Sunday 27 April 2008

Various Artists - Fenriz Presents : The Best Of Old School Black Metal (2004)


Unholy black smoke...once upon a time there was black metal...and then there was black metal. yes, the second wave of the early '90s was a pitch black invasion featuring the likes of Darkthrone, Mayhem, Emperor etc, but before such a wave there was a godawful mess that ripped layers from Venom, laced it with punk, hissed it with the atmosphere of a graveyard and puked it all out into a bewitching lump of hellish cancer. Thankfully, if you're too scared to reach back into the depths of time and grab yourselves a warped vinyl copy of the original nefarious kings of black thrash, then you can at least grab this amazing compilation stuck together by Darkthrone's godly drummer Fenriz, who along with Peaceville, has come up with a true black cauldron of hate, anger and witchery. A majority of bands on here the original grim murmurs of a style of music that has never been equalled, its intensity and primal rawness is simply as far as metal can ever go...

Blasphemy's eerie 'Winds Of The Black Godz' melts into Sarcofago's evil chugfest known as 'Satanic Lust', and immediately it's the early to mid-'80s, the sky is a canopy of menacing clouds, and rain is in the air, Celtic Frost's gigantic serpent 'Dawn Of Megiddo' rises from a nearby lake, the villagers are scurrying like drowned rats from their homes...picture the scene...it's black metal invasion...Nattefrost and Aura Noir provide a modern assault, but remain vile enough to be included in this set of sickly and gloomy rusted punk-thrash, but there's no denying the potent froth of Mayhem's 'The Freezing moon', run for your lives...Samael, Hellhammer, Venom and Bulldozer spilling the pungent alcohol and Destruction tearing up the speakers....the most unholy guide to what came before and what still rules today. There's no escaping this nightmare...


8/10

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