*** PALMARES MMXI ***

Disma ‘Chasm Of Oceanus’ de leur premier album Towards The Megalith (2011)

Autres incomparables en leur genre, du plus foncé au plus pâle:

Autopsy ‘Macabre Eternal’
Bastard Priest ‘Ghouls Of The Endless Night’
Vastum ‘Carnal Law’

Aosoth ‘III’
Blut Aus Nord ’777 – The Desanctification’ & ’777 Sect(s)’
Honorables mentions aux Leviathan ‘True Traitor, True Whore’ et Craft ‘Void’ pour la sortie de nouveau matériel

Dark Castle ‘Surrender To All Life Beyond Form’
Herder ‘Herder’
Yob ‘Atma’

Skull Defekts ‘Peer Amid’
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats ‘Blood Lust’
Wo Fat ‘Noche del Chupacabra’

Alexander Tucker ‘Dorwytch’
Earth ‘Angels of Darkness, Demons Of Light 1′
Six Organs of Admittance ‘Asleep on the Floodplain’

Au début on se disait que le vidéo ‘Lucifer’ du groupe Behemoth augurerait de façon remarquable le weekend de l’Halloween. Les jeunes allaient adorer (peut-être même intégrer l’idée du blanc vomis à leurs costumes?). Ça c’était avant la mise en ligne de ce vidéo sur sunn o))), plus tôt cette semaine. Le son dans l’eau c’est beau. Nous évoquons la pièce ‘Hell-O)))-Ween’ de leur l’album White 2 (2004) comme nouvelle accointance contextuelle.

Court extrait pour une mise en appétit convenable :

The Sorcerers
Michael Reeves, UK, 1967, 87 min

Une copie 16mm sera présentée au Cinéma Blue Sunshine (Montréal) ce vendredi 14 octobre à 20:00

‘Le deuxième des 3 films réalisé par Michael Reeves, le regretté enfant prodige du cinéma britannique décédé d’une overdose à l’âge de 24 ans, The Sorcerers n’a peut-être pas l’impact viscéral du chef-d’œuvre Witchfinder General (1968), mais est quand même féroce et original. Boris Karloff y joue un vieux scientifique de Londres vivant dans la pauvreté avec sa femme et rêvant d’une percée pour sa technique d’hypnose. Cherchant un cobaye, il met les mains sur Mike, un jeune homme malheureux, (Ian Ogilvy, ayant apparu dans les 3 films de Reeves) et bien sûr, les choses dégénèrent. Londres à son meilleur, pleines de mini-jupes et de boites de nuits, que la réalisation maîtrisée de Reeves transforme en un rêve éveillé et labyrinthique de violence, ouvrant la porte à vague d’horreur post-Hammer des années 70.’ (Cinéma Blue Sunshine)

Repost du Terrorizer Newshound :

Bob Larson, a well known American radio and tv evangelist and apparently one of the leading practitioners of modern Christian exorcisms, will conduct an exorcism next week on Jørn Stubberud, best known as the bassist in black metal band Mayhem (where he performs under the stage name ‘Necrobutcher’). The entire event will be filmed by NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company and the largest media organization in Norway, for a special program which will be aired in Norway in October.

By the late 1980s, Larson was often heard performing exorcisms of callers on the air, including Glen Benton of the death metal band Deicide, who became a regular caller.

Xasthur for Self-Titled Magazine no8
by Bryan Sheffield
May 2010, Los Angeles, CA

Part 2 had to be removed and can be seen here.

Begotten
E. Elias Merhige, USA, 1990, 78 min

‘The film heavily deals with religion and the biblical story of earth creation. But as Merhige revealed during Q&A sessions, its primary inspiration was a near death experience he had when he was 19, after a car crash. The film features no dialogue, but rather uses harsh and uncompromising images of human pain and suffering to tell its tale.

What ever this movie is very hard to understand, the film opens with a robed, profusely bleeding “God” (The Thanatos) disemboweling himself, with the act ultimately ending in his death. A woman, Mother Earth (The eros), emerges from his remains, arouses the body, and impregnates herself with his semen. Becoming pregnant, she wanders off into a vast and barren landscape. The pregnancy manifests in a fully grown man whom she leaves to his own devices.

The “Son of Earth” meets a group of faceless nomads who seize him with what is either a very long umbilical cord or a rope. The Son of Earth vomits organic pieces, and the nomads excitedly accept these as gifts. The nomads finally bring the man to a fire and burn him’ …

Black Metal Satanica
Mats Lundberg, Sweden, 2008, 80 min

‘Black Metal Satanica is an in-depth documentary capturing the dark, mystical and evil history of the Black Metal genre. Based on Scandinavian Viking lore, Black Metal borrows from ancient Viking melodies, lyrics and mythology dating back to the 11th century. The new wave of Black Metal heroes give their take on the current state of the genre as well as on the founding fathers of Black Metal like Mayhem, Bathory and Immortal and the extreme, almost inhuman acts that surround this controversial subculture. Self-mutilation, murder, suicide, church-burning, the desecration of graves and corpses are all covered here in shocking and graphic detail! Features music by Watain, Vreid, Shining, Svartahrid, Rimsfrost, Mordichrist, Ondskapt and more.’

The Norwegian foreign ministry has begun training aspiring diplomats in “TNBM – True Norwegian Black Metal” – after foreign service missions reported a rise in enquiries about the musical genre from around the world. Indeed, the popularity and scale of the black metal phenomenon were demonstrated recently as one of the style’s foremost proponents, Dimmu Borgir, took the stage in Oslo with an orchestra and choir in a collaboration that has gained widespread media attention.

The head of the foreign ministry’s centre of excellence, Kjersti Sommerset, told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv that “we now have 106 foreign service missions and they get many enquiries from people who want information about Norwegian black metal as a phenomenon. In the training program, we have a large cultural program in order to give the trainees a good understanding of Norwegian culture and the cultural industry.”

Black metal “is clearly a part of this,” Sommerset added.

‘Global awakening’

Author Håvard Rem, the author of a leading book on TNBM called Innfødte skrik (“Native calls”), described the phenomenon to Dagens Næringsliv as “a global awakening that gets the children of the ‘68ers to search for their roots from pre-colonial and pre-Christian times.”

Rem suggests that “young people all over the world identify with this search,” and explained that where young Norwegian boys might find “Norse religion and Odin” in their cultural roots, “in Asia, Vedic metal has arisen with TNBM as its inspiration.” Rem supports efforts to train budding diplomats in the subtleties of black metal, stating that “for people under 40, it is this that they connect to Norway” and that “even if one does not like the music, it quickly becomes a topic for discussion.”

Rem’s own lectures to the foreign ministry trainees also include information about a dark period in black metal history during the 1990s, when a number of murders, acts of violence and incidents of church-burning occurred that put the movement under the spotlight. “You have to realize that this is the history, but it was 20 years ago and, today, Norwegian bands are acceptable,” Rem told Dagens Næringsliv. He stressed that the past problems of Norwegian black metal were not necessarily relevant to selling the genre today, stating that “one can talk about Norwegian salmon without talking about salmon lice, and Ibsen was seen as destructive in his day.”

Aspiring foreign policy professionals themselves are reportedly keen on the move. Silje Bryne, who will work in the Norwegian mission in Paris next year, told Dagens Næringsliv that she feels she “will have a very big use for this” in the future. “I see the value in not just talking about Ibsen and fjords when one talks about Norway, but also about the export product that is black metal.” Bryne added that having “such a strong brand that means that we stand out among the Nordic countries is worth its weight in gold, it’s black gold.”

‘Goosebumps all over’

Meanwhile, in Oslo, leading black metal band Dimmu Borgir has received much attention for its most recent concert in Oslo, for which the band took the stage with Norwegian Broadcasting’s Kringkastingsorkestret (the Norwegian Radio Orchestra) and Schola Cantorum, a chamber choir associated with the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. In total, 96 musicians graced the stage at Oslo Spektrum and gave the 3,500 audience members an enhanced experience of the symphonic black metal sound, with Dimmu Borgir playing a number of songs from classic albums such as Death Cult Armageddon and Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia.

Many commentators were impressed by the spectacle but noted that the different sounds often cancelled one another out. Nonetheless, newspaper Aftenposten commented that “when it works, you get goosebumps all over.”

Aled-Dilwyn Fisher
Views and News from Norway

Merci Carolyne Weldon

‘In the early nineties several Norwegian bands laid emphasis on the primitive sounds of the historic metal bands, Bathory, Venom, and Celtic Frost. When these bands began recording albums their proximity and timing resulted in the specific sound of Black Metal’ …

‘The lyrical concept of these bands focuses on Norse Mythology, the Viking warrior, Nature, and the brutality of the medieval era. These bands gained immediate notoriety for involvement in a brutal murder, a suicide and the burning down of 12th century stave churches’ …

‘A decade later these bands still hold to the same values and are influenced by the same themes. Some bands have gone on to embrace a larger mainstream audience. While others have stayed true to the underground. Black metal bands can now be found all over the world. The subgenre’s, Vicking metal, Fantasy metal, Melodic Black metal, Tolkien metal, Doom metal, War metal, Vampiric metal, Medieval metal, and Troll metal, have expanded the sound and philosophy of Black metal into new realms of musical aggression.’

Black Metal (2005) by Stacy Kranitz. Details here.
First published with short interviews in Arthur Magazine Issue #16 (copies available here).

Seven Sisters Of Sleep ‘Monastery’ de leur Seven Sisters Of Sleep Debut EP (2011)

Seven Sisters Of Sleep Full Set @ The Echo Silverlake, CA, March 13th MMXI

Pour faire suite au billet du 25 mars 2010 (première montréalaise du film) et au Ultimate Norsk Black Metal Blog Post :

Until the Light Takes Us
Aaron Aites & Audrey Ewell, USA, 2009, 93 min

In 1991, Norwegian churches started to burn down, just after an underground circle of metal musicians had formed. The film reveals the true story behind the music, murders, and church burnings, and shows what happened to these young men, who tried to change the world using music, art, and violence. Ultimately, they lost control of what they had created.

BlackMetalMovie.com

Urfaust ‘Vom Geist Der Schwere’ du split 7” avec The Ruins Of Beverast (2007)
Vidéo produit par un fan à partir d’images du film ‘Altered States‘ (1980) de Ken Russell (ici).

“The descent to Hades is the same from every place.” – Ἀναξαγόρας

Re-repost du 4 janvier 2010 (cette fois avec le documentaire au complet) :

The Devil’s Bible
Robert Michaels, USA, 2008, 52 min

‘At 165 pounds, and allegedly made from the skins of 160 donkeys, the Codex Gigas is the world’s largest and most mysterious medieval manuscript. Filled with satanic images and demonic spells, according to legend, the cursed text sprang from a doomed monk’s pact with the Devil. Now, Nat Geo follows a team of scientists as they embark on an unprecedented quest to unravel the secrets behind the book’s darkened pages. Using ultra-violet fluorescence imaging, handwriting analysis and a re-creation of the text, forensic document experts attempt to uncover the cryptic truth behind this ancient Devil’s Bible.’ – National Geographic

Official Codex Gigas site at the National Library of Sweden

Rev. Patrick J. Berkery, Ph.D. ‘The Rite of Exorcism’ (1974) : Discogs | Download

‘Examples of diabolical possessions abound in the annals of human history. Some are more frightenning than others. All have the common denominator of an erstwhile faith that twisted or turned in an inexplicable bent. The album you now hold in your hands records one such experience. The case is actual and authentic, revealed in an ancient, dramatic rite’ …

Tracklist

1. Day of Wrath
2. THE STORY (Part I)
3. The Lord’s Prayer
4. THE STORY (Part I)
5. THE STORY (Part II)
6. Ron Aimee Fugue

J’étais allé voir la conférence avec Jeff au Cégep de Ste-Foy à l’époque (ça devait être en 1996) et c’est probablement de là ma fascination soutenue pour le livre d’Urantia … Quelques mois plus tard on faisait parti d’un ‘collectif’ du même nom (on leur avait même gentiment piqué leur logo) …