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posts about black metal.

while browsing around my back then favourite music store, the guy working there tried to sell me an album by negură bunget called om, which was supposed to sound “similar to moonsorrow”. well, that’s kind of a strong statement, but there is a bit of truth in it. but the main thing is, this made me experience a great band i haven’t heard of before. negură bunget is a romanian experimental black metal band. let me start with the first full song from the om album. this song is a beautiful stream of heavy guitarwork, great riffs, a awesome intertwine of almost spherical music with sounds of nature and black metal. i just love this.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the second song is the second to last song from the om album. beginning with 22 seconds of black metal, it evolves into a folk/ambient song, which eventually starts to get heavy again. a really crazy song.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the third song is the first part of the ‘n crugu bradului album, a concept album containing four songs about the four seasons. this song is about spring (and unfortunately, the youtube version is crippled; the beginning is chopped of by over two minutes :-( ). this song is, as is the whole album, very experimental, dark, technical, diversified.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

unfortunately, two of the three band members left negură bunget in 2009 after some “differences”, and the remaining member found some new bandmates to continue the band. since the two members who left were responsible for many parts of the unique music of negură bunget, i consider the new lineup as a different band. maybe i’ll write something about them in the future…

enslaved is a norwegian black metal band, fonded 1991, which eventually shifted more in the direction of progressive metal. let me begin with a track from their 2001 album monumension. this track, hollow inside, is mostly calm, more like progressive rock, until during the second half, a louder passage appears.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the next two tracks are from their album isa. these two tracks make the album my favourite one from enslaved, and i prefer to listen to them both in a row. (unfortuantely, i didn’t find a video on youtube playing them right after each other. too bad.) the title song, isa, is full of power, with some progressive aspects, while the second song, ascension, reverses this relation. especially the last 2 1/2 minutes of ascension are just amazing.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

(and yes, i already raved about ascension several times on spielwiese.) the next song is from their 2006 album ruun, and the one following after that from their 2008 album vertebrae. both are good examples of enslaved songs intertwining black metal with nice progressive parts.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the last (metal) track i want to present is the opener from their newest album, axioma ethica odini. there was a fan video contest for this song, and the below video is the winner of this contest. the song itself

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s a bonus track from the monumension album. a true piece of viking “metal”. this is more like it would have sounded back then, than most other songs categorized as “viking metal”. calm music, a background choir, sung in old norse.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

the finnish band finntroll is a more popular choice than most bands i presented so far, except lacuna coil. finntroll‘s lyrics are troll-centered. not internet trolls or fantasy trolls though, but the skandinavian ones. for that reason, they also sing in swedish, because it sounds more trollish than finnish or english. they tell tales about trolls, including their wars against christian missionaries. the music comes from the melodic black metal genre, with some humppa (sometimes described as finnish polka) influcences. most of them feature fast melodic heavy music with screamed/growled lyrics. the band also makes use of orchestric parts and is well suited as party music or to dance to it (well, i guess it depends on what you mean by dancing). one good example is vindfärd/människopesten from their 2003 album nadfödd:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

another example is from their newest album, nifelvind:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

a third song i want to present is relatively calm, compared to the above two. it’s from their ur jordens djup album, and very danceable:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s a rather different piece from their 2003 album visor om slutet, an album i already raved about on spielwiese (in fact, that was my first post there after the obligatory hello world post). the album is purely accoustic and often also instrumental. this is a nice piece with vocals:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

in case you like something atmospheric, folkish, try that album. it’s not typical for finntroll, but nonetheless great!

agalloch is another band i stumbled about while browsing my favourite record store in zurich. during their existence, they produced four full-length albums ranging over different styles. i particularly like the latter three: the mantle, ashes against the grain and marrow of the spirit.

unfortunately, all songs from the mantle are only playable on youtube for certain regions (in which i’m not living apparently). there are a couple of live recordings available, but i prefer the studio versions, especially when listening to the songs the first time. in case you can find them somewhere, the lodge and the hawthorne passage (featuring a quote from det sjunde inseglet) are two very good songs on that album. it is unfortunate that i can’t include these songs here since they are rather different, compared to the songs i present below.

from the album ashes against the grain, some songs are available on youtube, for example not unlike the waves, a dark, atmospheric and heavy song with both clear vocals and distorted screaming:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

another song i really like from that album is the opener limbs. the second song i want to present is from their newest album marrow of the spirit, released november 2010. it is called black lake nidstång and has a duration of over 17 minutes. it’s my favourite piece from that album, and not that easy to digest.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

update: someone uploaded the complete song together with a very nice photo show:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]

finally, here’s another piece from marrow of the spirit, called to drown. the first half is rather calm, while the second is more and more dramatic, until the music evolves into noise and finally into sounds of water, sounds of waves.

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]