Question of the Month: Which kind of music best speaks to you?

We're half way through September already, and there's a new question from Michael G D'Agostino at A Life Examined to be answered. The question of the month is:

"Which kind of music best speaks to you?"

I like many types of music, from Italian opera to Tom Waits. But my favorite type of music is black metal, in particular the classic songs and albums from the 1990s.  I'm thinking of bands like Satyricon, Gorgoroth, Taake and Mayhem.

Black metal, with it's sludgy guitar sound, fast blast drumming and somewhat harsh vocal style, that's the kind of music that make me relax. The song structure is often unconventional, with speed changes, and melodic guitar riffs.

Black metal concerts are way to rare in my home town. But this weekend, Mayhem is coming to town. I've bought tickets for the concert of course. I hope they will play some of the good old stuff. My favorite is Freezing Moon, the original recording with Dead on vocals.

The early black meal albums were recorded with cheep equipment in dark garages and musty basements. That's part of the charm with these old recordings.

In more recent times, some of the black metal bands were signed by big record labels, like Nuclear Blast. Dimmu Borgir even played live with a full symphony orchestra and choir. The concert was aired by the national broadcasting. That's cool of course, but the good old songs are still the best >:)

(Picture from my archives, taken some years ago when Mayhem played live at town square in my hometown on a light mid-summer night.)

Genre Favorites Blogfest

Today Alex J. Cavanaugh is hosting the Genre Favorites Blogfest. That's a fun blogfest, too fun to miss. 

But let's get to the point. Here are my favorite genres:

Favorite movie genre: 
I don't really have any favorite movie genre, but I have some favorite movies. From the top of my head I mention Night on Earth; great movie by Jim Jarmush. Five episodes from taxi trips in various cities. The best part is the last one, from Helsinki, made in co-operation with the Kaurusmaki brothers, Pink Floyd The Wall: Great music, cool movie,  and Dr Zhivago, based on the book by Boris Pasternak.

Favorite music genre:
Black metal and death metal and Italian opera. Verdi was heavy metal of his time.

Favorite books: 
That's easy. Ever since high-school days, I've been a big fan of Russian Classics; Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Lermontov.

Guilty pleasure genre: 
I still enjoy the good old Zorro movies. Except from that, I'm probably a little bit nerdy; too interested in science to keep work and leisure time separate. And I love reading maps, which means I'm pretty good in geography.

(A Hero of Our Time is a thin but great book by Nicolai Lermontov, one of my very favorites. The picture above is the cover of my copy, Penguin Classics.)

Out of the silence

This year has been very bad when it comes to metal concerts around here. The outdoor festival on town square in May was cancelled, and there has been nothing else worth mentioning.

Also, I have hardly used my iPod at all last months. I've rather enjoyed the sound of silence, which is quite nice, actually.

But yesterday Mayhem came to town, to play at the our rock museum. The concert was very good. It was like a reverse tour of their career, starting with recent songs, and ending with some good old stuff from the Mysteriies Dom Sathanas album, iincluding the magnificent Freezing Moon of course.

Here is an early recording of Freezing Moon, with vocals by Dead (who comitted suicide in 1991) and lead guitar by Euronymus (who was murdered in 1993).

Enjoy the dark side >:)

(That's a picture I took at the concert yesterday. This time I remembered to bring my camera)

Tagged

I was tagged a couple of days ago, by Liz Fichera. The tagging means that I'm supposted to answer some questions.

OK, I'll do my best. Here we go:

1) Do you think you're hot? If you mean that kind of hot, I know one or two who might say "yes", but most people would say "no", and I don't really care. I'm too old for that kind of games ...

2) Upload a picture or wall paper you are using at the moment. The picture above is what I've used as wall paper on my lap top for the last couple of years. I took it from our backyard three years ago, when we lived up North and the sun was shining 24/7 in the summer (unless it was raining).

3) When was the last time you ate chicken meat? Last week. I'm not very fond of eating animals with a beak. I eat chicken if I get it served, but have never ever ordered it in a restaurant. I usually prefer beef or fish.

4) The Song(s) you listened to recently? Most of the time I listen to black metal and death metal. Today Iæve been listening to Mayhem, Taake (which means fog), and Nile.

5) What were you thinking as you were doing this? I was thinking on my so-called novel that I'm trying to write. There are a couple of tricky parts in the plot, and I struggle to get it tied together in a smooth way.

6) Do you have a nickname? Cold As Heaven, invented it myself.

Waste of time

I don't know anything less interesting and more boring than Christmas. Usually I don't think about it before 23rd December.

This year it's different. My old lady is away this week, off-shore, on the oil platform she's working with. So I have to take care of a lot of Christmas shopping and preparations.

Damn, what a waste of time!

Usually, Christmas preparations bring some arguing and yelling in our family, since I'm not very enthusiastic when it comes to putting up lights and stars and the Christmas tree ans so-called decorations.

I hardly get the time to write on my so-called novel. Tonight I have written only 666 words.

Now I need some good music to cheer me up, for instance Freezing Moon by Mayhem. This live version from 2004 has Attila on vocals; the original studio version with Dead on vocals is even cooler. Note Hellhammer on the drums >:)

Abrahadabra

A few weeks ago, I visited the local metal store. It's a small obscure shop selling only heavy metal CDs, cash only, no cards accepted. I asked the long-haired and pale guy behind the counter if he had any cool stuff to recommend. He handed me an album by Australian grindcore-death-metal band The Berzerker. I bought the CD, and also grabbed the new album Abrahadabra by Dimmu Borgir.

Dimmu Borgir isn't my favorite band; I like the old-school black metal better. I wasn't very impressed by the previous Dimmu Borgir album and didn't have big expectations this time. Also, they recently fired half the band members, and replaced them by session musicians on base, drums and keyboard.

The new album was a positive surprise, nice melodic black-metal-inspired symphonic metal. Finally, they've got budgets big enough to hire a full symphony orchestra, and a big choir. In the song named Dimmu Borgir, the orchestra, choir and band flows nicely together. It has almost a radio-hit potential (hard-core black-metal fans don't like that).

On the song Getaways, which is the official video (a crazy mix of milk, blood and pigeons), they also use some female vocal. This works quite well, for variation, in particular the last 1/3 of the song (the "be the broken or the breaker" part). But they're not the first black metal band to do this; Satyricon had some female vocal on the Volcano album.

It's gonna be very interesting to see how they will perform the new songs live. Hopefully I get the chance to see them in concert next year. It's a really good live band >:)

Seafood in the dark

This weekend we switched the clocks back, from daylight-saving time to regular time. That's the astronomically correct time, more or less, depending on where you are compared to the meridians that define the timezones. It's getting dark pretty early now. It's dark already when I go home from work.

Anyway, we got one hour extra this weekend. It's like we save one hour in the spring, and get it back in the fall. I spent that extra hour in the best possible way with seafood, oyster and that kind of stuff. To Thou Who Dwellest In The Night, I recommend this great song by Arcturus.

Which timezone are you in? I'm at GMT+1 >:)

Halloween and such

Our door bell has been ringing continuously tonight, trick-or-treat kids of all sizes and ages (I suspect some of them were university students). Maybe a little bit childish, but I wanted to have some fun too. So I borrowed a scary mask from little boy. And I was wearing one of my metal T-shits, as usual, with sculls and scary stuff ... muuhaaahaaah!

Every time the door bell rang I put on the mask. Then, with the mask on, I opened the the door with a quick move, and screaming out the most horrifying growl I could make. I thought that would scare the shit out of the kids ... but they just laughed at me.

It's not easy to scare the kids anymore.

The picture has nothing to do with Halloween, but I thought this might be a suitable day to post it. I took it this summer, on a black metal concert on town square with one of my favorite bands, Mayhem.

Black metal fans have Halloween every day >:)))

Stockfish and rock

I just came back from the north. On the way south, the plane passed over a glacier, the second largest in Winterland. From the plane, I took a picture where you can see the crevasses in the glacier if you enlarge it.

Yesterday we were on a short geology field study along the beach. South and west of the island, there are potential oilfields under the sea floor. Therefore, it’s of interest to study the geology where it outcrops on dry land, to learn about what’s down there in the ground.

Yesterday we had a nice dinner, with dry cod prepared after the local recipe, served at the local bar. The cod is dried outdoor by the sun and the wind, without adding salt. This kind of dried fish is called stockfish.

All over the island there were racks made from logs. That’s where they hang the fish to dry it, for three months. Right now the racks are empty, since the fish has been taken down and shipped to Italy.

The stockfish export from this remote island to Venice in Italy, and how it all started in the 15th century, is interesting history. I’ll tell you the story later.

I am already missing the islands and mountains in the north. That’s why I’m listening to Mother North right now, a black metal classic by Satyricon. Here’s the link to the video on youtube: Mother North (video)

The video is somewhat controversial. If you don’t like that kind of stuff, you can listen to this cool version, live with the broadcasting orchestra: Mother North (live)

Beethoven at the Polar Circle

Yesterday, I was driving from the north to the south of Winterland, together with my old lady. We were arguing about what to play on the stereo. She hates black metal, and I don't like mainstream pop and rock. We compromized on classics, which both of us like.

We started out with Vivaldi; Concert for Two Trumpets and Strings, and then The Four Seasons. My favorite is Winter, as you can probably guess. Then we played Tchaikovsky. When we crossed the Polar Circle after 6 hours, including one hour on the ferry across a fjord, we were on Beethoven; Fidelio, his only opera.

At the Polar Circle there's a souvenir shop, of course, and a monument. I took a picture from the back side of the monument; I thought the snow and mountains were a better background than the souvenir shop full of crap.

There's a scenic road along the coast, but it takes too much time. So we took the fast and boring route, through endless forests and mountains. After 15 hours driving, we were home ... damn tired of Vivaldi and Beethoven.

Today, I'm back on black metal >:)

Black metal at town square

Tonight I was at a black metal concert, at town square. Good music, good beer, with good friends. This is one of the things I really like about the town I live in; outdoor extreme metal concerts, on light summer nights. There were all kinds of people in the audience; hard core headbangers, officially straight people like me, even parents with kids.

The headliner bands were Keep of Kalessin and Mayhem. It was great to hear and see Mayhem live. This is one of the pioneer bands within black metal, founded in the late 80's.

Next week I will turn my blog into a voyage diary, for a couple of weeks. I'm going to the northern seas on a seismic survey.The plans are as follows:

o Monday: I fly up to the town known as the northernmost town in the world, flying Six Flags Airlines the last part of the trip, of course. It's the only airline flying to these remote small-towns in the north,

o Tuesday: Prepatory meeting, with offshore crew and onshore support team.

o Wednesday: A helicopter will take us out to the seismic vessel, which is already en route to the survey area >:)

Slave of the Moon Shadow

I'm just sitting here, relaxing, and listening to one of my favorite songs, a black metal masterpiece; Måneskyggens slave from the Pentagram album by Gorgoroth. In English, the title would be something like Slave of the Moon Shadow.

It's a Hell of a crazy band, but great music!

Note the guitar riff that starts at 2 minutes and 8 seconds, and the one at 3 minutes and 3 seconds.

Here's the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJSZ2k-VAUs

Burzum is back

Good news; Burzum is back! The first album in eleven years, was released this week. The first guitar-based album since 1993, when The Count was jailed for church burnings, and for killing his band mate Euronymus (guitar strings were banned in jail, I guess). The new album Belus catches, partly, the atmosphere from the great albums from the early 1990's (Det som en gang var, Aske, Hvis lyset tar oss) . Some songs have the kind of monotonous feeling from the ambient Filosofem album. Here's one of my favorite tracks (so far). Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPKXUxJVv6Y

Black metal

Here is a very short introduction to black metal, my version:

The first wave of black metal is associated with bands like Bathory and Venom. In 1982 Venom released the album Black Metal, which gave the name to the genre.

The second wave of black metal emerged in the early 1990's, with bands like Mayhem, Immortal, Gorgoroth, Burzum and Satyricon. Characterisitic features of black metal are distorted guitars, blast drumming, and a special vocal style (grim vocal). The song structure is often unconventional, sometimes with several musical ideas in one song, different from the usual verse-chorus structure of rock and pop. The lyrical themes are often anti-religious.

Black metal has always been underground culture, not accepeted by mainstream society, often associated with satanism and church burning. However, less than a handful of individuals in the black metal community were directly involved in church burnings in the early 1990's. Well known are the infamous acts of Varg Vikernes (known as Count Grishnackh in the one-man band Burzum), who killed his band-mate Euronymus and set several churches on fire. The Count was released in 2009, after 16 years in jail. A new Burzum album will be released in 2010!

To get a kick start on black metal, run to your local metal store and buy these three albums:
o Pentagram by Gorgoroth
o Nemesis Divina by Satyricon
o Over Bjørgvin gråter himmerik by Taake

Below is a list of my favorite black metal albums. You will find most of these albums (and many more) in the CD collection of a black metal enthusiast.

Arcturus:
Aspera Hiems Symfonia (1996,2002)

Burzum:
Burzum/Aske (1992,1995)
Det som engang var (1993)
Hvis lyset tar oss (1994)
Filosofem (1996)

Carpathian Forest:
Defending the Throne of Evil (2003)

Darkthrone:
A Blaze in the Northern sky (1992)

Dimmu Borgir:
For all tid (1994)
Stormblåst (1996,2005)
Enthrone Darkness Triumphant (1997)
Death Cult Armageddon (2003)

Emperor:
Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk (1997)
Scattered Ashes: A Decade Of Emperial Wrath (Best of album, 2003)

Gorgoroth:
Pentagram (1994)
Antichrist (1996)
Under the Sign of Hell (1997)
Destroyer (1998)
Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem Trahunt (2009)

Immortal:
At the Heart of Winter (1999)
Sons of Northern Darkness (2002)

Keep of Kalessin:
Armada (2006)
Kolossus (2008)

Mayhem:
De Mysteriis dom Sathanas (1994)
Ordo ad Chao (2007)

Satyricon:
Dark Medieval Times (1994)
Shadowthrone (1994)
Nemesis Divina (1996)
Volcano (2002)
Now Diabolical (2006)

Solefald:
Red for Fire: An Icelandic Odyssey : Part I
Black for Death: An Icelandic Odyssey : Part II

Thorns:
Stigma Diabolicum (Best of album, 2007)

Taake:
Nattestid ser porten vid (1999)
Over Bjørgvin gråter himmerik (2002)
Hordalands dødskvad (2005)

Ulver:
Bergtatt (1995)

1349:
Hellfire (2006)

Aspera Hiems Symfonia

Arcturus was a legendary supergroup, a side project of musicians who had their main work in other bands. Aspera Hiems Symfonia was their avant-garde black-metal masterpiece. This album doesn't need any review; it's a classical album. Anyway, I just wanted to write a few lines about it.

Aspera Hiems Symfonia was released in 1996; great music, but not very good mixing and production. The album was completely re-mastered and re-released in 2002. You can buy a double CD that contains both the re-mastered and original versions (and a couple of good bonus tracks). The re-mastering really brought out the greatness of the music. It is an album where all songs are very good, it's not often you find that. The music is black metal at the core, but has more than you expect from the typical old-school black-metal albums from the 1990's.

The music is symphonic and melodic, carried by distorted lead guitars, with great solo sections. The brilliant (electric) piano played by Sverd adds spice on top of the guitars. The drumming by Hellhammer is brilliant as always, with nicely timed blast beats, and precisely underlining mid-song changes in beat and tempo. The grim-vocals by Garm has just the right desperation to match the mood of the songs.

I have listened through this album about a thousend times, never getting tired of it, one of my all-time favorites. I listen to it now, as I write. It is impossible to pick one single song as the high-light, every track on the album is one. Below, I have included a YouTube link to one of the songs, picked more or less at random: Whence and Wither Goest the Wind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zJ0vqJWwAM

And since only one song can't make justice to this album; here is another one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXHng1Vz3II

Enjoy !!! >:)

Wintry grey

I was skiing with the boys this weekend, as usual. We had a good time, as usual. The daylight already lasts noticeably longer than a month ago. It's still light at 3 pm. Saturday was sunny. Sunday was cloudy; wintry grey, reminding me of that great song by Arcturus (YouTube link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M0D_QPWl-U

Review of the new Gorgoroth album

A few weeks ago, I went down to the local metal store, and bought the new Gorgoroth album "Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem Trahunt". This is the band's first studio album in three years, the first since the lawsuit on the legal rights to the band name, and the following change of line up. The last three Gorgoroth albums have been, not bad, but kind of average, nothing special to it. Therefore, I was not sure what to expect this time.

The new album was a great positive surprise, a collection of 9 excellent songs. Infernus, the founder of the band, and the only remaining original band member, is back in charge as the main song writer. The musical style is melodic, sometimes doomy, black metal, carried by laid-back catchy guitar lines, and lazy drumming, frequently bursting out in clean blast beats. The grim-vocal by Pest is steady, but lacking some of the desperate feeling from previous recordings. As usual, Gorgoroth does not provide writtten lyrics on the cover. Sharp ears are neeeded to get all the text lines.

This is definitely the best Gorgoroth album since the classical albums from the 90’s; “Pentagram” (1994), “Antichrist” (1996) and “Under the Sign of Hell" (1997). Here is my favorite song from the new album (YouTube link), the title is, very suitably, “Rebirth".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T0h-qi9HQQ