BLACK FUCKING METAL NIGHT WITH THE DUCHESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once again, the gauntlet has been smacked down, and thus commences Metal Night!!! With Special Guest Star Duchess Von Doom(you know....it's Brandi, you guys)!!!!!

I had been wanting to have a serious black metal night for a while, and tonight we drank of the filthy milk of Satanic blackened hordes!!!! And beer. It was a beer kind of night; a warm and bright spring evening, with children playing the background, birds chirping, and our hate music creating a singular vortex of agony and dispair in our Westside abode.

Duchess started us out with some shit I had never heard, a split CD by nature inspired Vancouver band Skagos, and Loiusville, KY based one man anarchist horror show Panopticon. This shit blew me and Chris away. Skagos come across as Enslaved with hippy jam band tendencies. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Their two songs ran 12 and 15 minutes, all of it entrancing and experimental. Even when it doesn't quite work, it's fascinating. And Panopticon are just fucking mind blowing, doing things with black metal that I had never heard before; so many layers; the spastic drum work really standing out; some folky things lurking in the background. Duchess said that this was all she had been listening to as of late. I now have to get everything this band has ever put out. Clearly this was the winner of the night.

Next up is a demo CD by an ultra obscurity from Ireland, Beithíoch. This was my contribution of the evening. This CD falls under: kind of crappy, kind of great; ultra minimalist ambient noise, so droning, so abstract, that lesser mortals would have shut this shit off after the first minute. But we hung in there, and actually kind of enjoyed its scuzziness. You have to stick with it for the pay off at the end, after the 4 instrumental dronings, after the minimalist electronica, then comes the filthy scuzzy blackened filth, the shit that you want to hear, the stuff that sucks your pain, closing out the album. Pretty great. Chris and Duchess admitted liking this album, kind of. But clearly it comes in third.

Last but not least, Chris put on Forgotten Tomb's Songs To Leave, which is a certified classic of blackened doom. Even this could not top the Skagos/Panopticon split, but it's a great album. It's an epic, melodically twisted beast, the most traditionally "metal", but still abominably weird, with molten riffs oozing into dissonance, an under current of creepy and clean argeggios weaving their way into the muck. The vocalist is what makes this a decidedly black metal affair, his screeching coming straight from the tombs. Second place in the Metal Night pantheon.

BONUS SHOWDOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had some time before Chris had to pick up Audria, so played Sodom's In The Sign Of Evil and Destruction's Sentence of Death head to head. Both are debut EP's, both are thrash metal classics known for their influence on countless black metal bands, and both are wonderful messes, primitively produced and raw as fuck. Chris and Duchess liked Sodom the best, and they are great, but I had to go with Destruction. The Sodom had a sick vibe to it, and some great songs. But those fucking riffs on the Destruction album get me everytime. And the witchy vocals. And the leads. And everything about this little nugget. Not that Sodom is without it's charms. They are many. Like English being their second language. Let's look at some lyrics, shall we:

Sepulchral Voice
Dark deathknell call you to the throat of the
glowing hell lights of exist become extinet
and you read the epitaph of your grave

You are the chosen messenger of hell
Come execute your instruction with spell
You got magic power to all
in league with Satan for holy ghosts fall

Love to drink the blood of the slut
adore the bestial rite
eat the virgins heart warm and sweet
destroy the unborn holy meat

The Sepulchural Voice
mysterious groans torment your mind
the shadow of evil make you blind
a funeral song out of the burial place
damned you to hell from the human race

and lets not forget that Destruction were also masters of Satan lyrics with English as second language:
Satan's Vengeance
Witches been slaughtered at the stakes
They´ve been burned, ´cause
They were in league with Satan
People delighted themselves
When this creatures burned painfully

Witches decided to take vengeance
Satan sent a legion of poisened rats
The warriors of death and most evil inhuman

CHORUS:
The sentence of death
Drives you to despair
God can´t help ya
You shoveld your own grave

Now the mortal is in the bondage of Satan
Without mercy they persecuted people
Got a place in hell reserved for you

I fucking love Metal Night. Hail!!!!!!!!