I spoke to founding guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser about what went into this album, specifically the historical aspect of the music, what it was like to listen to these tracks again and what the journey was like to get these to album quality. The band also used AI to deconstruct these songs and properly master them from some original and deteriorating studio tapes. We talked about some of the cover songs being played live, being a touring band and some of their favorite tourmates including Thin Lizzy and The Pat Travers Band, and being viewed as elder statesmen by the rock masses, including appearances at festivals where they “were definitely the oldest band”. 

Read on below and take in some history from a first-person perspective. If you are a BÖC devotee, give Ghost Stories a proper spin, out now on Frontiers. 

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When I listened to Ghost Stories for the first time, I was curious as to how you were able to use modern musical conventions to resurrect these long dormant tracks. How did it all go down?

Buck Dharma: The original recordings were from the original album periods, pre-production takes from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s from the records at that time. These songs didn’t make the original albums due to the restrictions with vinyl in general as you could only have about 17-18 minutes a side, if it was the CD era they would have all been on there. When you get to a new record, all these new songs are competing for slots on the album and a lot of these songs get forgotten. The tapes existed in pre-production and our sound mixer at the time had them; I had forgotten abouCt them and he was putting them up on YouTube. Frontiers had been clamoring for some new material and we said, what about these songs? We decided to bring them up to recording quality and they said to go ahead and do it. 

Was it more about the songs being forgotten at the time or did they not fit the vibe of the next album when it came around?

Dharma: It was more that we literally had forgotten about them. We probably weren’t that organized or conscious of it at the time and we were constantly writing too.

Is there any truth to some of these songs popping up in live sets? Which ones made the cut for that?

Dharma: The cover songs we had played live, “Kick Out The Jams” we had played a lot and “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place” is on live record from us.

They are an interesting two songs to choose from, even though they both originate from the same era. 

Dharma: We played The Animals cover back when we were a club band so we have some history with it too. Eric really liked “Kick Out The Jam”  and we learned it and we played it, even though I’m not sure how many times we played it. 

It only makes sense to play “Kick Out The Jams” live, since the most famous version of it is the live one.

Dharma: You look back at the MC5 now and they were a really important band. If you ever get to see any live recordings of them, they were really good. 

It was really amazing to see what Wayne Kramer was doing back then and sadly we just lost him too. A super important person in rock music.

Dharma: I totally agree.

So why the name Ghost Stories for the album?

Dharma: If you think about it, the band is a little ghostly now. Allen Lanier passed away and the Bouchard brothers are not members of the band at this time and I thought it was apt.

If you have a keen ear, you can really get a good sense as to what albums you were recording when writing these songs as they have a distinct flavor to them. 

Dharma: When I listen to Ghost Stories it is more of a nostalgic feeling that brings me back to particular stages of my life. 

Were these all recorded in the same space or were they from different venues?

Dharma: I believe it was from 2 or 3 different studios. We made a couple of records at the New York Record Plant One, the first 3 records were at a jingles studio and a few in Columbia’s space in NYC and then a few on Long Island. The Martin Birch records were recorded at Kingdom Sound on Long Island. We did a few at the LA Record Plant and the San Francisco Automat. We worked at a lot of different places and had different producers. I really just like different recording studios.

Since you mentioned his name in particular, what was it like working with Martin Birch for those few albums?

Dharma: Martin was great, a great personality and a talented fellow. He was a producer and an engineer. As a producer he wasn’t dictatorial, but he definitely had opinions about how it should all go. He was very generous with his knowledge; we had just gotten the first multi-track recorders and we had been recording at home. He taught me a lot about recording at home. We miss him but his legacy lives on with what he was able to do with bands like us, Iron Maiden and Deep Purple. 

Was there an album in particular that made you want to hire him to work with you on those 2 records?

Dharma: Well, he had just gotten done working with Black Sabbath on Heaven & Hell so there’s that. 

If that record isn’t a testament to what he could do, then I don’t know what is.

Dharma: It was great and we were happy to have him.

Yeah, he worked on one of my favorites, Fire of Unknown Origin.

Dharma: Yep, that and Cultosaurus, they were a great time for BÖC.

One of the real positives of the internet era is the ability to look up histories of pretty much anything and it is particularly helpful for the intricacies of music.

Dharma: I have been pretty blown away with some people’s focus on music from a historical standpoint. 

A song that stands out on the record is “If I Fell” because of when you recorded it because of when you recorded it. What’s the story behind that song?

Dharma: We did a Direct TV special which was for the 40^th anniversary of Agents of Fortune. There was a video we did with Eric Bloom, Albert Bouchard, Richie Castellano, Kasim Sulton and Jules Radino at the time. We did it in the dressing room as an acoustic, but it wasn’t aired due to a rights thing since it is a Beatles song. It just laid around and we decided to put it on the record.

Why was “So Supernatural” the lead single off this album?

Dharma: Frontiers decided to go with that. It had the most recent refurbishment of some of the tracks in general. It had some of the most contemporary input.

AI is a hot button issue in the music world now in terms of being used to create artwork or even to create music. How did you use it for Ghost Stories?

Dharma: It was primarily used to deconstruct stereo mixes, you can now control the individual elements, the drums, the bass, the guitars and the vocals. There are tools that can do that now, with pretty good results; it’s some kind of voodoo what these programs can do. 

It’s almost as if the program is able to listen to music in the same way that some people do, by compartmentalizing the pieces as it is programmed to do. After listening to it, I wouldn’t have known that there was an AI element to the recordings unless I was told otherwise. It feels like a compilation since the time periods continue to vary. 

Dharma: The finished project to me sounds like a forgotten Blue Öyster Cult record. All of a sudden it is resurrected, and now people can hear it again.

Any other news coming from the band?

Dharma: We are doing 20 and 30 shows this year, and we usually do 75 dates which we haven’t done since 2022, our 50^th anniversary. I have a song coming out in a couple of months, during the summer.

What’s it like where you are playing with these newer bands like when you played Maryland Deathfest’s Days of Darkness back in 2018?

Dharma:  It’s great, we were the oldest band there. I’m glad that people give a damn about us at this point.

More people should, if they think of you as a one song band, then they really haven’t been paying attention. I say that all the time about bands like Thin Lizzy.

Dharma: I miss Phil and that band, we had great times touring with them. We probably played together with them about 3 or 4 times. Our truck broke down and they let us use their gear in Pittsburgh. Really sweet people. I hope more of these older bands get things recorded including interviews with Rick Beato, he does great stuff on YouTube. You can really go down a rabbit hole there.

Were there any bands that you really loved to tour with?

Dharma: We had a great tour with Pat Travers in the Northwest. When he had Tommy Aldridge on drums and Pat Thrall and Mars Cowling, it was a great band. 

Any other parting words?

Dharma: No, but thank you and we will see you out on the road. 

Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.

New Releases 4/21-4/27

Darkthrone — It Beckons Us All…… | Peaceville Records | Black Metal + Heavy Metal | Norway

There’s not much to go on for Darkthrone’s 21st studio album aside from “Black Dawn Affiliation,” which implied a shift away from their recent doom metal projects in favor of classic heavy metal. The thing is, at this point in their careers, the duo seem to follow their noses, meaning there isn’t a ton of evidence one can pull from to decipher where It Beckons Us All…… will go.

–Colin Dempsey

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Inter Arma — New Heaven | Relapse Records | Sludge Metal + Post-Metal + Death Metal | United States (Richmond, Virginia)

From Luke Jackson’s interview:

Putting on an Inter Arma album has always felt like stepping into an extreme music Big Top Circus; above your head a spiraling blackened odyssey balances on the high wire, in the globe of death a prog metal mystery revs its engine, and sitting in the sawdust some vintage blues fretwork crawls to life.

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Amiensus — Reclamation: Part 1 | M-Theory Audio | Progressive Metal + Black Metal | United States

Amiensus plants one foot in progressive metal and hover the other foot above black metal. There are some vestiges of the latter on tracks like “Reverie,” but it’s a tad too clean and professional to feel like more than an influence. Incidentally, this works well for Reclamation: Part 1 by giving it some claws amidst its prettier passages and fantastical structures.

–Colin Dempsey

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Glassing — From the Other Side of the Mirror | Pelagic Records | Doom Metal + Post-Hardcore + Black Metal + Post-Metal | United States (Austin, Texas)

From Colin Dempsey’s premiere:

[Glassing’s] dynamic has never been as accessible as it is on From the Other Side of the Mirror, a more commanding effort than their previous record, 2021’s Twin Dream, with the first three tracks aiming to punch your teeth out. “Circle Down,” the album’s third single, dials down the muscle to writhe in the gaps between post-hardcore, screamo, and black metal, at least at the onset. Halfway through, Glassing can’t help but shovel more of their overpowering riffs into your mouth.

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Pulverised — Master’s Personae | Pulverised Records | Death Metal | Indonesia

You should handle Master’s Personae with gloves because it is scorching. Everything about the Indonesian death metal group’s fourth album is seemingly burning, perhaps because it’s so rough around the edges that it’s generating friction. Nothing on it is operating at less than 100% capacity, and given the end results, nothing should.

–Colin Dempsey

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Fluisteraars — Manifestaties van de Ontworteling | Eisenwald | Black Metal | Netherlands

This Dutch duo’s bracing experiments in black metal now extend to dropping the sub-genre altogether, with Bob Mollema and the splendidly-named Mink Koops pledging themselves here to an immersive arthouse ritual conjured in cahoots with analogue synth ace Simon Claessen. From a viscous sludge of bulging drones surface a surreal flotsam of ceremonial gong chimes, electro-charged bird chorus and wonky arpeggios issued from a hollowbody guitar, absurdly churning in dark ambient abstraction like some Lautréamont-sponsored sound-bath, a bizarro phantasmagoria swimming in freakish sharks.

–Spencer Grady

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Freeways — Dark Sky Sanctuary | Dying Victims Productions | Hard Rock | Canada

If you’re looking for ’70s worship, Freeways’ second record is for you. Like its predecessor (2020’s True Bearings), Dark Sky is throwback ay eff, all the way down to the humid production and boogie-woogie groove. It’s a lotta fun, too: tightly arranged proto-metal filled with catchy melodies and tasteful leadwork. The cover’s all you really need to evaluate—you can practically smell the cigarettes and stale beer. Indeed, Freeways just wanna have a good time, and they’re inviting you along. How perfectly Canadian.

–Steve Lampiris

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ACxDC — G.O.A.T. | Prosthetic Records | Grindcore | United States (Los Angeles, California)

In which the L.A.-based powerviolence/grindcore quartet unleashes another collection of feral rage bashed out with stunning urgency: 17 songs in 23 minutes. Themes from 2014’s self-titled debut—systemic racism in policing, misogyny, troll culture, self-righteousness among the far-left—return here because the problems weren’t fixed in the interim. Hence the seeming nihilism of the record (“I see that nothing’s changed / What could I have ever done / To change the end result?”). In reality, ACxDC are simply expressing the exasperation that these problems still exist. Listening to G.O.A.T. probably won’t solve any of them, but its anger is pretty fucking cathartic.

–Steve Lampiris

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Full of Hell — Coagulated Bliss | Closed Casket Activities | Grindcore + Noise + Death Metal | United States (Ocean City, Maryland)

The latest Full of Hell record has far more going for it than I can fit in a simple blurb, but it’s definitely their strongest record yet. From overlapping noise and experimental moments to heavy, catchy riffs, this is not an album to miss.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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Deicide — Banished By Sin | Reigning Phoenix Music | Death Metal | United States (Tampa, Florida)

There has been a lot of hype around this record already, not all of it good. Many are annoyed by the AI art on the cover, but if you actually stop to listen to the music, this is a heavy record and a great summation of their career so far. Make sure not to skip this one if you’re a death metal fan.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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Morgul Blade — Heavy Metal Wraiths | No Remorse Records | Heavy + Black Metal | United States (Philadelphia, PA)

What sets Morgul Blade apart is their indifference to genre allegiance — although they’ve dialed up the black metal elements on their latest album, Heavy Metal Wraiths is really just about meshing fantasy and metal together without compromise or pretense.

–Ted Nubel

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Black Tusk — The Way Forward | Season of Mist | Sludge Metal | United States (Savannah, GA)

If you like your sludge terminally infested with punk, Black Tusk is still the go-to outlet. Beyond their raging discontent, you’ll also find complex songwriting and some unusual sonic construction — personally, I love the huge yet boxy drums and the weird little synth bits in there.

–Ted Nubel

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Tombstoner — Rot Stink Rip | Redefining Darkness Records | Death Metal | United States (New York City)

From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Rot Stink Rip”:

The band’s sonic density — two guitars, two vocals, everything punchy as all hell — thrives in this rancid landscape of far-flung, gore-drenched scenarios and aggravated nihilism. It almost feels like a mathematical constraint: their cranked-up approach to death metal demands similarly exhilarating subject matter. That isn’t to say that this ventures into comedy or pure absurdity — the New York crew offer a hard-to-imitate mix of blood-spattered satire and dead-serious violence.

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The album closes with a Midnight cover that highlights one big difference between Hässlig and some of their peers — they have no interest in melody or dramatics (although the cover highlights that they can nail those when they want). It comes down to intentions: if it’s not raging black metal or raucous, infectious punk riffing, it’s not a part of Apex Predator‘s core vision.

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Apex Predator releases May 3rd via Sentient Ruin,

Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.

New Releases 4/14-4/20

Haust — Negative Music | Fysisk Format | Black Metal + Punk | Norway

What an accurate name for Haust’s return album. Negative Music is devoid of any good feelings, instead creeping along the floorboards like a rodent and spewing filthy punk rock for those who only examine reality through worst-case scenarios.

–Colin Dempsey

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Lord Spikeheart — The Adept | Haekalu Records | Industrial + Electronic + Grind | Uganda

One-half of the highly-rated Kenyan electro-grindcore duo Duma launches his Haekalu imprint with this apocalyptic debut solo full-length, a hypnagogic chaos swarm gushing noise, nightmares and post-dancehall dread. Accompanying the always-foreboding ministrations of Lord Spikeheart (Martin Kanja) on this African-futurist hellscape is an impressive coterie of equally radical outriders, among them militant rapper Backxwash and Senyawa chief shaman Rully Shabara, their fiendish invocations feeding the fear throughout The Adept’s frenetic bricolage of mangled cyber-terror synths, corrosive screams and armour-piercing beats.

–Spencer Grady

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Hekseblad — Kaer Mohren | Hypnotic Dirge Records | Black Metal | United States

I dove into The Witcher book series over the past few months and, before long, began searching for the metal that’d best suit their tone. Luckily, Hekseblad have delivered just that with their debut album. They draw from melodic and symphonic black metal to match the sweeping yet emotionally fragile work. Kaer Mohren is epic yet grim without overstepping its boundaries in either direction.

–Colin Dempsey

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Antichrist Siege Machine — Vengeance of Eternal Fire | Profound Lore Records | Black Metal + Death Metal | United States (Richmond, Virginia)

On their third full-length, Antichrist Siege Machine engage in a single-minded pursuit of fury and flames. There’s no sense of taste or subtlety, only war metal. That being said, the duo weaponizes pacing by increasing the tempo over the course of tracks like “Sisera.” The song is less than two-minutes long, but the structure becomes an instrument of destruction in its own right.

–Colin Dempsey

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Nuclear Tomb — Terror Labyrinthian | Everlasting Spew Records | Thrash Metal + Death Metal + Progressive Metal + Noise Rock | United States (Baltimore, Maryland)

An assortment of genres suggests there’s plenty going on that doesn’t mesh on paper, but it certainly does through a speaker. The main motor is death metal of the old-school variety but with a library card that spends all its free time jotting down notes.

–Colin Dempsey

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Engulfed — Unearthly Litanies of Despair | Dark Descent Records | Death Metal | Turkiye (Kadıköy)

The relentless, down-tuned riffs Engulfed drops are a sound for sore ears that have been spending too much time in the spring sun. This is the sort of death metal that makes you want to stay inside and brood with the cookie monster vocals and cartoonishly demonic vibe. Is it a tad overindulgent? Sure, but playing it cool would remove most of the fun.

–Colin Dempsey

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Melvins — Tarantula Heart | Ipecac Recordings | Sludge Metal | United States (Washington)

Always the most prolific band on the planet, Melvins are still at it, and this time, they decided to make sounds first and then turn them into songs. In short, this record was constructed the way an EDM producer writes music. There are moments when it works, and moments when it doesn’t, but overall, it’s a lot of fun to listen to, so give it a spin.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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My Dying Bride — A Mortal Binding | Nuclear Blast | Gothic Metal + Doom Metal | United Kingdom

This album proves that the band still have something to say, and with their refreshed lineup, you can tell they have a renewed energy on this one. Melancholic and melodic all the way through, this is a My Dying Bride album for the ages.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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Ixion — Extinction | Finisterian Dead End | Atmospheric Doom Metal | France

From Ted Nubel’s full album premiere:

On Extinction, the melancholic chords and dismal growls of death/doom metal are not a constant, but instead a gut-punching eventuality that lurks within sweeping instrumental textures. The combination draws up an especially potent atmosphere where quiet, musing exploration often meets stark, uncomfortable truth in dramatic form. Alongside excellent pacing, Extinction outstrips much of its peers by daring to apply unusual, drastic vocal harmonies in combination with emphatic riffs.

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Bongripper — Empty | The Great Barrier Records | Doom Metal | United States (Chicago, IL)

Slow, loud, incredibly long, and the song titles run together into a gloomy phrase — yes, Bongripper is back, and just in time for 4/20 (obviously). It’s been six years since their last full-length, but Empty spews forth like it’s barely been a day, picking up where the band left off in delivering some of the mightiest riffs ever put to tape.

–Ted Nubel

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Dvne — Voidkind | Metal Blade Records | Progressive Sludge + Post-Metal | United Kingdom

Highly agile, Dvne switches between melodic fragility and metallic killing edge with stunning grace on this new album. The Dune-inspired progressive sludge group strikes out at the bleeding edge of the genre, but with a surprising amount of retro charm balancing out their progressive technicality.

–Ted Nubel

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High on Fire — Cometh the Storm | MNRK Heavy | Stoner + Sludge + Doom Metal | United States (Oakland, CA)

It’s the High on Fire you know and love — ripping heavy metal that feels like someone ran it through seventy-five fattener pedals. While not exploring all that new sonic territory, Cometh the Storm has done its homework in terms of figuring out how to beat your ass.

–Ted Nubel

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Red Mesa — Partial Distortions | Desert Records | Stoner Rock + Doom Metal | United States (New Mexico)

Don’t let the title fool you – I would label this as ‘full distortions,’ personally. More seriously, Red Mesa keeps things hazy and sun-bleached on their new record, weaving melodic threads that run between glacial, plodding riffs and hefty stomps. They’re not a band afraid to get a bit weird while keeping it heavy.

–Ted Nubel

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BV: How important have independent record stores been for you as a listener and consumer of music? Did you have any formative experiences at indie record stores growing up?

Paul: Independent record stores are tremendously important to me, and are still my preferred avenue for discovering new music. Without hyperbole, I’ve been in love with record stores for all of my life. By the time I was a teenager, I’d hung around Ranch Records (in Salem, OR) so much that I was granted a sort of tutelage/internship under my friend David, who was a musical mentor-type of character who’d worked there for many years. Initially I would just help with things when they moved locations or assembled new displays, gradually earning small tasks like re-alphabetizing sections in exchange for store credit, and eventually moving up to processing and stocking inventory. From age 15-24 I was in that store several times a week, and whether I was just loitering or exploring new sounds, I was always trying to absorb as much as I could. Anyway, between all of these seemingly mundane tasks was many years’ worth of immersion into the everyday business side of things for a brick & mortar record shop, as well as being privy to the staff’s varied, curated tastes and their collectively immense musical knowledge, especially the eccentric owner. The shop and everyone there provided me with a lifetime of invaluable insights into the music industry as a whole, but especially the record business itself, at a very young age. At one point, three of the employees were in a band together, who inspired me greatly by self-releasing their own records and getting to see how that worked behind the scenes. Ten years later I finally got the chance to work my dream job, at a record store/bookshop called Black & Read (in Arvada, CO), and I did so with all of my heart for half a decade, until my relentless touring schedules finally became too much. It’s hard to believe that nearly another decade has gone by since then, but it really was a hugely important era of my life. If the timing was right, I would be honored to work there, or any record store again. My wife and I both share the lifelong dream of owning our own record store someday – we even have the name decided – so perhaps one of the best record stores ever is in the cards, but for the foreseeable future, our lifestyles must remain dedicated to another side of records I learned a lot about back in those formative days – making the music itself.

Do you remember the first vinyl record you bought, and the story behind it?

Definitely. It was Iron Maiden’s Live After Death for $7.75 at Ranch Records in Salem, OR. I was 15 and it was an original US pressing in visibly partied-on, but totally playable shape. I still have it, of course, though this is reminding me that it was always missing the booklet… 

Since that’s not a very exciting story, I can also say the second record I ever bought was Dystopia’s The Aftermath…, brand new at the time, for $11 sealed at 2nd Avenue Records in Portland. Next up was all the 2002 Earache reissues I could get my hands on – first two Carcass albums, Napalm Death – Scum, Morbid Angel – Altars of Madness, At The Gates, on and on. Earmark had a bunch of classic ’70s and ’80s reissues back then as well, like Black Sabbath – Sabotage, Venom – Welcome To Hell, Celtic Frost – Morbid Tales, this sick Motorhead box set; it was all very exciting. I was also going to shows all the time, picking up every touring band’s LP I could, and punishing Parasitic Records for the rarest shit when he’d bring his label distro to gigs. I remember I was eager to fill up my first solid record crate, and don’t think it took very long… Clearly, those first few months buying records turned into a huge rabbit hole that quickly got out of hand.

What is your most prized possession in your record collection, and the story behind that?

This is something I would genuinely love to talk about at great length, but out of several thousand records, it’s not possible for me to choose just one, especially in a short interview. I wouldn’t even be able to choose just 5 from each genre, ha. After buying, selling, trading and collecting rare vinyl for over 20 years, even before working at a record store (which is the best and worst thing a record collector can ever do…) I had amassed a large collection and I’ve been very fortunate to come into dozens of seriously crazy grails and deals. There are likewise dozens of cherished gems which are not even particularly valuable or in-demand, but nonetheless are incredibly difficult to come by. Nowadays the collector’s market as well as the economics behind manufacturing vinyl is all so outrageous, it’s easy to get discouraged about records. But, I live for them, and to be honest, I just want to say – the deals are still out there! You just have to be patient at times, and swift at others… Anyway, a small portion of prized possessions in my record collection are: the $15 deadstock/remainder copy of [Emperor’s] In The Nightside Eclipse I got in 2003, the complete Paniac – Suicidal Doom Series, 30 titles (not counting doubles/triples) out of the 32 Seraphic Decay releases, white label/promo test pressing of [Morbid Angel’s] Altars of Madness with original hype sheet (!), genuine “Thy Kingdom Come” 7″ (with insert), Worship/Agathocles split, Strid 7″, Weakling’s Dead As Dreams for a seemingly-fatal $100 in 2006, complete Corrupted discography, Thergothon test pressings, Asunder test pressings, all of my own bands’ test pressings – Actually, I specifically collect test pressings, and often make my own covers for them. One of the rarest is definitely the aborted Burning Witch/Goatsnake split, which, for whatever reasons, never made it past the test pressing phase and was only ever released on CD. But, even with all this rambling we can barely scratch the surface of my collecting.

Is there a record you’re on the hunt for/have always dreamed of finding, and if so, can you talk about that?

It’s an endless hunt, as there’s still hundreds of records I’m actively searching for – not even counting the inevitable new discoveries which just adds to the endless queue, of course – but the sensation when you do finally stumble upon something like that in the wild is one of the great treasures in life. I did just cross off a huge one from that list though, thanks to a fellow absolute prog/vinyl maniac in Berlin: He helped me find Sergius Golowin’s immense Lord Krishna Von Goloka, the original 1973 pressing on Ohr/Die Kosmischen Kuriere, which I have been actively searching for since 2006! Ostensibly pure kosmische/krautrock, it is an extremely psychedelic album that prefigured the ominous, dreamlike sound of dark/experimental folk by well over a decade, and was recorded in the Swiss countryside where his path crossed with Timothy Leary, H.R. Giger and Klaus Schulze. And it is as cosmic, strange and intriguing as one could hope that to be, at least to my ears. There have been a handful of reissues over the years, including one when I worked at the record store and had it right there in front of me, but the genuine article has always eluded me until just a few months ago. This was legitimately one of my biggest dreams to find for the last 18 years – Eternal hails, Rezy!

How has the importance of physical music changed or evolved for you as music consumption becomes increasingly dominated by streaming services?

Taking in the full aesthetic presentation of an album is just not physically possible in a streaming context, so physical media has always been my priority, both as a listener and in the context of all of my bands. It’s definitely a chore to move them from house to house, they never take up any less space, and they’re remarkably wasteful/terrible for the environment, but in my opinion there’s still no better experience of a recorded work than to just sit there with it in front of you while you listen; holding it in your hands and looking over the liner notes, reading all of the lyrics along with the music, really just focusing on it and taking it all in. That’s been my M.O. for listening to music since day one, so streaming doesn’t appeal to me despite appreciating its obvious convenience; I do like when records come with download codes, but if they don’t I’ll try to buy their stuff on Bandcamp instead so I can listen to it while driving or on the plane, etc. But at the end of the day, vinyl records are what it’s all about; they’re the ultimate artifacts of what we’re all here for when it comes to shows and bands and the songs and just the whole power of music’s transcendental ability to define and change people’s lives. Without great records – physical vinyl records – none of what streaming services ultimately take for granted would even happen in the first place. It’s not being nostalgic; we have to cherish them.

Do you have a favorite record store, and if so, what makes it special?

So many! I’m glad you asked. In no particular order, of course: Whispers Records (Leipzig), Face Records (NYC), Nostalgi Palatset (Stockholm), The Searchers (Melbourne), Galactic Supermarket (Berlin), Ragged Records (Davenport, IA), Daybreak Records (Seattle), Extremely Rotten (Copenhagen), End Of An Ear (Austin), Recollect Records (Denver), Rhino Records (Claremont, CA), Musique Plastique (Portland), Reanimated Records (San Diego), Amoeba (Berkeley), Randy’s Record Shop (SLC), Eastern Front (Austin), Vinyl Conflict (Richmond), Lyle’s Records (Victoria, BC), The Record Exchange (Boise), aQuarius Records (SF),  on and on. I am definitely forgetting another dozen of the regular spots we try to hit on tour. But all of these shops have killer, curated selections of incredibly sick, rare, and well-kept records for your enjoyment. My sincere apologies to every great record store I love and didn’t have time to write!

Do you have any of your own stories of hunting down a particular exclusive Record Store Day release?

Nothing too crazy I was hunting for, but in 2013 I did come into work after the RSD weekend and found a sealed copy of Dust – Dust/Hard Attack still in the bins that was machine-numerated 00001 under the shrinkwrap. I only have a handful of RSD titles, but my absolute favorite is the Florian Fricke – Spielt Mozart 2LP! A recording from the early ’90s featuring the Popol Vuh main man playing some of his favorite Mozart pieces – Unpretentiously simple, yet stunning. It is also 45rpm, so you can get a little PV Slowzart experience, as a bonus. It was originally only a limited CD, which has remained expensive, but the 2018 RSD vinyl debut is still a $10 record and comes with my highest recommendations.

Anything else you want to add about vinyl or Record Store Day that we haven’t discussed?

Support your local record stores, and go out of your way to check out new ones whenever you come across them – you never know what you may find. Thanks to you for the interview, and greetings to anyone who finds a record they’ve been looking for for ages anytime soon.

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For more interviews like this and a big guide to this year’s RSD releases (metal included), read the entire BV digital magazine.  It’s free and available instantly, in exchange for your email address.

Blood Incantation also just put out a new music video and confirmed that their next album is “coming soon.”

We spoke at length with drummer and songwriter T.J. Childers about the challenges of creating New Heaven, Inter Arma’s surprising collaboration with a Canadian military photographer, and which Nine Inch Nails samples hit the hardest.

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It seems as though the band went through real adversity in the making of New Heaven. As a result, people might expect it to point inwards, and see you focus on yourselves and focus on that period. But the lyrics are much more outward looking, there’s this real focus on empathy and understanding, how did that come to be?

The more personal underlyings of the meaning of the lyrics is going to be for Mike to answer but on the broader scale of things, our records always tend to be pretty pretty dark and pretty bleak. I mean it’s just how it comes out you know, we’re not trying to write the heaviest music of all time, I think Nile cornered the market on that a long time ago, or Six Feet Under probably actually is a more appropriate band for that. But it is heavy and dark and bleak and oppressive as it may be and even the lyrics deal with, you know, loss and depression and just kind of all the blanket shit that human beings deal with on a regular basis. We always try to – whether it’s lyrically or musically, even though it is bleak and oppressive, it’s nice to have tangents of hope in there, so even when you are looking inward and thinking about the complex range of emotions that human beings are.. there’s anger, there’s joy, all the emotions. We always try to convey even though things are shit, things will work out, hopefully!

That touches on something that aggressive music doesn’t get enough credit for; the presumption that it is largely one note, just purely dealing with unpleasantness or hatred or anger, so to touch upon those brighter aspects of the music is cool. I was interested to hear a little bit about having your passports stolen in Europe, what’s the background there?

We were supposed to play Russia, back in like…fuck, what was it, like 2018, something like that. In order to get a visa to play in Russia, you have to mail your physical passports to Russia. And then they actually glue the visa in on the page and your passports and then send them back to you. So in the process of them being sent back, I don’t know how in the fuck this happened, but FedEx sent them to our buddy’s house, the guy who put out the first Inter Arma record before we were even on fucking Relapse, they sent them to his old house that he’d not been living in for two or three years at that point. So Steven, the guitar player was able to some way or another figure out that they had been sent there, so I went over there on two or three occasions, and basically the people that were renting the house at that point were fucking crackheads. I mean, full blown crackheads. I didn’t see the inside of their house. But judging by everything that was going on, on the outside of the house, I could tell that it was just it was fucking dark. I went over there on a couple separate occasions. And finally, the last time I went over there, I knocked on the door, and I actually started rummaging through their trash to see if they had, like, thrown our passports away or something. And as I’m getting ready to leave, this woman opens the door and goes ‘hey, what are you doing going through our trash?’ And I’m like, I’m looking for our passports, that I know were sent to this address. Do you have them? Have you seen them? And she said something to the effect of ‘we told so and so that we didn’t have them’. And, you know, me looking the way I look, walking up the sidewalk through their front door, saying please, if you have them if you know where they are.. and she just slammed the door. I knocked again, and she never came back out. And it was just it was like, a fucking episode of Breaking Bad or something.

Ugh, passports are the highest stakes of mail.

Yeah, and at this point, it’s two weeks before the tour was supposed to start and we’d already bought plane tickets. You know, we’ve we’ve spent thousands of dollars on tickets and merch, and in the United States, even if you expedite it, it takes two or three weeks to get your passport so there’s no fucking way that we’re going to be able to get them in time and we just had to eat the cost and and call up the other bands and the tour manager and be like, hey, this happened and we can’t fucking make it.

On a more positive note, how good did it feel when you finally landed Joe’s position in the band? There was a heavy churn of bass players in the run up to recording the new album: how did it feel accelerating through all that change without an album or a tour to show for it? And then how did it feel to find Joel?

Think for example of the song “New Heaven,” this is a great starting point, I  had the first handful of riffs for that song kicking around for a couple of years. And the previous bass player I mean, even him joining the band is a whole other story, but I knew that he wasn’t going to be able to play those riffs. I just knew they’re going to be beyond his skill set, and so that was discouraging. And then as I’m coming up with other riffs and thinking I don’t know if he’s going to be able to play this, that was discouraging also. And it just came to a point over time, then he left the band, and we were in limbo for six months, or however long it was. And at that point, everybody in Inter Arma lives in Richmond so we practice two or three times a week, but we’re missing the fifth limb, so to speak, it’s and we’re in this fucking purgatory of what the fuck are we going to do? It’s not conducive to trying to be creative and write songs without a full band. And so it was a fucking bummer to say the least there for a little while. And then.. I knew that Joel was a guitar player, so I never even considered asking him to play bass because most guitar players don’t want to fucking play bass in a band because their egos are so goddamn big (laughs) you know, that sort of thing wont allow them. But Joel hadn’t been in a band in like five years or something like that, and Steven asked him and he was like, fuck yeah. And immediately it was like the fucking the skies parted for us and the sun beams shone down right away, because I already knew Joel, I knew he’s a great engineer, I knew he’s a fucking killer guitar player, I knew he’s a killer songwriter. He’s an incredibly intelligent dude. He understands music on a more theoretical level, I can speak the language to him much more clearly. Whereas before, I’d have to say okay, so now put your finger on the first fret. Now I can just say the song’s in C, you can probably figure it out from there. So just being able to communicate with him in that way – the whole fucking experience was like night and day.

Three practices a week is good going!

I mean Nirvana used to practice like five days a week for six hours a day. Lynyrd Skynyrd used to practice for eight hours a day, five days a week.

You touched on the process of writing riffs and taking them to the other band members. With your chosen discipline within the band being the drums, where do you tend to begin with your writing? Does it depend on the needs of the song?

It’s different from song to song. One example is “The Children The Bombs Overlooked”. The drum patterns came first, I was just practising by myself one day, fucking around, and I started playing those patterns. I was like, Okay, this is cool. It’s kind of a polyrhythmic shift, but it’s just keeping steady time through all of it. So I think this could be something and then the riffs came afterwards. But then something like “New Heaven” the song, I’d worked on those riffs like I said, they’d been kicking around since 2020 or something like that. “Gardens In The Dark” started with the drum pattern, and then I was like okay, this sounds like a weird industrial Nine Inch Nails sort of thing, what would Trent Reznor do? So I came up with a chord progression that I thought sounded kind of fucked up and outside the box and just went from there.

I would buy a shirt that said ‘What would Trent Reznor do?’ on it for sure. So you’re going to be playing New Heaven in full at Roadburn festival,  how are rehearsals going? When you commit to a full album set like this are there any songs that might not have made it into a typical set because they’re tricky to arrange for live performance?

Well, rehearsals have been going great. When I’m done here, I’m going to go straight over to where we practice about 10 minutes away, and we’re going to run through everything. Most of the songs on New Heaven would probably make it into a live set, maybe not “Endless Gray” because it’s an instrumental, although it’s not off the table. But generally, especially if it’s like a support slot, we’ve only got 40 minutes, and you kind of just want to put banger banger banger in there. Then there’s “Forest Service Road Blues” because it’s a quiet acoustic thing, maybe if we were playing a headlining set, we might do that, but most of the time I’d say no, we probably wouldn’t play that one. That one’s cool, because I’m actually going to be playing keys on that one. I’m doing a full Tommy Lee at Roadburn, where I have the keyboard set up right next to me behind the kit. And I’ve never played piano or keyboards in front of a large audience, so I’m gonna have to make sure I’ve got that one well rehearsed before we go play in front of people (laughs).

The ongoing genre classification of Inter Arma is one of everyone’s favorite discussions, and in 2024 it’s a real pleasure to hear how at ease and unapologetic you seem with the range that the band is capable of. On New Heaven I hear black and death metal, I hear country, I hear prog. Does the fact that most of the band members only play in Inter Arma mean we’re getting everyone’s creative impulses in one vessel?

I guess maybe nowadays that has a little bit to do with it. Because in the past, that wasn’t true. I used to be a total band whore, I used to be in like, four or five, six bands at a time, which I’m fucking glad I don’t do anymore. And then Mike, Steven and Trey used to be in Bastard Sapling, the black metal band. But even since the beginning of the band, it’s always been like that, and maybe it seems like we can’t decide what we want to do, but that’s not really true. I like listening to bands and records that are kind of all over the place. Like don’t get me wrong, AC/DC is like one of my top five favourite bands of all time, and I fucking love Nile and I love tons of bands like Cannibal Corpse – you buy a Cannibal Corpse record and you know exactly what the fuck you’re getting, and I don’t mean that as a knock at all, last record fucking rips. But that said, the records that I tend to gravitate to the most are records that are pretty varied, whether it’s Neil Young, or The Beatles, or Queens of the Stone Age, or Zeppelin, or any of the upper echelon. Not that Six Feet Under isn’t upper echelon, but you know what I mean? I just love the classic fucking records that everybody goes back to. And even like Death’s Symbolic has “Crystal Mountain” and there’s acoustic guitars, it’s not just as fast as they can go, blast beat double bass the entire fucking time, there’s still a lot of variation. Even Morbid Angel records have the weird instrumental songs on them and shit like that. So to me, those are always the most fascinating and interesting records to listen to.

It’s wild to hear that Mike’s joining Artificial Brain.

Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting that (laughs)

Is it going to be a big pull on his time?

Um, no, they don’t really take too much of his time. And I mean, obviously, if he has a string of, like, you know, two or three shows with with Arty-B, and then we get offered some crazy fucking tour, h’s gonna have to tell those guys – and he’s already said to them, that Inter Arma is still my priority. But the likelihood of that happening isn’t super high, either. We’re definitely more selective nowadays about what we do. I mean, I’m not leaving the house unless I can make at least like $10,000 so… I’m just kidding (laughs).

(laughs) I was doing some quick tour arithmetic

I should have put a much higher number in there. $100,000!

You’re getting those keyboard performance royalties now! So you’ve mentioned Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young and famously you’re a big ZZ Top fan as well; you guys are from Virginia, which has some cowboy history, and you’ve worked with Garrett from Windhand in the past as well. Just wondering what kind of role Richmond and its history plays in Inter Arma and how you get inspired by it?

Well, we’re all from Virginia, but we’re all from different parts. Except for Joel, Joel is from South Carolina, which is even more southern than Virginia. And it’s funny, it plays a part, I would say in a more subconscious kind of way. And definitely for me, because I fucking love country music, an old old blues, like Sun House, and old Albert King and shit like that. So that kind of southern redneck thing I can’t really escape is no matter how hard I try, it’s just fucking in me. But that said I’ve lived in Richmond for almost 20 years now, Richmond is a very eclectic little city. The music scene is great, there’s tons of great bands here, which definitely plays a bit of the role, just as much as the whole rural side of things. When you listen to the records you can kind of hear it, it is kind of rural, but then there is a more harsher city element to it as well. So it’s kind of a combination of those things and, you know, drugs and other things thrown in there as well.

So is Richmond kind of the contemporary face of Virginia, the urban place people gravitate towards?

Absolutely. The fact that in the past few elections Virginia went Democrat, except for this past one, is pretty much because of Richmond and the Richmond metro area. Because outside of here there’s a couple of other colleges and if you see it on a map, that’s where all the liberal minded types are, but pretty much the rest of Virginia is very old school, redneck conservative Donald Trump loving motherfuckers.

Good luck with that news cycle this year.

Dude, it’s a fucking nightmare.

Inter Arma’s music deals with a bunch of conceptual ideas from the past, like atavists, and Sky Burial rites, it seems like there’s an interest in things that are lost to time, or traditional ways of being.

It’s kind of saying that, maybe the good old days weren’t so good. But also, it’s good to reflect on the past to learn from your mistakes. Even the way our records sound, and even the way our music is, it’s not like old old timey but it’s not like cutting edge tech death modern sounding either, there’s definitely still a bit of a vintage rock and roll swing in there which again, I think that just sort of goes back to my redneck roots, and everybody in the band’s redneck roots. It just I guess it’s fucking inescapable. Yeah, definitely it’s just like a lot of facets of our music: it’s not really there by design, but because of who we are.

The album cover for New Heaven feels really candid and cold. It’s a simple photo, there’s no illustration draped over it, it’s quite different from some of your previous albums. What’s the concept? Is there more in the gatefold that tells a story?

We’ve definitely leaned more towards photography for the last couple of records. Just because.. talking about well tread territory, how many more fucking skulls and occult shit can you put on a fucking record? So tired of that, so yeah, photography is what we’ve been leaning towards. And it just so happened that a fan of ours came to our show in DC last year. And goes hey, I love you guys. I’m a photographer and your music has really got me through some tough times. CWe come to find out he is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and is part of the Guggenheim Association. He’s shot in Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq and all over Antarctica, like every crazy ass exotic location in the universe, you can think about this motherfucker’s been there. His name is Louie Palu, and he is a photographer for the Canadian Army, I can never fucking remember what the actual that branch is called for Canada but he’s, like super, super top secret clearance, he knows things, and has been to places, it’s pretty wild. So he says look through my portfolio, and Mike was looking through it and found that picture, right after we were done recording, and we were still mixing and figuring out sequencing and all that shit and Mike texted to say check this out, I think this could be potentially the album cover and I saw it and was like, God damn, that’s pretty fucking cool. If you don’t know what’s going on in the photo, to me, it looked like this guy was in a snowy abyss in darkness, lost, meandering, doing who the fuck knows what. And then he stumbles upon this blue portal into another dimension or into Hell or into New Heaven? Who the fuck knows where it goes to. So after showing it to everybody and discussing it and then I think right around that time, we decided the album was going to be called New Heaven, so it all seemed to be working out very smoothly, which never happens (laughs,) but the actual photograph is of a Canadian Ranger who’s up in the Arctic Circle, and he’s ice fishing at night for food, not just to for leisure but to survive. He’s wearing a headlamp so that’s what the blue light is. And then the kind of backlighting is a truck’s headlights. There’s snow on the ground and there’s a little bit of snow coming down, that’s what it is. It looks like it could be on the moon or something.

That’s a very powerful friend you have there, I’ve no idea what the acoustics would be like in the Guggenheim but that would be a sick show. I wanted to shout out a couple of the songs on the album specifically. First off “Concrete Cliffs” because it sounds like it must be incredibly fun to play, and the range that Mike has on that song is wild.

It’s funny you bring up Mike on that song, because I knew he was going to do something melodic, especially for the chorus sections. But I didn’t know what he was going to do because that chord progression is slightly unusual. It’s not like a normal one four five, where it’s super easy to sing over like – it could be tough to sing over, but he knocked it out of the park. I mean the first time we heard him singing it was the first time he started singing it in the studio. But yeah, Trey wrote the main chord progression in that song, and the chorus chord progression, even though when he brought it in, it was faster, and I suggested slowing it down. And then there’s like a part where it goes from seven four to seven eight, I suggested that and a couple other little things. And then I wrote the verse riff and bridge lead section riffs. Immediately, as soon as we slowed it down, it kind of clicked and it created a vibe. And I thought, because the the main chorus sounds so like, airy and liquid to me kinda, we said okay, what if we juxtaposition that with like, just a fucking knuckle dragger? And as soon as we did that, we’re like, okay, that’s where that needs to go. So, yeah, that song’s a lot of fun to play.

The second song I wanted to mention was “Forest Service Road Blues”. It’s not new for Inter Arma to include acoustic guitars, but in the past they’ve felt very large and looming, whereas this song feels like it’s really zooming in on something smaller and specific, and the title is part of that as well. So I’d love to know more about it.

Well, it’s like you said, it’s similar to things we’ve done in the past, but it’s not really specifically something that we’d done before where it’s pretty much a singer songwriter setup. So the genesis of that was, I had that chord progression for like 10 years, it was 2010 or 11 or something when I wrote that. And I planned on it being this other bigger thing where it got faster, and it was more black metal and whatever. And like a year ago, I was just playing that on my acoustic and thought, this works well by itself, and I think this could be a thing and did some demos. And immediately, we all kind of got the Neil Young vibe, and I actually was the one that said let’s not have any electricity on this song, so it’s all acoustic piano, violin, upright bass. Which I thought was a cool thing that we’d never really done before, where there’s no electricity at all. It’s another example where I didn’t really know what Mike was going to do with it melodically until we got to the studio. And again, if what you hear on the record isn’t the first take, it’s like the second take, like maybe he flubbed a word or something. And everybody was just like yeah, that’s it, it’s fucking great. That song lyrically really hits home because we could hear everything he was saying and the song is so quiet. All of us were in the control room and he walked in after and we were all like, god damn.

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Quickfire question: say the second Inter Arma covers album launches tomorrow, what are the first three songs that you’re putting on there?

Oh my god, first three songs on the next cover record Jesus Christ. There’s so many. I want to say some things but I don’t want to give some stuff away. We’ve covered “Creeping Death” by Metallica, and when we did it, we just played it pretty much like the record, it was for a benefit so.. but I would love to figure out a way to do that in our own way. I don’t know if that would be possible at all because that song is so fucking iconic. At least in my mind. I’ve always wanted to do “Happiness is a Warm Gun” by The Beatles, that would be sick and another Nine Inch Nails song like “Reptile”… I’ve always thought that we could do “Reptile” off of The Downward Spiral and really fuck it up and make it our own.

“Reptile” is such a good song. What the hell is that sample like a camera or something?

It’s a fucking Polaroid which is sick! I bought The Downward Spiral when it was new on tape when I was 11 years old. But yeah Mike told me recently that’s what that sound is and it fucking blew my mind for multiple reasons. One of which being as soon as he said it I went oh my god, that’s exactly what that is. We heard that a million fucking times. Number two: who in the fuck would think to hear that sound and go that sounds sick, I’m gonna put it on a fucking record and use it in a song. Yeah, that’s how you know Trent Reznor is a fucking genius.

That adds a further layer of sinister dirt to it as well, given the content of that song. The fact that it’s a Polaroid makes it even more Nine Inch Nails to me.

Yeah, and I mean, it totally sounds sinister. I remember listening to that with on a Walkman when I was a kid and thinking it sounds like a cyborg and it’s getting ready to fucking kill you or something. There’s a bunch of sounds on that record that I very specifically remember hearing when I was a kid and thinking what in the fuck is that? And to know that now 20 plus? Goddamn.. 25? Whatever, a billion years later it still blows my mind and also just like the work he had to go through to put that on a sampler, like it wasn’t on a fucking desktop or a laptop sitting right next to him, that motherfucker had to work to get that sound. He’s a madman. He’s a fucking genius.

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New Heaven is available to pre order digitally before it releases on April 26th and can be purchased here.

Murk Rider is everything you don’t expect from black metal, or if you have been listening to black metal for any amount of time, everything you could come to expect. Sure there are tons of traditional aesthetic exemplified by bands just as much as unorthodox. Black metal is less about challenging the old guard as much as it is about bands having the freedom to do whatever they want.  From cover to logo, to themes, Murk Rider have forged their own path and upon footstones such as 30 minute songs, cosmic synth, and now covers of Uriah Heep. The Murk Rider is a new scrapbook which highlights the band’s patchwork of influence. You can preview it right now:

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The Murk Rider is a collection of new material and covers which is mechanically material left over and in production between albums. While this period can easily be a stopgap between albums, Murk Rider has zero reason to do anything else besides what they want. This is why the centerpiece “Go into the Magic Darkness” is around 15 minutes with the closing Berlin school style synth track “The Fires of Creation” around the same time. What lies between is a handful of covers, poetry, and sound collages which are like posters tacked on the walls of a basement bedroom. The covers of Uriah Heep’s “Rainbow Demon” and Sodom’s “Outbreak of Evil” are the best example of showcasing the genealogical roots of this band as progressive hard rock and first wave black metal is the type of aesthetic mashup we have all been secretly wanting. 

Murk Rider is much of a place of escape as it is creation and The Murk Rider is an avatar of collage. It is sometimes a devil, at others a samurai, or even sometimes an interstellar heroine descending from the skies with a giant glowing sword. It is 2024 and listening to black metal can be anything you really want it to be and many times can be everything. You can be spooky if you want to or be a space shaman from some 1980’s VHS tape no one has heard of. Whatever it is, it is done from a place of excitement which lies at the core. I’m glad this band reached out but to be honest we might have already known each other in some past life reading Conan comics surrounded by “water vases” in some smoky garage. I’m glad to have met you again, space travelers. 

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The Murk Rider releases on April 19th. Tapes will be available via Fiadh Productions and digital pre-orders can be found on Murk Rider’s Bandcamp.

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In recent times, Neseblod has become more of a museum than a shop, though there were plenty of records to dig through and buy. The basement of the building, with its infamous wall with the graffiti “black metal” sprayed across it, appears in thousands of photographs from people passing through. Even the more “serious” black metal fans succumbed to it. Hell, if I ever made it to Norway, I would have done the same. Sadly, no one in Norway would have us, so my opportunity is lost.

Just because I’ve never been there doesn’t mean that I haven’t read about it fanatically since I first was introduced to black metal 30 years ago. It seems to be the blueprint which almost any metal-themed record store tries to follow. In the intersection where my love of black metal and of record shopping collide, plus with the continual decline of physical media into intangible and unownable (If that’s a word … there’s no red line under it, so I guess it is.) bits of data, I can’t help but feel a deep sadness when something like this occurs, doubly so because of the amount of artifacts (that’s the word I’m sticking with, fuck you if you don’t like it) that are completely lost, leaving much of the historical items that are left in the hands of private collectors.  

But all is not lost. Darren Toms, whom I think is who signed me to Candelight but I could be fucking mistaken there, and who has long been entrenched in black metal culture, has started a GoFundMe to assist in the owners’ financial issues as well as, hopefully, an eventual return to business as usual. I’ve got it linked at the bottom of the next few messy paragraphs.

My contribution to the whole thing is a list of a few Norwegian black metal records that, while not necessarily “obscure” as my title would lead you to believe, don’t really get the attention (I feel) they deserve. Plus it seemed more interesting than writing another piece about Mayhem/Emperor/Burzum/etc. I’m sure there are those of you who will disagree with both of those points, and guess what? You can write a fucking article on Medium or do a Youtube video about what an asshole I am. I’m pretty sure other people have done those better, though. 

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In Times Before the Light landed around the time I was starting to write my first record, and I was immediately struck by how great the drums were, how much of an earworm the hook in the first song was, and how I thought I could somehow do that as well. History has obviously proved me wrong there, but 27 years (Jesus Christ) later I still get that same feeling from listening to this record. This was right before a lot of the atmospheric black metal bands either went overly symphonic (boo) or, as journalists love to say, “went weird.” In Times Before the Light preceded Covenant doing both and stands as one of the greatest black metal records of the 1990s. 

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While I have no idea what prompted Shagrath to call his label “Hot Records,” I do fondly remember it not only for some of the best records out of Norway in that era but also The Rape of the Holy Trinity compilation, which is where I first heard the title track from Ode to the Nightsky. Excellent atmospheric black metal of the time and one of the most promising demos/EPs that came out that year. 

Then they signed to Nuclear Blast and released a prog metal record with Hammerfall vocals which absolutely shit the bed for me and I didn’t give them any thought until I was writing this piece. Revisiting the EP, though, is a totally worthwhile use of your listening time. Also of note, on the Discogs page for them in the history section it talks about how they formed in 1994 but “finally broke up” in 1998, meaning whoever wrote that was also sick of their shit by then. 

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Looking back on things I listened to in the mid 90s, you’d think I would have either created an atmospheric black metal band or, at the very fucking least, tried to learn how to play my instruments. Dismal Euphony are a band whom, after their debut, I lost track of, outside of hearing stories about the fucked up lives of some of their members or that they were the benchmark for what Napalm Records would eventually be known for releasing nonstop. But their early material? Gloomy, synth drenched black metal with clean vocals. Think the first Gehenna EP but with operatic (I guess?) vocals, one of the earliest examples in the (sub)genre that I can remember. 

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Sure, In the Woods are very well known, but it seems mostly for their prog records after Heart of the Ages. LIke I said, “obscure” might have been clickbait, but it sounded nice. Isle of Men was the first black metal demo I ever bought, probably from the Relapse catalog, The whole thing just dirges along (that’s an adjective now) with a lumbering guitar tone that almost sounds out of tune but captures an atmosphere that no other recording had before or since for me. Soulseller Records reissued this on vinyl a while back and still has copies in stock. One of my favorite demos of all time, both for quality and for the sentimental significance. 

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Second entry featuring Nagash on here, Drep de Kristne was highly anticipated for me after the excellent Trollstorm over Nidingjuv saw a CD release via the excellent Head Not Found a year or so earlier. And it did not disappoint at all. Theatrical in nature and extremely Norwegian (yeah, no shit) this record embodied everything I wanted out of the (sub)genre at the time. I still revisit this one frequently.

As a side note, when I had a radio show I interviewed Nagash when the first The Kovenant record was making the rounds and, outside of him being interesting during a radio interview, the thing I remember most was talking about “The Phantom Menace” with him and how we’d both seen it multiple times in the theater. I’m sure this is interesting to you, dear reader, and you’re welcome for it.  

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When I think about wasted potential I first think about how badly I’ve fucked my life (and the lives of others) up. I also think about Frostmoon. Coming about during a time when the term “Norwegian black metal” was pretty used up, and the global scene was becoming more connected and looking in different places, Frostmoon got kind of lost. While they’re obviously viking-themed, what truly sticks out is the clean vocals, which make me think of -and this is probably only me- “Eye in the Sky” by Alan Parsons Project or maybe some of the more soaring backing vocals on mid period Bad Religion records. Sound cool? Fuck you, don’t lie to me. But trust me, this band are special, horribly overlooked, and incredibly overdue for a vinyl release. I would place Tordenkrig in the top 100 black metal records of all time, if that was something I was working on.

I could have written about a slew of bands for this. I considered Forgotten Woods, Strid, Malignant Eternal, Tulus, etc. etc. It took me years after the backlash in American black metal towards anything Norse to realize just how important this scene has been and continues to be to me. And now, with one of the monuments to the genre smoldering, is a perfect time to reflect on these bands, these times and maybe even lend a hand to help.

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Neseblod Records Gofundme

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Number 37 was originally going to be about second chances, and I plan on delivering that one in two weeks. See you then.

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While you’re feeling bad, though, at least you can get some headbanging in. Sundowner pair blues-laced sludge with neck-snapping hardcore punk, delivering chunky emphatic riffs in a blissful dichotomy of both fast and slow. It’s loud, abrasive, and carries itself with no shortage of swing. No matter the state of the world and how terribly your day is going, Sundowner promises one thing: whenever the drummer starts laying into the ride bell, you’re in for a hell of a riff.

The band comments:

This album represents exactly what SUNDOWNER is, straight to the point sludge.

Heavy, bluesy, intoxicated riffs from slow and filthy to hardcore punk speeds.

Lyrically ranging from substance abuse and drugs to serial killings and cults, it’s all around the nastiest side of humanity which reflects the nature of the music perfectly.

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Lysergic Ritual releases April 20th independently and can be pre-ordered on Bandcamp.