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ALBUM REVIEW
- Various Artists - UK Black Metal
Volume Two
- Panzerfaust Productions/UK Legions of
Black Metal
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- Maybe there’s something in it,
maybe it’s just a deeply ingrained facet of our national psyche, but the Brits
aren’t half great at fucking whining, when
in fact there’s plenty to be thankful for. Some evidence is located within this
interesting compilation, which is the offspring of Panzerfaust Productions and tireless
UKBM promoters the UK Legions of Black Metal. It sets out to showcase a particular feral
flavour of our finest spiteful art, but even within that remit there’s some very
interesting variation between these chosen acts, which should make us crack a grim kind of
a smile.
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- Some of the acts here will be
instantly familiar to our readers; we’ve featured Blooddawn and Teutoburg Forest
before, and the choice of tracks submitted by these ferocious acts are excellent.
Blooddawn air “Nailed Fist” from album
“The Enlightenment”, a particularly
brilliant raging assault of a song, whilst “As
the Ego Dissolves” shows TF’s Donn at the top of his vocal game, a slow
landslide track with a weird, attention-grabbing dissonant-melodic trade-off. These
aren’t the only bands to favour a fiercely primal and abrasive approach; the
fabulously named Cunt Witch exercise a very raw, hideous, screeching type of charm on
their contribution “Heksen”, and
Whorethorn (now Inconcessus Lux Lucis) also have a primitive harshness to their blackened
spite on compilation closer “The Awakening of
Vulfarru”, although this is balanced by an excellent sense of structure, which
allows a raucous, raging, mean slice of black metal to last nine minutes and still be
compelling.
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- Also distinctly interesting is the
progressive yet hell-raising insanity of Ebonillumini’s track “Into Forests So True”, and the
majestically noisy, triumphant “The Atheist and
the Priest” by Worms of Sabnock, the guitar work on which will instantly pique
your interest with its spiky yet melodic impulse and awesome momentum. For me, Old Corpse
Road’s exclusive track “Hell’s
Kettles” is very successful in terms of a compilation contribution, because its
mixture of vicious sections with a more heroic, synth-inflected style leaves me anxious to
find out more about the band, and the same can be said for the mid-paced and threatening “Barbed Ink Drop Weir” by Wojna, with its
unexpected length and clean ending. Barad Dur’s “The
Continuation” certainly needs a little edit and polish, sounding a little
‘bedroom’, but it has an enjoyable tone and flicks between racing nastiness and
a more doomy approach with ease.
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- Compilations are weird beasts, and
not everyone is interested in what they have to offer, but really, if you’ve any
brains at all, why would you pass up the chance to have a slice of the UK’s black
metal scene arrayed for you in all its aggressive, malevolent, supernatural force? For me
this confirms that the powerfully bestial flavour that has characterised our shores since
the earlier days… sure, we have other ways of skinning the cat, but folky occultism
and raging grimness go together damn well.
- 80/100
- Ellen Simpson
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- www.myspace.com/panzerfaustproductions
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