The Death of Gods - Secrets of the Jenkabala forest and Bulldozer

From the uber blackened heights of Jenkabala Palace to the dank dungeons of Castle Thrashstone, the evil thrones rise from the fiery devil pits to slay the quivering posers and enslave the pathetic weak. Once again, Metal Night reigns over your soul!
 


This week...........Bulldozer!!!! Bulldozer are a semi-obscure thrash/proto black metal band from Italy. Their sound was very influential on later black metal bands. Their first album, The Day of Wrath, is Italy's answer to Venom and Bathory. Not as over the top and tongue in cheek cheesy as Venom, and without the mysterious aura of Bathory, sound is rather derivative, but this album is saved by youthful enthusiasm, thrashy vigor, and a tight performance. The lyrics are misogynistic and creepy, not graphic like brutal death, but coming across as personal confessions. It's clear that these dudes watch a lot of Italian porn and giallo movies and that they are not very good at life.

 Chronicles of the North part 2.1 - Vacant Throne

The secret order of T’Chah Karnac was often mentioned in whispers in the northern lands. They were said to be the fearsome wizards who bound each of the royal bloodlines to a family of wyvern in order to prevent the ruling houses from warring with one another. Tales of their evil or heroism abound in the bard songs of northern Jenkabala, but their existence is often disputed, some being of the opinion that the Wyvern’s grasp of magic was already so great and the creatures themselves so wise that they must have existed long before the human bloodlines sprung fourth on Centon. Most believe that the creatures created humans for some obscure purpose and if they don’t worship them, they at least have respect for their powers. With this knowledge, you can imagine the surprise and disbelief when we, kidnapped from the forest floor by a reptilian ape, were guided to this pathway carved everywhere with the symbols of T’Chah Karnac. The path itself was cut deeply into the wood of the massive branch so that the sides rose up almost to our height. We 

 had been walking on an incline and the walls quickly closed above our heads. We were inside the tree. Above the corridor, the wood had been perforated with thin slats to provide light and as we went further into the pleasant smelling center of the sap-filled branch other passages shot off to either side, but everything was deserted. We explored the many chambers here, all roughly the same size and all containing nothing that would give any indication of the former occupants of this strange fortress. Up flights of rough stairs we walked, through massive chambers with catwalks and carven doors. Still, nothing, perhaps there were other Simian lizards lurking about somewhere. Perhaps this creature’s master had died and it still was carrying out orders remembered from long ago. We came to a gallery built with a long window on one side. The sun’s heat was very strong here, we were surely near the top of the tree. Suddenly, Bloodmace grabs my shoulder’ “Look it’s…a garden.” Indeed, I had not noticed but there was a cultivated garden filled with edible plants and flowers set into the floor of this room. From the shadows beyond, a figure emerges.

The second album, The Final Separation, is more of the same, but still enjoyable. The sound is clanky and  lo-fi, and there are a few more conventional speed metal trappings. I love their album covers. The singer puts himself on every cover, looking like some low rent Hammer horror villain mixed with Charles Manson, essentially making him then band's own mascot. It's comedy gold. And the same lyrical misanthropy persists.

 Chronicles of the North part 2.2 - The Warning

As the figure moves from the back of the room into the blazing light that beats down from the aperture carved in the wall closest to where Bloodmace and I stand, its hands trace shapes in the air. The cloak that conceals our host makes it impossible to discern anything about this mysterious treetop dweller. There is a great flapping of wings above and the unknown presence glides past us to gaze out the window.  Pulling back the hood, the stranger reveals himself to be a short-haired human with immaculately trimmed facial hair, who spoke with casual authority, “So, the sons of Bloodhammer. Your father came to me to tell me of the folly you have perpetrated below.” Out of the corner of my eye I can see Bloodmace’s evil eye on me. “I see he has given you the cloaks. Do you know how to use them?” Bloodmace and I give each other a puzzled look. Indignant, the master of the treetops turns, looks out the windows and raises his arms to the sky, “Why Bloodhammer?” As if in answer, the birds perched atop the titanic branch that contains this room take flight all at once with a goading cry that sounds like laughter. Whirling around, the mystic fixes us with an intense stare, “I am Chanthoth, last of the T’Chah Karnac. Your lot has never been easy but it’s about to get very much harder.” Waving his hand above the windowsill Chanthoth raises a strange glowing display out of the wood, makes another motion and we hear the ancient hymn, 

“From a haze came a rage of thunder 

Distant signs of darkness on the way 

Fading cries scream of pain and hunger

But in the night the light will guideyour way."

The sun is sinking quickly and the three of us stare wordlessly into the blood red sky, meditating on the battle to come.

The third album, IX, is where they step up their game and release their thrash masterpiece. This features good production, more speed, tighter performances, tighter songs, and killer riffery. This album equals anything in the German thrash pantheon. The lyrics are even more incoherent and demented. The awesome cover had made vocalist/mascot A.C. Wild into the god of this world, evil wizard incarnate. This was the clear winner of the night. Jjjjwild, man! Wild!

Words of the Elders

And so the adventure in the northlands begins. The seeds of intrigues past have grown in secret, taking on strange forms in the darkness and have become heavy with the fruit of rebellion. What secrets lay buried within this empty stronghold?  The very existence of the T’Chah Karnac would shake the very foundations of politics and history on this timepiece world. Strange workings on mountaintops and deep jungles have led Bloodmace and Demon Scourge from Jenkabala to Waylor and back, on a quest to confront the evil Lord Headron of Dantor. He has made the sacred palace of metal in the Jenkabala woods into a mall where posers and fascists frolic and cavort under the icy moon. Brothers and Sisters of metal, raise your fists to the air to give berserker strength to the lone thrashers who search unendingly for the truth of their legacy among the ancient trees of this weird forest and to their brethren to the south, who even now trudge through the kaleidoscopic sands of the Time Desert on their way to Castle Thrashstone and destiny!

Until next week,battalions of fear

Horns

Ketch-up Night Part Duex - Mosh Down Babylon

 

Once again, Demon Scourge and myself found ourselves on the vodka train to Hammersmith with Atomic Stief, we we really didn't have much time to bother writing the blog. So here is another catch up post; a reminisce through alcoholic haze of Metal Night's past. Demon Scourge takes some time out from his chronicle to review the last three albums, since I was way too drunk that night to even remember what they sounded like. 

Swedish Death Metal night
Dismember- Indecent and Obscene-This album is one of the classics of Swedish Death, if not one of the founding documents of the scene, then one of the quintessential. Brutal riffery, many twists and turns, but not without a bit of melody. Fucking classic. Winner

Amon Amarth - Versus the World - Workmanlike melodic death. Actually, the only thing about this band that is death metal are the vocals, otherwise, this is pretty traditional. Not to say that it doesn't have its moments. This band has a set formula, and when it works, it's crushing. When it doesn't, it's boring.

Hypocrisy - Abducted - Another Swede death classic; an expansive, rather experimental album, space rock meets death metal. They throw some clean but psychedelic vocals on some of the more subdued, experimental songs at the end of the album, finishing on a darkly trippy vibe. One of my favorites, but the Dismember album wins by one single charred ember.

 Mayhem Related Band Night

Mayhem-Wolf Lair Abyss-This Ep was the first release of new material by Mayhem after the famous stabbing that made the Norwegian black metal scene infamous around the world. The band is as dark and evil as ever, but sounding not so different than 1000 other black metal bands from the time. This is a band coasting on their reputation.

Merciless-The Awakening-The winner of the evening is this little blackened thrash ditty from Sweden. It's pretty uncomplicated but very unrelenting. It just kicks into high gear and blazes a trail of glory through the hinterlands. This album was the first release by Deathlike Silence Records, which was the label owned by Euronymous, and was very influential on the Scandinavian scene in general. Ok, no one in this band was ever actually in Mayhem, so maybe they are only spuriously related to that band, but blazing riffs and furious speed win the night!

Tormentor-The Seventh Day of Doom-Attila Csihar's first band is one of the most influential thrash bands to influence Mayhem. You can definitely hear the black metal riffs, but this is thrash, first and foremost, with lots of trad metal influence. It's just that the band was possessed by Satan, and listening to this demo will send you straight to hell. 

European Trad Metal Obscurities 
Aria - Meglomania - The first album by the long lived Russian metal stalwarts, Aria was most defiantly in the NWOBHM tradition, almost hard rock in parts. By 1985, when Meglomania came out, this kind of music was already being supplanted by the more extreme forms of metal  that were beginning to dominate tape decks everywhere (Slayer, Sodom, Bathory, Etc.) Everything you would expect is here, the galloping, maidenesque bass lines, harmonized twin guitars, crowd whoring sing-along choruses and of course the shitty Scorpions-style power ballad. They are, by all reports, revered in Russia and with good reason. These guys are pro, real pro. They play with conviction and though it’s easy to see this as an album that offers less to the average metal fan than their ’87 LP “Hero of Asphalt,” (I definitely prefer that one), This had to be the greatest Halloween gift ever to Russian Metalheads who never had a band to call their own.

Cobra-Warriors of the Dead-Again we encounter a band playing a more traditional style of metal in the mid eighties. Some of Warriors of the Dead is awesome, the title track, the cleverly named “Cobra” and the nuke-obsessed “China Syndrome” all display the band as an ass-kicking riff machine. The balance of this graveyard, however, is filled with stiffs that can barely open the coffin lid, much less go into battle and almost all of the songs have lyrics that fly like a ten pound brick. Vocalist Paul Edmonson doesn’t help the case with his Alice Cooper worship, but hell, you could do much worse. Defiantly a third-tier act, they still manage to eke out a few good neck snappers before the bonehead who wrote the lyrics drags the whole proceeding through the mud. I got some laughs out of their erotic jam, “Wildest Dreams” where Paul asserts that he will “make you feel”, again and again during the fadeout.

Axe Witch-Visions of the Past-Well, here’s our requisite Swedish band. Why the crap do the Swedes get all the good metal bands? Seriously though, even though this album has its flaws, it dominated the night (well what I can remember of it anyways.) As we have already seen, in the mid 80’s Maiden and Priest worship was the order of the day and Axe Witch oblige their audience with gusto, serving up riff after riff. Like the other albums we listened to these guys seem a little too eager to please, like they saw the success of the big acts of the day and were trying to ride the gravy train. This strategy worked out for Aria but not so much for Cobra and Axewitch. So even though Aria was more successful and Cobra was funnier, Axe Witch were winners simply for being harder than the competition.