Czral's drumming during this period of time is so amazing. He had a lot of similar drum weirdness for Ulver's demo. It's too bad that he can't drum anymore. He was very inventive and technical.
This is a fun song from them, but I wish the person would've picked Carrier of Wounds, my favorite from the album, but this is a good representation as well. That said, this is still black metal, just pretty avant-garde. Its a really nice album overall, I hope you can hear the whole thing some time.
I think this is definitely one for an album review, it will do the album justice, and it will work in your favor too, I mean that you will actually enjoy it more, after a certain atmosphere is established. The one song doesn't do it justice. However, needless to say that once again your analysis is pretty spot on.
Yeah, you proably guessed that I would be all over this. You're covering a lot of ground in relation to 2nd wave of late. I would not hesitate to call this black metal, and a lot of people back in the day were also quite content to see it as such, even if they'll attach some prefixes and suffixes to the designation. But that emphasis on atmosphere and mood is quintessential black metal, albeit with slightly different avenues of expression. It's also intentionally inaccessible and kind of imperfect, which lines up perfectly with the ethos of the era. This is very much the kind of music that fits that cliché of needing several listens to click, if it does at all. This band was a trio, and quite an illustrious one at that. Yusuf Parvez, guitarist and co composer ( who was about 17 when this was recorded, with the other 2 members being around 20) is the main force behind Dodheimsgard, which is more traditionally black metal but shares a lot of this VBE's dna. Hugh Mingay, the bassist, also played in Ulver and Arcturus and is kind of notorious for just sometimes going off the script in his playing and just kind of jamming. Carl Michael, the drummer, would go on to form Virus, which is very much a development of VBE's sound and that which most departed from a metal blueprint. And they were breaking the mould back in 1995 before the mould was even established. It sounds rough around the edges, but at the same time, there's still something fresh to it in spite of this album being old enough to vote. It uses a lot of jazzy ideas, but unlike more tech death bands, it's clearly not for showboating purposes and more what that jazzy sound can bring up to the table in terms of establishing a mood. It stood out even back then, clearly, but it was also readily accepted in that sort of glaring contraditcion that was a genre known for being so outwardly dogmatic and rigid being also the basis for so much experimentation. That's why I tend to comment so much on it. 80s metal is seen by some as its glory days, but to me it feels like an arms race. Not much to differ NWOBHM from thrash other than the increased tempo and raspier vocals and death metal was thrash, only crunchier, more downtuned and even more atonal in vocal delivery. 90s saw mainstream metal all but die out and most of the establish names wallow in mediocrity, but all the while, this was bubbling under that surface and bands were going sideways instead of merely going faster. Paralel to black metal you had doom metal, bands rediscovering goth, industrial, dance music, folk, all the while sharing the same sort of generational moodiness that bred grunge and nu metal. But what it lacked in good production values or sometimes, execution, it made for in that it was more or less a genre reborn out of zero commercial ambition for a tiny while before people went and made it marketeable again. It's also why I am so insistant, I think this era of music is kind of a perfect fit for your channel; even when it isn't your personal tastes. It's just a very interesting musical time to talk about.
Your comment about them being still fresh today had me look up the date of this release because I honestly thought it was newer. This absolutely doesn't feel like 1995 and was so far ahead of it's time that it fits quite well with the modern post-BM ideas coming out. I think we'll have to do a 2nd wave BM week and hope we get a good selection of songs for it that showcase the width of experimentation in the era.
@@CriticalReactions it surprises me how early this album came out, too. That and how young Parvez was when he co wrote it. If you're open from suggestions from the pennyless peanut gallery, I'll finally play my Emperor card and suggest "I am the Black Wizards" [sic]. Their second album is a fairly vast leap forward and I'd say Loss and Curse of Reverence is one of the best black metal songs ever, but that album might actually make for a pretty good album reaction. It's written to be listened start to finish. "Wizards" is still pretty iconic and atmospheric.
@@CriticalReactions yeah, no hurries. Just figured this is as good a time as any to lock in that request. It's both a glimpse into athe roots of symphonic influences in metal and in Ihsahn's musical evolution. It's kind of funny that you've sampled everything he did except the thing that first put him in the spotlight.
@@CriticalReactions on reflection, I'm ammendung the suggestion from black wizards to Inno a Satana. It's the track with the strongest symphonic crossover , so much so they did a symphonic (synths) rework of it called Opus a satana that holds up even though all they did was translate the guitars lines into symphonic ones. A good one to listen on your own after and appreciate the underlying melodic work
Happy you did this one as your first VBE reaction. It’s probably my favourite song from their only full length. And coming out in the 90s it was a really unique album in the black metal landscape back then. And I still think it stands out. Not a lot of newer music sounds quite like it. Very special, desolate atmosphere through the whole album. The black metal vocalist in this song is Vicotnik, who is the main man in Dødheimsgard, and other band members as well has gone on to make special music. Monumental album!
Yeah, this was the first full reaction but he scoped I Sang For The Swans on a Patron live stream last year. I still listen to this album fairly often, it's timeless (it's magic).
One of the weaker songs on this album imo, I think I Sang for the Swans, Den Saakaldte, Remembrance of Things Past, or even Autumn Leaves would have been better choices!
Partially I requested this because it's easily a top 3 album all time for me, but also I did think it was BM you might enjoy or at least find interesting. Thanks for your thoughts! Glad you picked up the way the drums and especially bass drive things while the guitar is usually there just for texture. Speaking of, yes the drummer in particular plays like a man raised by animals with no human contact. He later said that he felt he "overplayed" them on this album but to me it's a big part of why the album is special. No matter how many times you listen to this album it just feels alien. Even the lyrics are too abstract to really make sense of. I agree that the clean vocal style suits the music (the harshes are used very sparingly). For some people they're too laconic, but it fits. They wouldn't suit many other albums.
He may have felt he overplayed the drums but it's a standout aspect in those sections and I think some of the build ups wouldn't have hit the same without the chaos he adds. If it makes him feel any better I'd say they weren't overplayed at all and any less would have been underplayed. :)
Great pick. And no matter what he said, the drum work is what keeps these songs together. There's a lot of jazz in them, but jazz as it was first conceived, free flowing and played as it feels.
Remember listening to this album back when I was exploring the fringes of experimental BM. I remember finding it very interesting if just on a historical basis: this came out in '95 and there was simply nothing even remotely like this back then (that I'm aware of at least), and I can hear its influence on a lot of later forms of especially psychedelic BM like Oranssi Pazuzu and perhaps Blut Aus Nord. That said, I can't really say I enjoyed it, largely because most of it had this raw, demo-like quality to it and it really sounds like a band whose ambitions exceeded their talent, which is a common thing in the long tradition of punk and punk-inspired music.
I never even brought up the timeframe for this one because I honestly thought it was newer stuff, part of the post-BM exploration. It was waaaay ahead of its time.
So we had two faces of the avant-garde black metal sound this week, and I knew in advance that this would be more digestible on a first listen compared to the deathspell omega song. Even the Mayhem song checked deviates from the regular black metal formula.
This is probably the band/album that took the longest to completely click with me. It probably took about 15 years trying every once in a while (probably not even every year) and while I always enjoyed some parts, it never fully clicked until I decided to put it on one day while grinding in a videogame and it just completely made sense for some reason. I have listened to it plenty of times since and I like it a lot now. The same can be said for the project "Virus" which has at least some of VBE's members and is somewhat similar only more in a rock setting. I did enjoy one of their albums and had bought that one years ago, but all the rest only clicked after VBE clicked as well. I assume it was probably the clean singing style that took the longest for me to get used to.
I have to scratch my head every time you claim a strong connection between BM and Thrash. Ehab Sami did a short video covering few Metallica hits riffs BM style, and imho it highlights the style differences pretty well if you know Metallica. Because he had to alter the original as much as if he was covering, say, Judas Priest or Queen. Re VBE, pretty good reaction. Nobody understands what their lyrics are about, it seems. Fallen angels are like wounded birds, maybe? Or infinite dreams vs abrupt limited reality - who knows.
Thrash wasn't just Metallica. In fact, most thrash isn't like Metallica, they always stood on the cleaner, more polished side. German thrash, like Sodom and Kreator, or even early brazilian thrash like Sarcofago and early Sepultura, are an undeniable and clear cut influence in black metal. Even old Slayer. Bathroy can very much be seen as bridging thrash to black metal.
@@thegrimner >are an undeniable and clear cut influence So can be said almost literally about any other heavier metal or even rock. Say, Ihsahn was influenced by Iron Maiden. >Bathroy can very much be seen as bridging thrash to black metal. And Venom "bridged the gap" between Heavy and BM. And Darkthrone "bridged the gap" between DM and BM. Yet, we don't hear people say "BM is basically just a harsher version of Heavy" very often.
@@GriefGrumbleTheMauler or you can simply listen to Kreator and Sodom's first albums and see exactly what I mean. Which isn't even what I mean, the influence is amply talked about and admitted to in interviews by second wave musicians, many of those, like VBE's very drummer having straight up thrash side projects. The influence is there, it's easily discernible to the listener and is openly admitted by the actual bands, it's not really a matter up for discussion, quite frankly.
@@thegrimner>you can simply listen to Kreator and Sodom's first albums Indeed, I can. Why inform me on this, though? >The influence is there I absolutely agree, it is. How does this mutually accepted fact contradict what I said previously or what follows from what I said previously? I'll try to make it clearer: Thrash metal did not influence BM more than Heavy or Speed or Death or other metals, or even Punk. To say that BM is basically Thrash is the same as to say that BM is basically Heavy or Punk or Industrial or Goth.
@@GriefGrumbleTheMauler good thing absolutely no one said black metal is basically thrash then. The influence is there, though. Not to Metallica, which was the example you gave and has absolutely no bearing on the discussion, but German thrash substantially informed black metal's sound and aesthetics especially in the early days. So, glad that's established, I guess, it was my whole point.
