Back in the box...
Aryan Triumph - Our Future is War (2003, Warlust Productions, Tape)
Having established my multicultural credentials to my own satisfaction by drinking a Pilsner Urquell out of a glass designed by Swedish artist Lasse Åberg, paired with a shot of African Angostura Bitter, I figured I could treat myself to some NSBM. As some may have gathered, my political views are generally somewhat to the right of natural disasters that afflict the poor and colored disproportionately. I never met a form of essentialism I didn't like, at least on an emotional level. Still, honest, straight forward political content in music often tends towards absolute failure, and this goes especially for black metal. When aesthetics bow to boring ass slogans, it usually kills the mood for me. Simply put: I am not very interested in black metal informing me of adverse effects of unskilled immigration on salaries or the national budget deficit. Also, if the style gets too skinhead/punk/RAC it at least TENDS towards becoming either shit, or (once again) funny. There are exceptions, who pull the whole "over the top" thing off - Der Stürmer comes to mind. Still, NSBM is generally at its best when it wallows in more obscure intellectual fields, immersing itself in a diverse array of incomprehensible occultism, kitschy nature romanticism and runes and symbols lifted from books no-one has ever read from beginning to end. Now, Aryan Triumph don't exactly do any of these things. The cover is just some young WWII era German with a big ass gun looking Aryan, and the song titles are utterly generic ("Forward with Loyalty", "Take no prisoners", etc). If you look at the tape, only the logo indicates that this isn't RAC made by some drunken Slovakian skinhead. The band does surprise on a musical level, though. There was some talk in the black metal thread about too long intros, and these guys take it over the top like Sylvester Stallone! The first of several intros is so convoluted and lengthy I almost lost it. There's heavy experimental synth/junk stuff, a long break for a significant part of the Horst Wessel Lied, and then back to more industrial stuff. I didn't time the whole shebang, but by the time the black metal began I had already begun considering that I might have forgotten what this tape was all about, and thought the band might in fact be an industrial act, which just happened to have a black metal style monicker and logo. Still, from there on it's more about typical black metal, and it is quite alright. Mid 90s Norwegian style BM with slightly worse production. Satyricon's "Shadow Throne" done on a porta studio with a drum machine is the first thing that came to mind, and while the industrial and synth interludes continue throughout, most of the tape is best described in those words. Decent stuff.
Chainsaw - Massacre (1995, Curse Records, Tape)
Japanese grind, and GOOD Japanese grind at that. Chainsaw was a short lived side project from Kozaborou Kojima of the absolutely excellent black metal act Gorugoth, and you can hear that quite easily. This C20 is marked by reverb drenched production, relentless (and equally reverb drenched) drum machine, and roaring vocals, and if you listen to this and any Gorugoth release back to back, their mutual root is obvious. I remember Sigh talking trash about Gorugoth and other grind oriented black metal bands in some old interview, but while I do like a little bit of Sax appeal in my Japanese black metal, I think Gorugoth kicks Sigh's ass any old day of the week. Chainsaw is not as great as Gorugoth - after all, it's grindcore - but it still kills pretty much everyone everywhere. Unconstrained and wild, and utterly programmed and sort of muffled, at the same time. A reminder about the days when technical limitations and choices defined the sound of extreme metal far more than the "individual creative ideas" of the people making it. Unlike most other Kojima stuff, which has been re-released on CD by Zero Dimensional Records, I think Chainsaw has remained hidden on the few tapes that was made. Kojima had a "black noise" project called Golgoth, with which he released a split with this band, but while Golgoth has made it onto a CD, Chainsaw seems destined to remain forgotten. That is a shame.
