The wave of early '90s black metal, particular from the frozen Scandinavian wastes, was at once suffocating yet irritating once a thousand bands had daubed themselves with corpsepaint and cried grimly into the forests of night. But there was a time, like with most musical genres, when something so fresh and new opened the eyes of many and stood above the rest. After the punky harshness of 'Deathcrush', 'De Mysteriis...' emerged, a black, consuming blanket of gloom from Norway's inhospitable woodlands, where the snows rape harshly the flesh of man, and the most genuinely evil of noise was constructed.
'De Mysteriis...' is one of the black metal classics, without question. One part Bathory with its dense yet almost tinny riffing, yet another part so remote and cold beyond the wildest nightmares of heavy metal's primal past. This is way beyond Venom's jokey drunken evil, and instead remains untouched in its grim void.
Step forward original black metal god of the inner circle, Euronymous, clad in black, face daubed like some miserable orc, yet his band making a terrible noise from the tundra that only Darkthrone could match. 'Funeral Fog', is a hyper blitz, the vocals almost muffled in their obscure evil, the guitars a rancid, grating buzz before the band slow it down for the ominous 'Freezing Moon'. Eerie stuff, blessed with an atmosphere devoid of life, screaming in its black hate and forever intoxicating the brain.
This is true black metal from a time when heavy metal grew out of its satanic imagery and got serious.
8/10
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