Blut aus Nord - Odinist
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This week is French bands week at Invisible Oranges. There is no special occasion, other than a desire to celebrate the country that brought us Juliette Binoche, Daft Punk, and the finest metal scene currently outside of Sweden.
Blut aus Nord‘s sound has gotten grumpier over time, a fact reflected in gradually darkening album covers (see here). 2006’s MoRT sounded like it looked, bleached of virtually all color. Last year’s Odinist was billed as a return to old times, but all records so touted inevitably fail. Times change, as do people and production techniques. Despite efforts to convince the world otherwise, Metallica will never recapture the magic of Master of Puppets.
An Element of FleshThe Cycle of the Cycles
Thus, Odinist only steps back so far. Its drum machine wakes up from its coma on MoRT, but its guitars remain in the dissonant soup that The Work Which Transforms God first stirred up. (Interestingly, compatriots Deathspell Omega went off the deep end around the same time.) The drum machine has long been a BaN trademark, but its value is variable. It has sounded best when submerged underneath guitars (Ultima Thulée) or when paired with guitars equally grotesque and unnatural (MoRT, Thematic Emanation Of Archetypal Multiplicity). Anywhere in the middle, though, where real drummers could do better, and it’s annoying; Memoria Vetusta I would have been ferocious if not for its Sisters of Mercy-esque plastic poundings.
Odinist is another such annoying case, exacerbated by overly compressed mastering that artificially inflates the low end. So much thudding makes the record feel tired. But the feeling matches the guitars, which approximate Godflesh with a killer hangover. For BaN, this sound is getting familiar. Next to black metal’s hordes of “old school” retreads, however, it’s still thrillingly alien. “An Element of Flesh” flings aloft psychedelic warblings (backwards guitars?); “The Cycle of the Cycles” rises and falls hypnotically. BaN are already working on a new record, a sequel to Memoria Vetusta I, but they’ll have to un-grotesque themselves for it, which seems unlikely.
Odinist is available from Candlelight, Relapse, and The End.
