“Post Modern Black Metal”?  Perhaps Varg should’ve started burning Universities as well as Fantofts.  The Church of Self-Important Intellectual Wanking is just as bad as anything any Christian ever did.

Despite the typically ridiculous press release, the album itself is *partially* a delight.  It varies between individual pieces that are a blend of traditional black metal and vast black noise, to experimental interludes which I would compare to say, John Coltrane’s Om album, (but of course from a black metal cold-void sort of perspective).  ‘Kind of like if Sun Ra were a white guy who’d been thrown out on the Siberian plane with recording equipment.  The first few tracks of the album are wholly more enjoyable than the last.

You see, for being someone who enjoys experi-mental noise, I’ve never been impressed with the “avant-garde” or with progressive metal.  Parts of this album are both of those things.  And more.  Yes, it can be argued that jazz-fusion and certain aspects of black metal are similar.  But when it gets to the point that black metallers are trying so hard to be the “next big thing” of the genre that they’re polluting the genre, that’s when I pull the lever to get off at the next stop.  Which is frankly what many of the tracks on last part of this album make me want to do.  It was work making myself listen all the way to the end without skipping forward on the last few pieces.  Tracks 5 through 7 are the sounds of musicians mentally masturbating, in my opinion; a collective yawn that doesn’t go anywhere, but probably impresses chicks who think the Equator is a country in South America.

[I would include the track names for you, but of course, in the “avant-garde” it’s cooler not to name things than to name them.  Whatever.]

What you want to know though is, “Should I buy the darned thing or not?”  Well, sure, if you have the money to buy CDs just out of morbid curiousity, to see what they’re like.  But if you want to know if I think this CD is worth parting with hard-earned cash for, just due to its brilliance or inherent value as a “so negative it’s positive force” in your life, no.  I’d say wait to find it used, or buy yourself the Neptune Towers CDs which are experimental without being “avant-garde”.  Or, if you’re not into the spacey way-out sister of black metal that Neptune Towers represents, go for some purely ambient black metal that isn’t trying so hard to be something other than itself.  (Refer to the Blut Aus Nord review in this issue for recommen-dations, if you wish.)

No track listing.  (Tracks are not named.)

http://www.moribundcult/index2.html
 

07/13/04