern Rock'n'Roll idioms, be it Metal or Punk (maybe not Britpop?)and all sub-species, then gave it to our children. It's just that Venom wishes it was them wot dunnit ! Rather silly as they are,they have a strong case for moulding the Metal we know and love today.

Tracklist:

1 Sons Of Satan 3:37
2 Welcome To Hell 3:13
3 Schizoid 3:30
4 Mayhem With Mercy 0:58
5 Poison 4:31
6 Live Like An Angel 3:56
7 Witching Hour 3:41
8 One Thousand Days In Sodom 4:34
9 Angel Dust 2:39
10 In League With Satan 3:32
11 Red Light Fever 5:12

Bonus Tracks:
12 Angel Dust (Lead Weight Version) 3:03
13 In League With Satan (7" Version) 3:32
14 Live Like An Angel (7" Version) 3:53
15 Bloodlust (7" Single) 3:00
16 In Nomine Satanas (7" Single) 3:26
17 Angel Dust (Demo) 3:12
18 Raise The Dead (Demo) 3:31
19 Red Light Fever (Demo) 4:45
20 Welcome To Hell (Demo) 4:58
21 Bitch Witch (Outtake) 3:07
22 Snots Shit (Outtake) 2:10

DOWNLOAD a welcome from the hell that is Newcastle-upon-tyne HERE!

Poison – "Awakening Of The Dead" (Self-released Demo) – BFM 003 1986

By Demo,or Demon,number III, Poison have finally worked out how to operate a mixer,and we can hear all the instruments. Now I can reveal that the Bass Player ,called...don't laugh....Incubus Demon......(muffled giggle)....has lifted the one size fits all Bass riffage from Saxon,whose every song used a one note E-string drone for virtually every tune they did.....just like Lemmy,and probably the four stringed Satan who was in Venom too.....i'm guessing here as I'm not too familiar with Venom's seminal works.

Poison's guitar sound is ruthless as always,the vocals are customarily indecipherable ,but they still retain that special live in the replica Gas Chamber at Auschwitz ambiance. If you ever visit that Nazi Disneyland for ghouls and fools (Don't),test out the acoustics of the Gas Chamber with the impertinent question "Is this the original Gas Chamber or is it a post war replica?"...and count the evil looks cast in your direction......names will be taken.

Metal ,in general, is a difficult thing to admit liking. Saying "I'm into Metal" is tantamount to admitting you're a Virgin,or have no Friends,or were bullied at school. On an anthropological note, I did note that the Bully's were usually Soul fans, and the Bullied were invariably followers of the infinite varieties of Heavy metal. Mirroring the Mods and Rockers' running battles of the 1960's. Punks, of course, were a mixture of the two camps,so generally got left alone,unless Skinheads were in the vicinity....this is why 'Oi' came into existence.

I did get discovered with a Devo album by a gang of Soul-Boys one time,which didn't end well,for me or the Devo LP. Not understanding the appeal of Soul music myself, i guess i lean towards the Metal end of the Pop spectrum,but this doesn't mean I'm a Virgin or totally friendless....although I'm working on that one....because i'm reformed Punk Rocker I suppose? Nowadays I can't stand Punks either.

"Never join a club that would have you as a Member" is my family motto courtesy of Karl Marx's smarter brother....Groucho. 

Tracklist:

...this world (A)

A1 Satan Commands 4:38
A2 Wake The Dead (+Intro) 7:48
A3 Yog-Sothoth 7:34
A4 Antichrist (D.t.C.) - Live '85  3:03

...beyond (B)

B1 Alive (Undead) 6:41
B2 Legions Of Hell (New Version) 8:08
B3 Black Death - Live '85 3:40

DOWNLOAD some german poison live at auschwitz HERE!

Poison – "Bestial Death (Demo II)" (BFM Tapes – BFM 002) 1985

Oh my God......sorry all you pale blue-veined metallic youths...I mean Oh My God of Evil,the great Satan and all his fantastic demon mates...I fall to my knees in thanks that you are but a very early prototype for a system of control...and a majority of the modern Planet still, STILL(?) falls for it.

Despite hardly ever being mentioned in that toilet fiction best seller by authors unknown, "The Bible", your influence still makes the god fearing  among us fear the concept of 'evil'...even the very intelligent among us are sucked into this ludicrous experiment of mass hysteria.That is far more frightening than any fictional devil,mainly because its fucking real!

The main tripping point for Death Metal,or just plain satanism is ,that if Satan exists then so does God,or Jehova, or Alan.....please don't kill me, I meant Allah!. Therefore,you are condemning yourself to eternal torture because you didn't waste your life grovelling for forgiveness for sins that ,apparently, Jesus Christ had already absolved us all for when he ,allegedly, provided the perverted image of himself nailed to a cross to remind us all.Although there are no photographs to prove it, so we'll just have to take the word of a bunch of madmen, who seem to have an exclusive hotline to the main office of the Almighty God above,and so can inform us of which confused nonsense this evasive deity wants us to know.

So, Death Metal bands are either comfortable in the knowledge that neither God, Nor, Satan, almost certainly do NOT exist ,and are just having a bit of fun, or they are totally stupid,worshiping the wrong side. I've heard that Satan, doesn't pull the punches when it comes to torture and eternity...even though it says fuck all about it in the Bible.However, one must say it's great fun annoying, and better still, frightening the shit out of dumbass believers by pretending to worship Satan,Lucifer, Beelzebub ,or whatever other stupid fucking name they give this ghost.

Now back to the slightly more logical world of terribly bad recordings of Death Metal band Poison, from Germany.

If it could be possible, Poison's second Demo, has an even higher rating on the Shit-Fi scale than the first. This one seems to have been recorded in a shoebox,with the drums outside in the car park,but the vocalist is the same room as you, spraying large clumps of sputum in your ear.The lyrics of which are unlikely to be sophisticated ruminations on the human condition.....well...either that or about death,evil and the Devil.It's truly bizarre stuff,and naturally its also very silly, but there's nothing else that sounds quite like it.

Tracklist:

1 Intro : The Vision 0:54
2 Satan Commands 4:21
3 Witchfynde 3:25
4 Wake The Dead 8:03
5 Antichrist (Death To Christ) 3:09
6 Alive (Undead) (7:55)
6a Intro 1:08
6b Song 6:47

DOWNLOAD a bestial ear bumming HERE!

Poison – "Sons Of Evil" (Self-Released Demo) 1984

 

Death Metal can either sound and feel like you're having your head kicked in, like Slayer's immaculately produced ear batterings; or, like having your inner ears dewaxed by a hammer drill whilst being surrounded by multitudes of arcing electrodes,which is where we find ourselves today. Depending on the group,some of these electrodes will be attached by crocodile clips to your balls,or whatever are now the sensitive parts of whichever gender you self-identify with nowadays.

This demo,is actually an unedited live rehearsal by German Death Metallers Poison, recorded in what sounds like a vast empty gas chamber,or an abandoned public toilet built on an ancient burial ground.

The guitar frequently does a rather accurate impression of one of the more harsher Merzbow albums,with a sound not too far removed from a tethered moped on full throttle in the hold of an oil tanker. The bass is inaudible,and the drums have that adorable DIY biscuit tin and bucket quality,overpowered by one side of a C-90's worth of the last words of somebody being garroted .

Its all quite ridiculous of course,but it sounds fantastic.

Tracklist:

A1 The Omen (Intro) 1:39
A2 Inferno Breaks Out 2:29
A3 Black Death 3:47
A4 Demon 6:16
A5 Reaper 3:08
A6 Possessed 2:06
A7 Angel Of Satan (+ March To Hades) 5:41
A8 Satan's Damnation (Intro) 1:24
A9 Legions Of Hell 3:38
B1 Leather + Metal 4:00
B2 Hell Of The Living Dead 4:55
B3 Slaughter 2:18
B4 Gonna Make You Die 5:21

DOWNLOAD from this german hell HERE!

Hellhouse – "Burn For Peace" (Self-Released Demo) 1986

These fun chaps seem quite literate for metalheads gone wrong.Quoting George Elliot on Loneliness?

The music is such a bizarre distortion of the original Metal template as to qualify for the 'weird without trying' award of the week.This is the stuff that should be in the Rock'n'Roll hall of fame not REM and the like...although I dunno why I chose REM for special attention,because I like REM.....is Meat Loaf in there? If he is then replace REM with Steinman and Meat,slash,Loaf and jim;but the loaf we all prefer would be Renaldo's Loaf,as in Renaldo and the...surely?Hellhouse is the stuff that Hell is made of, and for.A Hell with Renaldo's Loaf and REM in it is not too bad a place to be,and a Hell with this Hellhouse group in it as the house band is but no Hell at all.

How you can start off with Black Sabbath and end up with this bizarre cocktail of barking and 78rpm riffing is a fascinating process indeed.

Tracklist:

1 KIll Your Mother
2 Meat Cleaver
3 Rape Your Mother
4 Crucified
5 Rage
6 Impaler

DOWNLOAD the exquisite loneliness of hellhouse HERE!

Hellhammer – "Triumph Of Death" (Prowling Death Records – PDR 002) 1983

 

Well....We've had a band called "Dead" whom shared a name with the second most mental member of Mayhem...the one wot shot himself. So now we find a very early Black Metal trio in the Venom/Motorhead mode whose name was commandeered by Mayhem's Drummer, Hell Hammer.....one of the more sensible members of Mayhem one must add;but that ain't saying much.

This Hellhammer came from the repressed and impoverished hell hole we know as Switzerland, where life is so unbearably awful that it makes young men so unhappy that they just wanna sing songs about death and violence all the time.

I'm not sure if it's an urban legend or not, but doesn't every Swiss home have a nuclear bunker,and own at least one handgun?

Indeed gun ownership is rife,yet the murder rate is one of the lowest on the planet. Maybe this is achieved because of the cathartic effects of Black Metal? We'll never know,but there seems to be very few Swiss bands that manage to escape the Alps and spread their secret. I can think of Brainticket, Kleenex, Yello and...er....Hellhammer!?....quite a mixed bag,so maybe they're brainwashed at school to be bland,neutral peaceniks with guns.....I dunno.Or maybe they just ain't stupid like American 2nd amendment waving rednex. Having visited this stunning country,they do seem to have the slowest law abiding car drivers i've ever tail-gated. It's all quite weird,especially when the shops close at four in the afternoon on Saturdays!? Its that Nazi-Gold (or dead jews teeth) they stole during the war I reckon?

It seems ,on the insert, that Hellhammer don't like Venom too much,which is obviously incorrect,as they'd be called Venom 2 if they were a horror movie franchise.

Its all suitably raw,and spacious,which is unusual for metal albums.The Bass clawing is particularly impressive,and the vocals very Lemmy-esque,which seems a prerequisite for the birth of Death Metal...the growling and grunting evolved later it seems.

Basically, whoever had the bright idea to take these groups into a good studio should be forced to listen to Metallica (can't believe that was in spellcheck!?) for an unspecified period.....i am aware that this may be against most conventions on Human Rights,but needs must.

Tracklist:

A1 Crucifiction
A2 Maniac
A3 When Hell's Near
A4 Decapitator
A5 Blood Insanity
A6 Power Of Satan
B1 Reaper
B2 Death Fiend
B3 Triumph Of Death
B4 Metallic Storm
B5 Ready For Slaughter
B6 Dark Warriors
B7 Hammerhead

DOWNLOAD to down there HERE!

Mayhem – "Pure Fucking Armageddon" (Funny Farm inc) 1986

These Notorious Norwegian metallers were very naughty boys indeed. One could accuse them of taking it all rather too seriously, perhaps even taking it all a tad too far maybe? They nicked their name from Motorhead-a-likes and supposed Black Metal band numero uno,the UK's very own, Venom.So that kinda categorises them I guess?

Some call this Back Metal,or even Death Metal? I dunno,but because they dress like Metal kids with make-up on,does that make this metal? Its got some riffage going on,and hints of growly vocals,singing about ghosties,violence,and pure fucking armageddon.....stuff like that. So I suppose the pure derivative silliness of it all qualifies them as 'Metal'.It just sounds like a bunch of mad noise to me,like an avant-garde interpretation of Metal whith large chunks edited out,the opposite end of Sun(((((0. Basically I dunno what I'm talking about,but I like it...(sing).."Mamaaaa, it's only Black Metal but I like it,I Like It Yes I doooo".

Of course the back story to this band is that some of them actually wanted to back up the rhetoric with actions.So if one of the mis-led young fools said I'm gonna actually live out the the Rock'n'Roll endgame of comitting suicide on stage I'm actually gonna do it.

It all started to go wrong with the addition of new vocalist and grade 'A' nutjob, Per Yngve Ohlin,aka "Dead",who had a nasty habit of cutting himself with hunting knives and broken glass on stage.A cry for help perhaps?

The obviously mentalist Dead,did infact end his own life by slashing his wrists and sucking on a shotgun,but he didn't do it onstage,the sell-out! Here's a short extract from his suicide note:

"Excuse all the blood.Nobody will ever understand this, but as a sort of explanation, I am not human, this is only a dream and soon I will awake".......whoops!....Were still waiting for him to wake up thirty years later.

Then the story gets dafter with  the fatal stabbing of founder member,guitarist Aarseth (Euronymous) by Bassist Varg Vikernes,who was only in the band for a year,but seemed determined to make a bigger splash in the Mayhem legends swimming pool.Varg was also responsible for a string of church arsons for which he was convicted in court.Along with the small matter of first degree murder,the punishment for which was to spend a lenient 21 years or so in the unbridled opulence of those famous Norwegian Prison Cells/luxury flats(although he only served 16 granted parole in 2009!?).Surprisingly,and very un-Norwegian he also had to leave the band,which was then reduced to a duo, temporarily,due to murder,suicide and imprisonment.Incredibly replacements for the vacant positions were not hard to find,not that I would recommend anyone should volunteer for such a poisoned chalice i may add.And they are still churning out the filth today;although they've given up murdering each other,toying with Nazi politics and messing about with shotguns.At least for the present.

Now out of prison for the last decade or so, Varge has not rejoined the band surprisingly,even though he still made solo albums in his prison cell,and now a free man,is still plying his trade as a metal musician in,of all places, France (Shit! I live there!?)....although he may,as a convicted Murderer, Arsonist, and neo-Nazi find it difficult to get a visa to visit any of the many non-EU nations who have a Metal audience interested in this shit.

Yes, its all very fucking silly, but early Mayhem were in fact rather good.Making unlistenable soulless metallic noise that would undoubtedly put the shits up any passing Christian or,even better, Muslim.....so anything that can do that is fine by me.

Suicide, Murder,Arson,stabbings,slashings,atheism,ultra right wing paganism,high speed noise,and all in glorious,atrocious,deafness inducing shit-fi too.What more could anyone possibly want from a pop group? 

Tracklist:

Side Fuck (Studio Quality)
A1 Voice Of A Tortured Skull 2:22
A2 Carnage 4:14
A3 Ghoul 3:31
A4 Black Metal (Total Death Version)2:06
A5 Pure Fucking Armageddon 2:50

Side Off (Unmixed)
B1 Mayhem 1:46
B2 Ghoul 3:43
B3 Pure Fucking Armageddon 2:43
B4 Carnage 4:32

DOWNLOAD the mayhem of mayhem HERE!