Metal liner notes of the day



Metal liner notes of the day

TEN NÁŠ BLACK METAL

AS A TRIBUTE TO ROOT'S GREATEST TUNE, WE WILL NOW HAVE A CONTINUATION OF SORTS OF THE PREVIOUS POST.

First, a keyboard version.  Note the tongue at the end--this will be thematically important later.

Obviously not anywhere near as good as the original, but it's pretty catchy, and there's no denying the talent here.

 

Now---well, there's nothing descriptive I can write to do this justice.  See for yourself: 

The weirdness factor here exceeds that of the original video.  To be fair, I probably look similar when listening to the song, except I don't cut out templates of Big Boss' corpsepaint and apply them to my face.

 

Finally, some performances with old friends:

 



I find the slow section here (especially the evillaughter) to be astonishingly good for such a later live version. 

Videos of the unholy trinity of Czech black metal

Sadly, if you were to mention "Czech black metal videos," what comes to mind first would likely be Maniac Butcher's "Co Dobré Pro Mne, Dobrým Jest," or perhaps that Trollech video where the members start off playing guitar calf-deep in a creek.  Something akin to the atrocious "Call of the Wintermoon" video and its much deserved parodies--budgetless stuff full of silly in-the-forest posturing.  But long before Barbarud and Vlad Blasphemer were headbanging in the great outdoors or storming bridges with woodcutting implements in jerky slow motion, there were Czech black metal videos.

In fact, all three pioneering Czechoslovakian black metal bands had professional videoclips made roughly around the times of their debut albums.  Think about that--at a time when most of the infamous Norwegian black metal musicians were still playing death metal, these bands had REAL VIDEOS.  Although it wasn't uncommon for old East-European heavy metal bands to have videos, with the exception of Venom, these are probably the earliest black metal production videos ever made.

Yes, yes, I know the black mass-themed video for "Geniové" is better known.  That clip is a fine one too, but there's something I like about this video better.  The seizure-inducing speed of the cuts during the playback parts?  The dramatic hand movements?  Franta and co.'s struggle with the bars of the gate reminding me of the "Breaking the Law" video?

This is the most professional of the three videos.  I'm curious where the interspersed footage is from--I've seen claims that it's from the 1969 eponymous film Kladivo Na Čarodějnice (alternate title: Don't Steal the Communion Wafer, You Old Fucking Hag), which is incorrect, as firstly, that was a black and white movie, and secondly, there's way too much action in the footage here.

We finish with what may well be the greatest extreme metal vid ever made.  I don't mean that in a smug or belittling way, either.  This could have been a disastrously silly video if made under other conditions.  CONDITIONS THAT DON'T INCLUDE BIG BOSS.  The man is a legend, but that doesn't mean we can't be honest about his unconventional age and look, even back then--his slightly maniacal, child molester-esque demeanor lends a genuinely creepy feel to the proceedings here, which is perfect for the theme.

Metal liner notes of the day

Metal liner notes of the day

Dead Conspiracy - "As You Would Have Them Do" CD-single

Originally I had the idea of doing oddball reviews under the title of Weird Tales of Metal, which was honestly just a catchy title for what should have been Common and Recurring Themes in Metal.  Most bands inevitably turn to shit, mediocrity abounds everywhere, there's the whole dichotomy of unfaltering traditionalism vs. throwing in all sorts of avant-garde nonsense (for the sake of pushing "boundaries" which are usually self-imposed), there are lots of hidden gems buried by time and obscurity, etc.  Nothing particularly weird about any of those things.  It's how heavy metal is.

Remember what I just said about bands turning to shit?  Well, here you go:


Lemon yellow inserts and a polka-dot logo.  You know this is going to be good.

Dead Conspiracy's As You Would Have Them Do CD-single was released by New Renaissance in 1991, during the very end of the label's original run.  As such, it abandons the classic New Renaissance castle logo in favor of their later-but-decidedly-heavy-metal-looking logo of a bloody chopping block.  It was also (until the label's resurrection), along with the Terrahsphere CD, one of the last releases done wholly under the New Renaissance moniker.  Ann would shortly team up with Colossal and go on to release towering thrash classics such as Dead & Bloated You Don't and Denial Antichrist President.

As noted on the cover, this lone track was released as a preview for a full length album which never came.  Probably fortunately so.  This is pretty much New Renaissance's WORST RELEASE EVER.  Not because Tuff Luck or Intense Mutilation are so great, but there's only one silly and ill-conceived song here, with nothing else to temper it:



Lewis Livermore?  Heh heh heh...

As you can see from the band member names and yellow background color, I have not sneakily posted the lineup from a ska band.  YES--DEAD CONSPIRACY HAVE A HORN SECTION.

The song opens with an audio snippet of Marin Luther King Jr., so we're clearly in for pro-social lyrics; indeed, lyrically it's an anti-hate/anti-persecution tune.  For all the trepidation I had about them, the horns are used in an oddly superfluous way.  They kick in right at the start, last about a minute, and then reappear at the end after a short funk bass section.  They provide an extra flourish but don't really follow the theme of the song.  The horn players were clearly not regular members of the band--if you look up Tim Bryson and Lewis Livermore (bwahaha...), this is the only semblance of anything remotely rock-like in their musical careers.  I'm not sure how they knew the band, but it's entirely believable they didn't--I wouldn't be surprised if everyone just happened to be at the studio at the same time, and someone thought it would be cute and novel to throw trumpets and a sax into the proceedings.

Initially, it seems things are going in a funky-music-with-heavy-guitars direction ala Mindfunk/Last Crack (there are some similarities to Mordred, to be sure, but things get nowhere near as thrashy) and all the Red Hot Chili Peppers/Jane's Addiction influenced tripe that was prevalent in the late '80s/early '90s.  Eventually the main riff begins to build speed; broken free from all the funk influence, it may have been the basis for a decent progressive thrash song.  But let's not get too ahead of ourselves with what might have been, because the cherry that tops this shit sundae comes in the form of the ridiculous vocals.  I sense they are an attempt at "schizophrenic" crossover-style vocals.  Trembly talk-singing and occasional bursts of more aggressive punkish singing are involved.  I'm not sure of the correct technical term (well, other than annoying), but some of the vocal phrasings are purposefully drawn out, to comedic effect.  Perhaps the vocalist realized he was resigned to the terrible fate of singing over this shit, and that resulted in his strained wails.  Ultimately, with only one song here, it's hard to tell whether the band was moving towards this style or whether it's just a fluke tune where they were trying to be quirky.

As silly as I find this release, it unfairly colored my perception of the band for a long time--for almost 2 decades this CD-single was all I knew of them.  They were off in the Pacific Northwest, placing me far away from any local word of mouth, and I never encountered their '80s demos through tape trading.  I was quite content with my ignorance until a few years ago, when the Gore Drenched Legacy CD compilation came out.  It was touted as actually being good.  Could this really be the same band?  Sure enough, it was, and I was pleasantly surprised that they started out as raging deaththrash.  Whatever their later transgressions, their earlier stuff should have at least merited a track on one of the Satan's Revenge comps. or something similar.

Metal liner notes of the day

Mandatory Suicidal Tendencies