Let me tell, Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior did not fare well this night. No, not at all. We invited him to Metal Night a while back, but like the hippy he is, he fucking blew us off until we lured him with the promise of pure artisan dick water to turn to some pretentious wine. He never shares his 'shrooms, either, though he could feed 5000 easily. He's just been kind of bitter since The Passion. Bad memories and shit.
But we had the upper hand. As soon as he walked through the door, we clubbed him with our demon mallets, hung his ass upon the upside down cross we had prepared (we didn't bother nails, already had holes in his fuckin' wrists) and subjected him to the unholy terrors of this evenings selection...
The desert winds blow cold in the endless night that envelops our realm. Stars whirl around this hurdling rock as we huddle in our desert outpost. This is the forbidden land. This is a place of solitude, where the doorways to other places hide in rocky outcroppings and at the top of unknown mesas. Here, in the blasted wasteland that lies south of our forest home, Bloodmace and I prepare to wrestle with the figure that stands central in the metal pantheon, Jesus Christ. That’s right, with all the talk of Satan and evil we tend to forget that these are Christian concepts. We tend to overlook the fact that this music, with all its conflicted views of morality, is essentially a kind of cultural debate among Christians. We brandish our symbols of evil for parents, teachers, or priests. We display them as you would a cross to a vampire, warding off their unwanted advances. The first portion of our journey was a difficult one indeed, for we had on the platter one of the densest, most philosophical and musically diverse albums we have yet seen at metal night.
The Meads of Asphodel's 2010 opus 'The Murder of Jesus The Jew was that masterwork. What an amazing album. The music is hard to label, hard to put a finger on. They are a very eccentric black metal band. Call them the British version of Sigh, but with an eclectic Hawkwind influence. Darkly trippy, progressive stuff, but the lyrics are a hardcore gnostic theological treatise on the Death of Jesus Christ, complete with a 10,000 word manifesto explaining every lyric, available only on their website. Prog metal with an intellectually obsessive, intensely psychotic edge. This is a band to slowly savor over time, as their back catalog is deep as their music.
Our Journey thus begun, we broke out our supply of Mexican brandy to soothe our frayed nerves. We had questioned everything, examined our own faith and come out the other side of the tunnel harried and nearly broken. We were alive though, and feeling stronger by the minute. Bloodmace, wiping crimson stains from the blade of his tremendous saber, continues to blaspheme.
“Tonight my friend, we shall hear black metal with SAXAPHONE”.
My heart drops into my ribcage. My comrade has most certainly lost his mind. Nothing could be more terrifying to a metal fan, especially a black metal fan, than to hear that one of his favorite artists has a sax in the band. Now I know a lot of sax players and they really aren’t as bad as people say. Some of them won’t even steal from you. Sax in a metal tune though….no way dude! Trumpets, yes, strings, sure, tympani, great! But this sax? Hmmmmm. We are out in the forbidden lands though, and we have come here to challenge ourselves. The essence of our quest is to reach beyond the surface of this music, to reach beyond ourselves and discover what lies beyond our narrow horizons. The otherworldly winds, now whispering, now howling call out to us their siren’s song. The yawning abyss lurks there in the darkness and we have come to ride its torrid currents until it lies broken and cringing at the sting of our lashes. And then the madness begins…
We then listened to former Norwegian corpsefucking black metal progenitor turned Fancy Dan music instructor Ihsahn, formerly of Emperor. This is his third solo album, and his most mature sounding to date. Usually when critics employ that term, it's a sign that an album is about as interesting and heavy as documentary about collective bargaining, and I must admit, this album does sound pretty chill coming after a weirdo holocaust like The Meads. but the staggering musicianship and jagged prog riffs keep this thing alternately chugging and gliding along. Perhaps it's too professional sounding, too pristine, and the lauded saxophone experiments work only half the time, and the other half sounding like Miami Vice. This was still one of my favorite albums of 2010.
And so there was a great rushing of winds. Screaming. Long wings flap faster while light turns dark and back again. I notice the smell of gingerbread and coffee as blood falls up from the slick mud below us. Axes and maces crash and spark. Falling up. Claws reach out from walls that were once floors and we slide down or sideways as a mass of bony reptiles lick at the air with tongues of blue fire. It seems as though this might be our last quest into the unknown. Suddenly, out of the chaos, a throaty growl penetrates the chamber. The growl widens into a shriek and a massive paw swipes the reptilian horde aside. Our trusted companion Mr. Paw, the cat, has heard our cries and come to the rescue! We are indeed lucky, for as everyone knows, cats can travel freely between all dimensions. In this particular dimension, however, Mr. Paw is many times the size he is in our own plane. He dispatches of the lizards quickly but hurries us to the nearest doorway to our own dimension, explaining that he has heard some unwholesome noises passing close and that we should all hasten to depart as soon as possible.
We exit the cavern and return, via a cave neither of us have ever noticed, but near the hut we have called home for this metal night. The dusty hut seems like Jenkabala palace itself after our travails in the lizard dimension and the brandy brushes the dust from our parched throats as we begin the last stretch of our travels.
Lastly, we tortured The Nazarene with Demon Scourge's lastest obsession, 1980's speed metal fiends Agent Steel! First, we were stricken to the fucking floor by the title song on the Mad Locust Rising EP, chortling in fear as the imaginary locusts attempted to rip apart our flesh. It is the most metal song that ever was and ever will be and you cannot fuck with Agent Steel. We put on the first album, Sceptic's Apocalypse, still in shock. And then it was over. The forsaken savior of humanity lay mangled and bloody in a pile of theological quandaries and metaphysical dead-ends. Yet, the sun burns with a vengeful intensity behind the night. This will not be our last meeting.
The more we see of this vast, infernal universe, the less we feel like we know. Our quests are sometimes folly, sometimes triumphant, but always fascinating. So many obstacles stand in front of us like a mountain but we press on. Monsters, seen and unseen, human and not, confront us at every turn. Still we press on. The very gods seek to confound our minds, leave our spirits broken and ravaged but we press on. Straight as a dagger, piercing the very heart of their most treasured mysteries. This is no game to us but a living quest, a life in service to all that is despised. A reverence for both the theater of the unholy and the passion of the pious. A striving towards the realms of darkness and chaos and then beyond, disorder fading into a new order, over and over. We discorporate! We return! This is our POWER and we shall use it as WE see fit! Lords of beyond beware! Lords of chaos beware! Lords of sea and earth, we come for you! IA! IA! You shall spend your eternity in DOOM! Until next week metalheads….
