Black metal – Page 228 – Wonderbox Metal

Interview with Uburen

Uburen’s début album Withered Roots is a fiery homage to the band’s Norwegian heritage done in a much more aggressive style than is the norm for most Viking/Pagan bands. I asked some questions to find a bit more about them…

Give us a bit of background to Uburen

Uburen is a 3 piece band formed after ending other music projects. All members had a common interest in Norse mythology and the old Norwegian culture and wanted to form a band that would deliver both musically and as a live preforming band with a stage show that will not be forgotten right away.

What are your influences?

Bands that influence us are many, but among some of the more known bands: Enslaved, King Of Asgard, Varg, Vreid a lot of the underground bands also offer a lot of inspiration for their music and their will to continue on self economy.

What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?

Nowadays we listen to a lot of various bands such as Woods Of Ypres, Wyrd, King Of Asgard, Solstafir, Khold.

What did you want to achieve with your new album?

We would like to spread our music and the message of a dying culture, meet new people have some drinks and play concerts.

Uburen Band Are you happy with how it turned out?

With a budget nearly none from our own pockets we ourselves think its pretty decent, but can’t really measure up to Amon Amarth or Enslaved.

Tell us about your sound – it’s a lot heavier and more extreme than a lot who play this Viking style

The sound on Withered Roots is heavily inspired by folk and black metal, but not “nice sing-along boy-scout-campfire” music or music is inspired by the frontline on the battlefield and we try to captivate the macabre, anguish, anger, fear, hate, despair and all the raw emotions.

Tell us about your lyrics

Our lyrics focus around the darker side of the Norse history and mythology from the tales of creatures such as “Nøkken” the disapearence of men lured in and suffocated in the cold lakes fact based stories of brutal executions such as the “Blood Eagle” songs that tells stories with underlying words from the old sagas for instance about never giving up fighting ’til you die. Not trying to avoid your fate, keep walking through every winter.
Give us a bit of information on the songwriting process and how you create your songs.

The song writing process varies from song to song, usually one of us has a riff or bits of lyrics then we sit together think it through, what feeling and what message we want to tell when the song is put together we play through couple times take a break for at least 1 week to reflect if its how we want it to be.

In my review I say “Imagine Enslaved if they were less Progressive and more aggressive, or maybe Amon Amarth if they used Black Metal as the basis for their sound rather than Death Metal”. What are your thoughts on this?

It’s and honour to be compared with such bands as Enslaved and Amon Amarth we are all fans of them since way back, but we have not intentionally tried to sound like anyone. Our sound has just formed itself from our own minds.

How do you see your position in the wider Black Metal musical framework/genre?

Can’t say that we have given much thought to playing within a certain genre like Black Metal or Folk Metal its just music inspired by old Norwegian history and folk lore and our past is grim so that we sound like Black Metal just happened.

How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?

We have no planned direction for our music nor for our lyrics, it will continue to evolve with us. No compremise.

What does the future hold for Uburen?

At the moment we are looking into playing at festivals around where we are wanted. We have some booked, but those are secret for now we would also like to go into the studio again in the not to distant future whenever our pockets allow it. Maybe even another music video.

Thanks!

Australasia – Vertebra (Review)

Australasia are from Italy and play Post-Black Metal Shoegaze.

Well, I love the album cover, so that’s a good start.

These are largely short compositions although they have all of the time they need to make themselves felt.

These are songs that are as emotive and translucent as any in the style. They take the listener through the usual gamut of emotions typical of Shoegaze releases of this nature.

Post-Black Metal comes about when Black Metal and Post-Metal meet, as can be expected from the name. The addition of the Shoegaze tag usually specifies something similar, only in my experience tends to mean that the band have a fragile, brittle sense about them; not in any negative way but rather in the sense of everything being pushed and focused into making the songs as expressive and emotive as possible.

In Australasia’s case the emphasis is on the Post-Metal side of the equation rather than the Black Metal side, (although this aspect of their sound is still present). In addition to this the band also employ some Electronica influences and use this as a further aspect to their sound.

All of this describes Australasia perfectly as they have the hauntingly fragile delivery and highly evocative emotional appeal that typifies this kind of music. And they do all of it very, very well.

There are largely no vocals, so the instruments take centre stage. The only exception to this is some female vocals which are strong and assured; they appear very briefly as a small but important enhancement to a few tracks.

A recommended listen for seekers of sensation everywhere.

Vermin Womb – Permanence (Review)

Vermin Womb are from the US and this is their début EP.

Made up of members with an impressive Extreme Metal pedigree, (Primitive Man, Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire), this releases takes that collective knowledge and experience and funnels it into a veritable natural disaster’s worth of extremity and violence given form.

This is a combination of Sludge, Grind, Death Metal and pissed off Hardcore. It’s not for the faint-hearted and sounds like the end of the world is coming. It’s brutal, nasty, and very, very heavy.

The songs here combine the ferocity and general disdain of Hardcore/Grindcore with the murky evil of Sludge and the brutality of Death Metal. There’s even a Blackened edge.

Take Eyehategod, Brutal Truth and Anaal Nathrakh, mash them all up, put the remains in a blender, force feed the resultant slop into a few hapless victims and the resulting screams of pain and agony will sound a bit like Vermin Womb.

The singer is probably one of these unfortunates as it sounds like he’s been gargling liquid nightmares and is now vomiting forth the worst of his experiences.

This is impressively ugly and it takes real determination and talent to create Metal this heavy and grotesque.

Absolutely horrible music that you can’t afford to miss out on.

Uburen – Withered Roots (Review)

Uburen are from Norway and this is their début album. They play Black Metal.

This is Viking-themed Black Metal with hints of Death Metal thrown into the mix here and there. Heavier than the norm for this style, Uburen play to the more extreme side of the Viking sub-genre.

The vocals alternate between Black Metal screams, rasps and deeper growls, with some spoken word and other styles making the odd appearance. The singer puts in a great performance and his vocals are quite varied compared to most monotonous vocalists who have maybe one or two sounds at most that they make.

The guitars are rhythmically melodic, stirring up the appropriate emotions and have a good double bass foundation that they build their songs on top of. This is not pseudo-commercial fodder, this is the real deal. Rather than the heroic songs and style-over-substance façade of most Viking/Pagan bands, Uburen have got to the blood and guts of the matter and their interpretation of the genre is altogether dirtier and heavier.

There are some really enjoyable, powerful scything Black Metal moments on this release and the combination of the higher/deeper vocals merely enhances this.

Imagine Enslaved if they were less Progressive and more aggressive, or maybe Amon Amarth if they used Black Metal as the basis for their sound rather than Death Metal.

Uburen deserve a wider audience than they’re probably going to get. You can help remedy this however – check out Withered Roots today and feel the blood run hot through your veins once more.

Favourite Track: Asmegin. Fast and furious.

Fractured Spine – Memoirs of a Shattered Mind (Review)

This is the second album from Finland’s Fractured Spine.

Fractured Spine play Blackened Gothic Doom/Death Metal. Which is to say that they take the Doom/Style, add Gothic touches to the music and then layer a Black Metal fuzziness, melody and feel over everything. Early 90’s Gothic Black Metal mixed with Doom/Death.

They are also a bit more experimental than a lot of bands who play the Doom/Death style, which again gives them more of a Black Metal theme to my eyes.

Vocally the band eschew the normal purely Doom/Death deep vocals for a more varied approach involving a mix of deep growls, high screams and Gothic cleans.

Some songs have more of a Black Metal feel, others more of a Gothic Doom feel and occasionally even an early Lacuna Coil or …In The Woods style makes an appearance.

The keyboards and Gothic effects are prevalent throughout the album and it’s a refreshingly different take on the Doom/Death sub-genre.

A surprisingly varied album that experiments with its sound to create a mixture of related styles under one album.

Check them out and see what you think.

Protestant – In Thy Name (Review)

Protestant are from the US and play Blackened Hardcore Metal.

This is raw, dirty and exceedingly violent in nature.

The riffs have a real Blackened colour to the melodies, which are merged with a Punk attitude and delivery style. The Blackened Punk style has yet to be done to death and Protestant do it very well indeed.

Protestant inhabit a similar space stylistically to bands such as Hexis and Flesh Born, and if you like them you should check out Protestant, (and vice versa). All three bands are exemplars of this kind of music.

Protestant write good riffs and sound thunderously impressive. They let the darkness pile on thick and heavy, all the time allowing the driving Hardcore mentality to energise the songs and propel them forwards.

The vocalist croaks and rasps his way through the 8 tracks like his lungs are going to give out at any minute. He accompanies the apocalyptic sounding music like the final harbinger of the worst things yet to come. His is the voice of anger, rage and dark tidings.

Protestant have released an album that bridges the gap between the sometimes dissonant worlds of Hardcore and Black Metal in a way that sounds like they were born to do this.

In Thy Name is an album propelled by exquisite Blackened riffs and Hardcore energy the likes of which we don’t see very often.

Listen, listen loud and listen now.

Stormnatt – Omega Therion (Review)

This is the third album from Austrian Black Metallers Stormnatt.

Stormnatt immediately score points by not messing around with pointless intros; first song Ascension of the Scarlet Angel gets straight down to business and introduces the band with their fast and atmospheric style of Black Metal.

Influenced by the second wave of Black Metal, we have plenty of darkly melodic riffs and more evocative guitar parts than you can shake a stick at. The guitars are the foremost feature of Omega Therion for me as they carry the songs along on waves of darkness and have a warmer than average sound for Black Metal. Like liquefied crushed velvet.

The riffs are even quite varied on occasion; everything from the standard Darkthrone-template-riffs, to a touch of Blackened Thrash to Blackened Trad Metal to Blackened Doom Metal…it’s all here. The key word is Blackened, of course, as everything sounds as Black as night and twice as evil. This works wonders for the songs as it keeps things interesting. The band know their chosen style and know it well, but these added variations on the theme help keep things fresh and the listener engaged.

Works for me. This is an album I’ve really enjoyed.

This is not experimental, or avant garde, or pushing new boundaries, or whatever; this is Black Metal done with purity and strength of purpose. Backing this up you have songs that are comprised of emotive riffing and a singer who knows how to rasp a good performance. This is Black Metal done well and done right.

At just under 40 minutes in length this is a storm of night and blackness that it’s easy to find yourself lost in.

Listen to Stormnatt.

Inexorable – Morte Sola (Review)

This is the latest EP from German Technical Death Metal band Inexorable.

It starts with Doom. First track, Praeludium Mortis, is 2:39 of slow, agonising crawling through broken glass and razor shards. It sets the scene perfectly for Inexorable’s brand of impenetrable Black Metal-tinged assault.

This is no normal Death Metal. This is for fans of Gorguts, Portal, Mayhem, Axis of Perdition, etc. – bands that are interested in pushing the boundaries of traditional genre restrictions and will do so in their own way. If Mayhem went Death Metal, Inexorable might be what they sounded like.

The riffs congeal together to produce dark, murky feelings and the guitar lines almost seem alive with malignant presence.

Vocals are kind of an ethereal growl that reside half in our reality and half in some other, twisted dimension; or sometimes a plaintive semi-clean sung from the depths of a churning abyss. Either way they are not the standard for this kind of music, with the semi-cleans in particular coming across strongly.

The songs, and the EP in general, is a holistic experience; a nightmare reality to visit but hopefully to escape from at the end. Sometimes bands which attempt music like this can come across as unfocused or messy, but I’m pleased to say this is not the case with Inexorable.

Throughout all of the evil, grim sounds and communing with other realities is a firm foundation in, (atypical), Death Metal. This serves them well and keeps them grounded whereas they might otherwise carried away by the dark and lost to us forever.

This is not music for the weak hearted. If you can stomach it, however, there are some evil delights to be had here.

Very highly recommended.

Kafirun – Death Worship (Review)

Kafirun are from Canada and play Black Metal. This is their début demo.

This is True Black Metal. It’s aggressive and grim and takes its cues from the likes of Mayhem.

With riffs sharp enough to do yourself an injury on, the darkly melodic guitars churn and rage their way through the playing time of the songs as the drums pound or blast appropriately.

The vocals have a a touch of Mayhem about them as well and the singer seems quite at home whether he’s performing semi-clean chanting or high pitched screams.

For a demo release there’s nothing wrong with the production at all. It’s got a good Black Metal tone that allows the guitars to sound as if they’re sliding over each other and everything else to sound like it’s filling in the spaces.

There’s only three songs here but they’re good ones and the band ably show what they can do.

If you’re not sated on Mayhem-influenced Black Metal then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy what Kafirun do. Check them out.

Natanas – All Is Permitted (Review)

Natanas is a one man Black Metal project from the US. This is Natanas’ second album.

This is atonal, obscure, underground Black Metal that’s more focused on creating particular moods and feelings rather than songs in the traditional sense.

The vocals are deep gargles and spewings; barely-human sounds and daemonic mutterings are the stock in trade of this warped intellect.

The drums are off-kilter and sometimes seem quite out of place with the more organic guitars and bestial vocalisations. I get the impression that this is done intentionally however, thus fostering the strange atmosphere that All Is Permitted shows off.

This is not a release for everyone, not even necessarily the hardened Black Metal fan. This is for people who enjoy bands that put uncomfortable feelings and sounds before everything else, even production values and traditional Black Metal.

Think bands like Xasthur, Portal, Mitochondrion, Enbilulugugal, Ævangelist and the like, and although I don’t think the guy behind Natanas is currently playing at their level just yet, given enough time and development he could be.

If this is the kind of Black Metal that does it for you then check out Natanas and see what you think.