Furze - 2003 - Necromanzee Cogent

Necromanzee Cogent is Norwegian one-man-band Furze's first fullength album. This is a very interesting album indeed, many an odd influence has found its way into the music of Furze. What strikes me as very surprising, and very interesting is the heavy Black Sabbath influence that shows up at times. In fact the entire second track, "For the Lust of Darkness", is built on Ozzy era Black Sabbath-esque guitarwork. The track following this, "Dødsrikets Fremtred", could very well have been recorded by Darkthrone during their Under a Funeral Moon era. Apart from these influences there are also some Abruptum and early Thorns in this album.

As you probably have guessed by now, this is not fast necro Black Metal, but rather slow, doomy avantgarde Black Metal with some faster and actually even some groovy parts. I must say this is one of the more interesting releases in quite a while. The vocals vary quite a bit, everything from screaming to traditional Black Metal vocals and also whispers, are utilized. Of the 7 tracks on this album, only one is under 6 minutes,and the last track clocks in at 23 minutes.

Sunday February 8 2004, by :Vragh:

Emit - 2002 - The Dark Bleeding

The British one man band Emit has unleashed a cassette with four tracks of Black/Noise/Industrial Metal. The music sounds similar to Abruptum and Burning the Temple of God era MZ 412 with traces of Aghast at times, with the few instances of vocals being mostly very distorted screams.

The soundquality on this recording is very good, and fits the music perfectly. The songs have a bit more of a regular songstructure than most Abruptum tracks, which makes for a bit easier listening.
Definitely something to play on loud volume in the dark of the night. Very haunting.

Standout tracks are "I" and "IV".

Monday July 26 2004, by :Vragh:

Abruptum - 1995 - Evil Genius

This is one of the more accessible recordings by Swedish cultband Abruptum. It collects the two demotapes that were released in 1990, Abruptum and The Satanist Tunes, and the Evil 7" single released in 1991. What sets this collection apart from their other albums is the fact that here we have
more of a standard length of the tracks. Only one of the tracks on this album is longer than five minutes, as opposed to the later 25 and even 61 minute tracks.

The sound on this recording is a bit murky, despite the fact that the tracks were remastered for this release.

The music is more to the slow and heavy side, with some noisy parts. The album has a rather ritualistic feel to it, due to the murky sound mentioned earlier, and the fact that all the lyrics are in latin only adds to this feeling. There really isn't anything out there that sounds quite like Abruptum.

Mostly this sounds like Death / Doom Metal a la early 1990ies, but with it's own special edge to it.
In a way the cold feeling of this album reminds me of Ancient's first album Svartalvheim,
although musically these two albums are not at all alike.

Long ago, by :Vragh: