Mental Funeral Zine: July 2012

Perdition Winds – S/T (Darker Than Black Records 2012)

Perdition Winds is the apex of what I look for in black metal!!!!

“Purification” has a really clean production that brings out this brutal and hollow echoing effect to all of the instruments and vocals that actually sounds a though the band are live. The rhythms are clunky and heavy like massive boulders dropping, especially with the skins being beaten to a pulp, that gives the song a primitive occult atmosphere of ritual and blood sacrifice. The guitars are buzzing in a swarm of chaos and have a clean distorted sound to them that, in combination with the rhythms, yields a filthy, toxic, and addictive mixture. The bass tones really round it out to give it some serious brass knuckle knock out power rather than the common over trebly hazy gas like feel that is common in black metal.

The closest description that I can come up with would be to say that Perdition Winds is meeting of Finnish and Greek black metal styles, definitely some similarities to Serpent Noir with the cryptic occult ritual spots present toward the and of “Corrupted Image of God”. For black metal PW almost borderlines on the swampy but never sinks all the way into the muck, they just have this aggressive and “full” tone that almost does slug you right in the gut with the impact of being hit by Hummer.

“Perdition Winds” ditches the ritual and secretive doings of the cult and moves forward toward a full blown blitz attack of colossal dynamics and changes in rhythm that keep you jolted and electrified as the seedy underbelly of bass grabs you like a powerful undertow and drags you across the bottom of their black pool of evil. There’s also this epic and majestic subtlety to the sound in each song, but nothing involving symphonic or more atmospheric effects to give it that feel, these guys just create it naturally. The moaning at the beginning and throughout the song is like that of some werewolf cursing at the moon.

Ending with the bloodfreezing stomp of “Path Revealed” this EP could not have been any more gratifying to my ears except for being a full length. It’s about as Draconian and cult as one could possibly get, but with top notch production!!!! “Path Revealed” is like an old gothic horror tale come to life, but in shades of red only instead of black and white and especially emphasized in its soft strumming outro.

Recommended overall, but especially for fans of: Embrace of Thorns, Varathron, Serpent Noir…

Not yet available, but in the works from German label Darker Than Black, so check out the link below periodically for updates on the release date.

http://www.darker-than-black.com/

Poisonous – Perdition’s Den (Metalhit.com 2012)

Perdition’s Den is one of those death metal albums form which you know straight from the first tones and seconds of the album that it’s a brutal fucking mess and will remain to reign in blood and septic flesh for it’s entirety!!

“Subterranean Rules” opens this album with a doomy and filthy vehement stench of violence and inhumane desires that reminds me of a toxic concoction of Autopsy, Immolation, Morbid Angel, and Incantation. The experience of hearing Poisonous is without doubt intense enough to cause your internal organs to implode from the pressure generated by the depth of the growling demonic throat bursts of vocals that literally extend in a sulfurous caustic vapor after the words of condemnation and hate are uttered, or it’s the doom riffs and extent of down tuning that will literally cause your bowels to tie themselves into knots.

“Worthless Christ” sounds and feels like early Morbid Angel circa Altars of Madness and Blessed are the Sick, but, ironically, putrefied, possessed, and coated with a veil of bloody vomit.

“Under the Blessing of Death” is a charred blackened surge of homicidal tendencies that’ll leave you with blood on your hands once it’s over. There’s a subtle blackened death metal sound to this one as it does it’s diesel powered riffage that comes at you like a shredder of anti-Christian jagged jig saw blades (like the silver sphere in Phantasm that comes at people when they enter the crypt) and drills straight through your forehead.

“Perdition’s Den” makes me think of the filth and bombastic gnarling The Dead Shall Inherit (Baphomet) with the chugging torso sawing riffs and beyond the grave vocals. Some tones are just so low that they really do practically become a natural disaster and those will be heard with Poisonous.

I’m not going to go through each savage song of blaspheme and depraved indifferent brutality so in short: Poisonous lives up to it’s name, they are like Leprosy, an infectious flesh eating filthy dismembering and rotting contagion that brings back the true essence of gut-wrenching morbid filth and bestiality to a saturated death metal era. If you weren’t filthy, vile, and diseased prior to crossing paths with Poisonous, then prepare to be sodomized with a shit-covered ice pick until the tip pokes through your eye socket when/if you do. This is DEATH metal!!!!!!

http://metalmaniacs.bigcartel.com/product/poisonous-perdition-s-den

Todesstoss – Sauglingshangwerk Aushilfheins (Traumorgane Kreationen)

Todesstoss is one of the very best at making raw and ….well, fucked up black metal expressionism. Once a solo project of Martin Lang, (recently becoming a three piece) mainly consisting of hollow fuzz clouds of gritty distortion and echoing, reverb saturated, guitar buzz; lunatic rants in German; and very primitive mechanical, almost industrial, drum machine rhythms that take the early work of Urfaust and strip it even further down into a cold concrete bunker stained with blood and reeking of isolation and bizarre deaths. I’ve been following this guys work only for the last two years or so, but in that time I’ve grabbed everything that I could starting with the esoteric and psychotic Spiegel der Urangste, which sounded like raw black metal as heard through a slow awakening from a Chloroform inhalation, but even through his incredible catalog there was nothing….and I mean NOTHING remotely hinting at the horrors that are found on Sauglingshangwerk Aushilfheins. This album takes horror, insanity, and depravity to new levels of shock and artistic craft!!!! If you’re looking for a mindfuck…get Sauglingshangwerk Aushilfheins, and if you’re either experiencing Todesstoss for the first time or are a repeat patron of the deranged sounds that this incredible act can conjure up, this is the one that you want to go with.

Sauglingshangwerk Aushilfheins is the story of a man, J. Black, who works for a company called Death Inc. and his job is to collect newborn children and execute them, further along in this 30-minute horror tale filled with macabre German poetry written by Lang himself, you can actually hear the screaming of infants and the gun shots of death. The typical psychotic tantrum rants of twisted poetry that are a Todesstoss trademark are on an all time high performance here, they are really emotional and fluctuate violently and systematically between moods as he is both the narrator and J. Black the baby butcher.

Occasionally you can hear the basslines pumping and pulsing through the sinister minimal guitar wailing tone and wall of feedback and reverb. The song builds up to the middle where it just explodes into this siren of blood and homicide, it becomes this surreal black metal storm of delicately placed drum patterns, throbbing basslines of seismic proportion, a diesel motor rumble and grind of intense sound, and some of the most intense and bizarre moments that you will ever hear. This album, broken between the intense and abhorrent title track and the more darkwave/industrialized “Spannungstrauma X” will definitely rape your morality. Todesstoss in any phase, but especially in the trio phase that it has morphed into during the last year, is like a homicidal mixture of Einsturzende Neubauten Germanic harshness and industrial improv. with the raw and sonic effects of everything from Burzum and Urfaust, to supernatural forces and serial killers, more than likely on mind altering drugs.

Even I find this album challenging to describe, and that’s saying a lot. Yes, the sounds and subject are generally, to most, repulsive, but the reason that this extreme story is so powerful and justified is due to the fact that it only takes half of a brain cell to realize the sentiment behind it. Sauglingshangwerk Aushilfheins is so great because it represents a fictitious horror/black humor scenario in which humans are sacrificed by force, for humane reasons. Black Metal, and metal in general is not apologetic and neither are such minds as those behind Todesstoss, which literally translates to “deathblow” in German, a fitting title for this opus that they put forth.

The second portion of the album is the black psychedelic monument of insanity titled “Spannungstrauma X”. Fans of the briallinace of Toil and Hateful Abandon fused with Burzum and Urfaust, with a heavy nod to SIXX (Devil Doll) and the darkwave influence.

If you haven’t heard Todesstoss, then you haven’t heard the entire side of the truly insane and wild side of black metal. I’m in the process of an interview with Martin Lang in the next few weeks, so expect some wild shit to post and deeper excursions off the pier of sanity with that and Sauglingshangwerk Aushilfheins.

From what Martin has told me, this and the other recent Todestoss S/T are only available through the label site, but don’t let that hinder you from buying and exploring, check the links below and YouTube to hear and experience first hand the sonic manipulation and psychotic power that this band will compromise you with. Todesstoss is the ultimate challenge between psychosis and sanity, emotions and logic, and self expression over popularity.

http://www.traumorgane.de/

http://www.last.fm/music/Todessto%C3%9F