Album of the day: Blut Aus Nord – The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion (2CD)

Praise for Blut Aus Nord‘s The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Long out of print, this twisted bit of experimental avant industrial flecked gnarled and warped black metal from these French weirdos gets a super deluxe reissue, with a whole extra disc, more on that in a second. But first let’s talk about The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion, a French black metal record that in some ways maybe foreshadowed Deathspell Omega’s big stylistic shift, which wouldn’t really happen until 2004, but back in 2001, Blut Aus Nord were already taking classic sounding frosty grim blackness and twisting it all up into their own strange idea of what black metal should sound like. Adding strange chords, and weird string bends, turning buzzing riffs into dizzying smears of abstract sound, what could have been just fast and furious, ended up sounds trippy and sort of psychedelic.

And here, the roots of their more drone based ambient side surfaced, which would eventually culminate in 2005′s all ambient disc Thematic Emanation Of Archetypal Multiplicity, as well as the less buzzy and more atmospheric records like Mort. But on Mystical, like on The Work Which Transforms God, another of our favorite BaN records, this dark ambient side consisted mostly of long glacial interludes between songs, doomy fuzzed out riffs, disembodied and abstract giving way to dark shimmering low end rumble, chiming bells, all muted and grimly dark.

But really, it’s the demented riffing that makes Mystical so special. The vocals howl demonically, the drums blast so fast, they almost sound like a drum machine, with a sort of industrial rigidity, but the riffs are just mind blowing, it sounds like the guitars must be fretless, or every note in every chord is being bent back and forth, slippery and woozy, gorgeously disorienting, tripped out and druggy, like listening to Immortal through some sonic funhouse mirror. Usually when we get a hold of older, earlier records from a band, they tend to be more raw, less progressive and less fully realized (Deathspell?) but if anything, Mystical is just as weirdly fucked up and amazing as the two records that would follow.

And if that record wasn’t already amazing enough and well deserving of a deluxe reissue all by its lonesome. The band have added a whole second disc, three new chapters (the original record was separated into ‘chapters’ in lieu of songs), all of them titled Chapter 7, nearly 40 minutes of new music, hinting we presume at their forthcoming multi part, multiple full length 3 part 777 triple cd, each volume its own record, with its own title, but all a part of their 777 epic.

The Chapter 7′s on Mystical Beast, find the band slowing things way down. The first, a dirgey, blackened death march, a haunting slithery creep, the guitars still twisted and gnarled, but anchored to a lurching, lumbering rhythm, the vocals a beastly croak, the main riff augmented by streaks of high end melody, reverbed leads, the whole thing like a slowed down blast of black metal. The second Chapter 7, begins with a long stretch of droned out layered guitar, riffs pulled apart and laid atop one another, the drums eventually come back in, another dirge, but this time the vocals are clean, melodic, way off in the distance. The result is some kind of blackened gloom pop, like some Nortt / Alice In Chains mash up, which sounds weird, and it is, but it’s also actually quite cool.

And then finally, the last Chapter 7, nearly 20 minutes long, another slowly unfurling riff, thick crumbling distortion, super spare, ultra doomy, guitars howling, melodies pealing, the vocals clean and again off in the distance. The track swells ebbs and flows, a lurching almost seasick sort of swell, the guitars woozy and warped, the drums a plodding trudge, the result, a weirdly hypnotic, mesmerizing slo-mo black doom wooziness, that is totally trancelike, and ends WAY too soon, even after twenty minutes. The perfect warped coda to an already brilliantly warped slab of twisted grim blackness.

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.

Tags: Album of the day, Aquarius Records, black metal, Blut Aus Nord, Debemur Morti, The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2011 at 8:26 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.