‘Sensuous, deeply felt, rigorous, uncompromising – the work of Chick Strand belongs in the canon of avant-garde cinema alongside that of her contemporaries Stan Brakhage and Bruces Baillie and Conner. Thanks to a spate of recent restorations by the Pacific and Academy film archives, they may slowly be getting their due.

‘Co-founder with Baillie of Canyon Cinema in 1961, Strand helped create an audience for experimental filmmakers, which she continued over 24 years as a professor in Los Angeles, bending and expanding minds with the manifold potentials of cinematic form. Her own mastery of poetic abstraction, found footage and lyrical ethnography make her filmography one of the most dynamic and distinctive of an era.

‘A student of anthropology who went on to study ethnographic film, Strand is most often associated with her work documenting the people she encountered in Mexico, in and around the town of San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato. For years she spent her summers there, always with a 16mm camera in hand: Cosas de Mi Vida (1976), Fake Fruit Factory (1986) and Señora con Flores (1995/2011) are only a handful of the many portraits she created before her death in 2009.

‘Many of them focused on the everyday lives of women. The 1970 film Mosori Monika, which considers the relationship between missionaries and native Waraos in Venezuela, exemplifies Strand’s signature style: caressing movements and features in close-up, pulling viewers in by the lapels with a telescoped lens, incorporating the subject’s thoughts via voiceover narration.

‘Perhaps the most radical is Artificial Paradise (1986), an ecstatic rapture of glimpses and textures that dares to express, as she has written, “the anthropologist’s most human desire.” The intimacy of her gaze wants to collapse the distance between filmmaker and subject, outsider and native – in true avant-garde fashion, to recast the document as ‘of’ rather than ‘about’. The result is a relentless, deeply absorbing visual encounter that must be experienced to be understood.

‘Perhaps this unapologetic subjectivity played a part in keeping Strand’s work from embrace within visual anthropology circles – although practitioners like Robert Gardner and John Marshall managed to push notions of the genre from within. (She also felt a strong sense of duty to access and interpret the female experience across cultures, something underrepresented in the male-dominated anthropological work of the early 1970s.) Still, the breadth of Strand’s interests went well beyond ethnography, into film language and experimental technique.

‘When she moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA, Strand met Pat O’Neill, who encouraged her interest in film stocks and showed her how to solarise film as well as operate an optical printer. Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) and Waterfall (1967) are early examples of her experimentation with these tools and techniques. The former is a layered poem of landscape, creatures and natural light with a jazz inflected soundtrack; the latter a deftly synthesised reverie of figure skaters, retriever dogs, church towers and Busby Berkeley mass ornament.

‘Also assembled from appropriated materials are the later works Cartoon le Mousse (1979) and Loose Ends (1979), both decidedly poignant if darker visions of suffering and the human condition. These films succeed in absorbing the viewer into their own universe of keen and unsettling association, dry wit and devastation.

‘The intensity of Strand’s oeuvre finds its breath in films like Kristallnacht and Fever Dream (both 1979), each a sustained meditation on reflected light. But where Kristallnacht hovers over rippling water, with drips and sprays in luminous black and white, Fever Dream insists on the body, all skin and sensuality. They give you the distinct sense of Strand’s voice distilled: the intimacy of physical experience married to light and movement; the essence of vision, the essence of cinema.

‘Describing ethnographic filmmaking, Strand once wrote: “It is a means to get into other perspectives of the culture, to meet them, and to identify with them as fellow human beings.” Her diverse output is permeated by this profound sense of humanity, of film as a tool for identification and relation, transcending time and culture. Strand, who preferred intuition to analysis, would agree: stop reading. See the films.’ — Vera Brunner-Sung, Sight & Sound

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Chick Strand @ The Film-Makers Cooperative
‘Chick Strand: Loose Notes’
‘U of M Students Respond to Chick Strand: In Retrospect’
‘Divining spirits: Chick Strand’
‘Soft Fiction and Kristallnacht: An Interview with Irina Leimbacher’
‘Chick Strand, Señora con Flores’
‘Tags: Chick Strand’ @ Experimental Cinema
‘Remembering Chick Strand’
‘Chick Strand at 75’
‘Who’s Chick Strand?’
Steve Polta on Chick Strand
‘Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear: Fake Fruit Factory’
‘THE JOY OF AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE’
‘Last Strand’
‘Chick Strand: Now They Call it “Avant-Garde”‘
‘Goodbye, Chick Strand’

 

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Extras

CHICK STRAND DOCUMENT

“Marmor”, a found footage video using film material of Chick Strand

 

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Audio Interview 2008.02.25

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Quotes

 

“I have no idea what my films mean when I’m doing them. That is boring to me to figure out…If I knew what the meaning was, there would be no reason to do it.”

“Other people love to work with a script and the whole thing but not me…”

“[Soft Fiction] is a film about women who win…What I mean by winning is that they don’t become victims, and they don’t become survivors. They carry on. They take the responsibility for having had the experience and carrying it off and dealing with it and carrying on and becoming more potent, more powerful, more of themselves.”

“The end one, Hedy, means it is never trivial. It is all going to get us in the heart and the gut. She just comes to a blank when she gets to that hill where bad things are going on. She gets to a blank. She’s had a hard time, obviously. And that was the first time that she told the story to anyone….in a sense the film itself acted as an exorcism for some of these things. These stories are what the women told me….”

“I make films. I don’t make films for a living. It’s out of pocket most of the time. And I damn well do what I want. I have no responsibility to the Women’s movement, to liberal politics, to international workers of the world, or to anything or to any political correctness, none at all. I’d be bored. It’s all going to come out. Let the people speak for themselves, the incidents speak for themselves. When I first started showing Soft Fiction, I’d get shit from some feminists as if I wasn’t supposed to show it—as if I was supposed to lie about it somehow.”

“All of us experimental filmmakers are in the hole—the guys and the women, too. We’re the last anybody ever thinks about and the first to go. But then our own boys don’t pay any attention to us. Well, they do but…that’s pretty hard. But that’s okay, because the biggest hole is experimental film…We’re all in it as experimental filmmakers. So that’s the part of me that ends up going to these shows and speaking—just in case one or two people might be interested enough to pay the fee to get in and keep things going.”

“I shoot documentary style…And Soft Fiction, no. I don’t know to this day whether one person’s story is true or not. I mean, it has to do with memory. I am much more interested in how it is related to Alain Resnais—to Last Year at Marienbad (1961)—than I am interested in whether it is related to Salesman (Albert and David Maysles, 1969).”

“I like a lot of movement. I like to make my own special effects. I like to put the viewer in a position they would never be in: really close in, for a length of time, like they’re flitting around the feet of the dancers.””

 

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10 of Chick Strand’s 18 films

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Anselmo (1967)
‘Strand spent over twenty years documenting her friend Anselmo Aguascalientes’ life, eventually creating a stunning trilogy of films—Anselmo, Cosas de mi vida, and Anselmo and the Women—tender portraits that are also glimpses into poverty, resourcefulness, perseverance and patriarchy.’ — letterboxd

 

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Mosori Monika (1970)
‘ Mosori Monika considers the relationship between missionaries and native Waraos in Venezuela, exemplifies Strand’s signature style: caressing movements and features in close-up, pulling viewers in by the lapels with a telescoped lens, incorporating the subject’s thoughts via voiceover narration.’ — bfi

 

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Elasticity (1975)
‘Impressionistic surrealism in three acts. The approach is literary experimental with optical effects. There are three mental states that are interesting: amnesia, euphoria and ecstasy. Amnesia is not knowing who you are and wanting desperately to know. I call this the White Night. Euphoria is not knowing who you are and not caring. This is the Dream of Meditation. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who you are and still not caring. I call this the Memory of the Future.’ — C.S.

the entire film

 

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Cosas de mi vida (1976)
‘Expressive documentary in an ethnographic approach about Anselmo, a Mexican Indian. It is a film about his struggle for survival in the Third World. Orphaned at age 7, he was the sole support of himself and his baby sister, who eventually starved and died in his arms. The film continues with Anselmo’s struggle to live and to do something with his life other than a docile acceptance of poverty. Totally uneducated in a formal way, he taught himself how to play a horn and when he became a man he started his own street band. The film was started in 1965 and finished in 1975. During the 10 years, I saw the physical change in Anselmo’s life in terms of things he could buy to make his family at first able to survive, and during the last years, to make them more comfortable. I felt a change in his spirit from a proud, individualistic and graceful man into one obsessed with possessions and role playing in order to get ahead and stay on top, but one cannot help but admire his energy and determination to succeed, to drag himself and is family out of the hopelessness and sameness of poverty to give them a future. Anselmo tells his own story in English although he does not speak the language. After he told me of his life in Spanish, I translated it into English and taught him how to say it.’ — C.S.

Watch the film here

 

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Loose Ends (1979)
‘LOOSE ENDS is a collage film about the process of internalizing the information that bombards us through a combination of personal experience and media in all forms. Speeding through our senses in ever-increasing numbers and complicated mixtures of fantasy, dream and reality from both outside and in, these fragmented images of life, sometimes shared by all, sometimes isolated and obscure, but with common threads, lead us to a state of psychological entropy tending toward a uniform inertness … an insensitive uninvolvement in the human condition and our own humanity.’ — Filmmakers Coop

the entire film

 

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Soft Fiction (1979)
‘Chick Strand’s SOFT FICTION is a personal documentary that brilliantly portrays the survival power of female sensuality. It combines the documentary approach with a sensuous lyrical expressionism. Strand focuses her camera on people talking about their own experience, capturing subtle nuances in facial expressions and gestures that are rarely seen in cinema.’ — collaged

the entire film

Irina Leimbacher talks about “Soft Fiction”

 

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Kristallnacht (1979)
‘”Kristallnacht” is so abstract that any connection to the Holocaust beyond the film’s title and dedication can be seen as deeply seeded if not entirely non-existent. I don’t consider that a complaint even if it sounds that way. If anything, this is less about the images evoking meaning on the surface and more about the context deciding the meaning of its images. Light on water, silhouettes of faces, a naturalistic mostly environmental score – so so minimal, yet placed underneath the inescapable implication of death.’ — Puffin

Watch the film here

 

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Fake Fruit Factory (1986)
‘ I discovered this particular piece after it being mentioned as one of the National Film Registry’s 2011 list of 25 culturally significant films. Before actually viewing the film I was surprised by its inclusion given that it is only a twenty minute documentary about a group of Mexican women making fake fruit. Upon beginning my viewing of the film though I realized it was something far grander and more realized than simply documenting an unusual type of employment. What Chick Strand creates in her brief documentary is an ethereal study of human existence as seen through the lives of a few under-appreciated and blatantly exploited women. Unlike other fly on the wall documentaries, Strand offers you no explanation as to what you are watching besides an occasional title card of explanation, you are left to glean from the film what is shown and what is said by the works, most of which is referencing the sexual exploits of the women. This approach makes considerable sense given Strand’s close ties to the ethnography program that existed at UCLA in the 1970’s. What Fake Fruit Factory becomes through Strand’s vision is a concise narrative essay on a few women who are being exploited by an often faceless white man, who only desires their craftiness and, at times, exotic bodies. We as viewers fear the worst when we realize that there is little these women can do to escape, until we are shown the women enjoying a picnic and swimming at an unknown park. This brief moment reminds viewers that life is not about the products we create or those things we can quantify, but instead the always fleeting moments of quality which toss and turn like agitated waters. Chick Strand offers something different and proves how integral experimentation in film has become to the grander evolution of cinema.’ — Travis Wagner

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Coming Up for Air (1986)
‘A “new narrative” film based on the visions of magic realism in an Anglo context. This is a gothic mystery that explores a reckless pursuit of interchangeable personalities and experience. Whether experience is first hand, read, remembered from a conversation during a chance encounter, heard of from all possible sources of information, whether fact or fiction, the “experiences” become ours; reinterpreted, reconstructed, and restructured, finally becoming our personal myths, and the source of our poetry and dreams. The sources for this film include night dreams, the idea of holocaust, the exoticness of the Mid-East, the sensuality of animals, the explorations of Scott in Antarctica, and a film I once saw, entitled The Son of Amir Is Dead.’ — Chick Strand

the entire film

 

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Wild Rumpus (2008)
‘A pastiche by Chick Strand built out of footage from Where the Wild Things Are.’ — dustincollins

the entire film

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Black Metal is very stylin’. Eek, I had measles as an adult when I was living in Amsterdam, and it was really rough. It took my immune system more than a year to work properly again. Avoid the possibility at all costs. ** Darby𓃱𓃱$$$, Giddy, sweet. ‘Freak Toons’, no, I don’t, but I will check with my most zine-savvy associates and pursue post-haste. If I find it, you’ll know. Thanks! Awesome about your New Year! Thank you about the mouse. I saw it just in the nick of time. ** jay, HNY to you! Gosh, maybe I’ll actually give celebrating the change of years a shot, but I don’t like drinking, and I’m basically post-druggie, so it might be a real challenge. It’s very rare that studio porn these days isn’t just boxy and old fashioned. A dying breed, I think. I’m one of those persons who can’t watch or read or listen to anything, even porn, without immediately deconstructing it formally and trying to figure out how it works, or, in porn’s case, putting aside its cast members and assessing how it gave me a boner our didn’t. I think they call people like me geeks. How nice that the slaves post did extracurricular duty, and successfully. Thanks for passing that along. Good luck making your New Years fun a mere twinkle in your year’s eye. Eye? Or something. ** Steeqhen, I never remember my dreams so I’m envying the clarity and narrative properties of yours. 30 is wholly doable. I don’t know how many books I read yearly, but it’s quite a bunch. For me, yoga worked pretty well, if memory serves, but not well enough. That said, I don’t remember anything about doing it what that felt like. So, who knows. Much luck on the throat/cough upswinging. ** Dominik, Hi!!! You’re back!!! Good, good that you only had 8.5 lousy hours since we last spoke. My holidays were very lowkey, Kind of a blur. This year has started without an untoward incident thus far. Black Metal can be very good at kind of scrubbing you out, clearing the mental decks and all of that. Like a deep cleaning. Thank you putting my thing on your list of favorite things! Your thing was on my list of favorite things too. Fist bump. Love’s not a girl who misses much, G. ** James, Ridiculous, poorly recorded things are a problem? Since when? HNY to you! There is quite a lot of grunt work involved in finding slaves who are interesting/ amusing/ tragic enough to present to you all, so I’ll accept a smidgen of your compliment, thank you. No, I think you have to write that Burroughsian novel, as far as I can tell. Ultimately, as something of a news junkie, not to mention a devourer of every fact-based tidbit about my various obsessions, I definitely read more non-fiction than fiction, but when non-fiction is in a book, I do fight off feeling like ‘Get that rabble out of the sacred object!’. You’re lucky to have the brother you have, trust me. That guy you chatted with sounds like a total warning sign. Glad he couldn’t keep himself from warning you. Luck with the short story. Nose to the grindstone, as they say, and whatever the hell that means. ** Cletus, HNY to you and yours! Cool. I once tried to interview a Black Metal musician as part of my research for the text portion of a theater piece Gisele Vienne were making, but every time I asked him a question he just glowered at me and rolled his eyes, so that didn’t help. Or, well, it did, I guess. ** Misanthrope, Well, next time, man. There’s always a next time. Ugh, re: David’s state. I think you have to cut him off. He’ll probably lose his shit, but he needs to lose his shit. Man, so much luck to you on that. Poor David. I so really hope he gets his shit together. ** Tyler Ookami, Hi. I did do an early search on the furry bands/music, and it does look pretty healthy and interesting. I’m just waiting to see if it’s enough to make a blog post about at the moment. Thanks! ** Steve, In my experience of late, most of the people I’ve met who are big readers of fiction and/or poetry have either been female, trans, or young queer guys. I have to wait for the venue hosting the premiere to announce before I can. I’m not sure when that will be. I don’t believe the venue has a competition. It’s an exciting, logistically smaller, relatively new festival. ** Steven Purtill, Hey, man! I’m glad you saw that I re-upped it! It’s still fresh as a daisy. HNY to you! I hope everything in your world is progressing greatly! ** HaRpEr, The Schuyler novel is really lovely. Very him. Calder is so great. There was a time when every book I read was either a Calder or Grove book. Did you ever get caught shoplifting? I did twice, but I was still young enough at the time, maybe 13 or 14, that my crocodile tears got me scoldings and not the cops. As a thrower of myself into work type of person, I don’t need to tell you which side of that argument I’m on. Throw. ** Dev, Hi. It does feel like the Cloudflare monster is weakening, but I don’t know if that’s technically true. Anyway, hey! Thanks for knocking twice. FUMES by Miccaeli: cool, I just bookmarked it. I do sorely need to enter the minds of people who think complexly about smells. ’19-69′ … I do know what cocaine smells like, I’ll try to find it and give it a whirl. Thanks, pal. I’m guessing Oxford, MS was named after Oxford, UK and now I am wondering why. Nothing against non-fiction at all, at least from me. I do think it’s interesting that most readers would rather have factual material to use their imaginations on rather than pre-imagined non-truthful writing to build upon. Wow, yeah, our birthdays are next door neighbors! Thats crazy. Uh, I want to go to my favorite amusement park Efteling, but I won’t be going on my actual birthday. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Traditionally my friends and I always went to the Hard Rock Cafe to eat nachos, but Hard Rock Cafe shut down permanently last month, so I’m a bit lost. You’ll be studying so hard you can’t even go outdoor a birthday dinner on your big day?! Hats off to your dutifulness, man. Well, at least eat something completely amazing on Friday. ** Justin D, Hey, JD. Oh, wow, choosing a favorite GbV song is very, very, very hard given their endless supply of song masterpieces. At one point I decided that ‘Red Men and Their Wives’ was my favorite by them, so it’s possible it still would be, but don’t hold me to that. What’s yours? Every day I curse the forces that do not allow us in France to access The Criterion Channel. My first day of 2025 was okay. I saw a visiting friend. I progressed in my video game. The price of cigarettes went up one euro per pack and that wasn’t so great. That’s kind if it. How was your second day of 2025? ** Okay. Today I present to you the work of another very interesting filmmaker that you may not be familiar with due to the ridiculous conservatism of current day film critics and distributors and streaming platforms. So, in that sense, today is a possibly rare opportunity to say, ‘Fuck the boring, mainstream self-appointed culture-arbitrating powers that be, I’m going to discover films based on their uniqueness and daring, and here’s one of my chances.’ Or you could just scroll down rapidly. It’s a free country. It’s all good. Maybe. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)

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Akitsa est un groupe de black metal québécois fondé en 1999 à Montréal par O.T. et Néant.

Montreal-based black metal duo Akitsa are one of the many overlooked gems in the Canadian metal landscape that come as a breath of fresh air once found. Akitsa are masters of loft, punk/garage rock influenced black metal that also occasionally borders power electronics and harsh noise (especially on tracks like Les Ruines De La Modernité), with downright primitive, ceaseless shrieks from O.T. (the vocalist) that really bring a sense of unquenchable bloodlust and anger that characterizes their work. Whether their song structure is reliant on pretty simple, alternating, almost doomy riffs, or extremely complex instrumentation that completely overwhelms at times, Akitsa does it so, so right- a hard thing to do when driving through multiple tempos, atmospheres, and various types of experimentation in my own opinion.

-fucked by noise

Imagine being able to peer into an underground room with some of pretty bad recording equipment, and a few guys who want to creative very raw and antihuman black metal. Akitsa are that band and Goetie is an album that is about twenty years archaic, though the lofi black metal sound is a fifty/fifty wager on either being incredibly atmospheric or downright abysmal. Though there are moments where the production hampers the experience, Goetie is one of the better examples of underground black metal where atmosphere trumps the choice production. Though it may either take ears accustomed to the sounds of Haine et Vengeance, or repeated listens to understand Goetie the album is a voyage into the murky realms of underground black metal.

-metalreviews.com

Heavily in the Burzum way! One of the most raw and primitive bands emerging from the canadian and the quebecers true underground black metal scene.

-red stream

AKITSA GOÈTIE (FULL ALBUM)

 

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For most listeners this music is almost unlistenable: unrelenting and mostly unchanging basic flickbeats through a drum machine trot past a fiercely, cheaply, grossly distorted guitar power chording riffs built of the same basic ideas and reacharound counterpoint tendencies. Barring that aesthetic restrainer, a careful listener will find the insecurity of a will behind seemingly random, simplistic music; with interpretation, one can see why this music walks heir to the throne of Hellhammer, Bathory, and Burzum: it breaks down in order to show melody and structure in the cracks of an aging order, and retaliates with a virulent nihilism and ideological anti aesthetic textural synthesis. Where it is brilliant it is, and where else it is nonetheless reflective.

-deathmetal.org

Ildjarn’s chief claim to fame is briefly being a live Emperor bassist, but the mysterious Norwegian also had a self titled project. And, amidst various albums, mostly ambient, deep in the band’s discography lies this deceptive little bastard, armed with a name and artwork which suggests some Bergtatty stroll through gentle, kind trees, perhaps with a picnic. As you’ll know if you actually play it, the Forest Poetry experience is nothing like that. Imagine yourself in a forest at night in a blizzard, being chased by some mad snarling goblin with an axe, frequently running into trees and knocking yourself senseless – whereupon everything goes quiet as you pick yourself up and start running again. The production is very raw, the drumming is a primitive racket, the bass is loud and obnoxious, there are no songs, just count-ins and abrupt endings.

There’s no melody or structure, and the instruments form one deranged DIRNGA-DIRNGA-DIRNGA-DIRNGA-DIRNGA that makes Venom’s Black Metal sound like the lushest Nightwish song in existence. I’d forgive you if you listened to a single track and declared it the worst garage band in the world at rehearsal.

-metalreviews.com

For the most part, Forest Poetry appears to be composed of the same riffs, the same monotonous drumbeats and the same amount of fuzz and static that you expected from the last two records. While the drums actually sound much better here than on the debut album, only the fact that Ildjarn started to compose traditional song structures makes it a little better than the debut. There are no electronics or experimentation on the record either, as it sounds very basic and that might be its greatest downfall. Perhaps I don’t quite understand the notion of kvlt, but the same song with a slight variation for an hour’s length isn’t in any way noteworthy; and comes off as pretentious and lethargic to say the very least. When listening to an album becomes a test of patience, you start to wonder what odd textures roil about in the minds of those who consider this work to be genius. (Eric May)

-new noise

ILDJARN FOREST POETRY (FULL ALBUM)

INTERVIEW

 

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The disc is composed of two pieces , without major differences between them, the length of 25 minutes each . We are talking about a piece of music is difficult to define in words that embodies the pioneering spirit of Black Metal, made of screams, distortions, extremism , the typical gait reflective (although here the term seems to be out of tune) of Ambient music: we could talk quietly Dark Ambient if this term were not so overused nowadays be understood another thing (i.e. Ambient played with synthesizers but especially by extreme music exponents). The Abruptum: namely the Bauhaus struggling with the experimental suite “cacophonous” The Soft Machine Third … rumorismo the extremes of the first and dilating ominously structures of seconds (of course I am referring to the most jam-session of the English pieces) . Their music has neither head nor tail, has no real purpose, since it eliminates the shape song that would tie this kind (and any other) to the canons of the Rock / Pop (of which the metal is sound evolution).

-debaser

The line up for the album is quite simple. IT performed the vocals, and Evil took care of the guitar, drums, and noise. The track list, is not even worth mentioning. As there aren’t any. The entire album, is one hour long audial trip to and from Helvete. Each section of the record lasts twenty five minutes.

And it is within this hour, that you will experience a dark awakening and experience. Many listeners to that of Abruptum’s work, especially of this, and of their second full-length Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo, In Aeternum In Triumpho Tenebrarum, have noted that listening to their noise causes violent thoughts, vomiting, and even seizures. That, as well as hallucinations make this a noise like musical drug.

I would speak about the instruments, and the music itself, but there purely is none to speak of. While the guitar and drums are present, they are but there for an effect every now and then. This recording is nothing but loud, blaring, thunderous noise.

As for IT’s vocals, they are absent. All that you have is his screams, as he tortures himself. This, coupled with the demonic noise, makes you feel like you’re in Hell, and are listening as Satanas speaks in tongue.

-unbalanced ramblings

Vocals are nothing more than demented and tortured howls and shrieks, as well as some painful moaning. The question regarding whether or not there are actual lyrics here is up for debate. Again, everything sounds quite improvised. If there is an overall structure to these two pieces, I haven’t yet discovered it. Due to the length, I’ve only listened to this recording about a dozen times in the past few years. Whenever I need an Abruptum fix, I’m much more likely to go after the Evil E.P.

-rise of the black moon

ABRUPTUM OBSCURITATUM ADVOCO AMPLECTERE ME (FULL ALBUM)

INTERVIEW

 

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Dutch black metallers Urfaust carry the blackened torch of ultra cult, totally personal, and weird as fuck black metal into infinity with this record. Imagine an opera singer, wandering drunkenly down the street, ducking into a Karaoke bar, only to discover that the back up band is Burzum or Woodtemple or some other stumbling droney black metal outfit, and thus proceeds to CROON maniacally atop their grim fuzzy midtempo buzzing backing, in a ultra dramatic warble that is equal parts Ethel Merman, Devil Doll’s Mr. Doctor and Tom Jones. Sometimes the music kicks up a notch into a pounding Viking style shanty, and the vocals follow right along, spat out in belligerent slurred shout / growl, and punctuated by occasional grunts and wild warbling wooooooaaaaahhhh’s. The vocals occasionally get even weirder, becoming a wild banshee like falsetto shriek before slipping back into that campy warbly croon. Sounds goofy and it is, but it’s also totally compelling and emotional, dark and weirdly wonderfully creepy. And these songs are strangely catchy and will totally get stuck in your head. Every once in a while since we got this in, I’ll find myself humming something to myself trying to figure out what it is only to realize it’s Urfaust! Holy shit! How often does that happen? With some demented BM band?! As if that wasn’t enough, toward the end of the record things get REALLY weird. The second to last track is an extended mournful epic, just minor key strings, majestic and sorrowful, a slowly shifting doomscape, and the vocals fit perfectly here, like a damned and doomed heartbroken shell of a man, standing alone at the edge of the world, staring into the abyss wailing and moaning his anguish, in that by now unmistakable hyper dramatic caterwaul. Then the final track comes out of nowhere and finishes things off with a tranquil swirl, an instrumental new age swoosh, all warm and dreamy and blissed out, like the Orb or maybe Labradford, What the fuck?!

-aquarius records

While they may technically not be good at all, his wailing has some sort of depressing, sad undertone that is mesmerizing from start to finish. And to top it all off, he occasionally boasts out a shriek that sounds more mentally unstable than Nattramn (Silencer) will ever be able to. His performance is impressive, as he comes frighteningly close to how a fanatical Devil worshipper would sound. All fuses are blown, and IX is lost forever, dancing and praying in the woods, singing loud his unholy worship. Endless solitary worship. A very chilling experience to say the least.

-metal storm

URFAUST GEIST IST TEUFEL (FULL ALBUM)

INTERVIEW

 

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The bulk of the music is built around extremely dreary guitar riffs and tormented screams. This possesses an atmosphere similar to early Mütiilation or Burzum, with the focus on conveying pitchblack negativity to the heart and mind of the listener. Things are often carried out at a brooding pace. Even when the drumming speeds up, the guitar melodies carry on in a hypnotic manner, never really approaching anything that could be called intense. Feasts is the sort of album that would serve well as a soundtrack to a nightmare. There is something downright unsettling about some of the riffs, giving you the feeling that you have been pulled into Hell. The songwriting also includes elements that are similar to the works of Vlad Tepes and Belketre, such as some of the old school rhythms and more traditional passages. Good examples of this can be heard in “Deadsex” and “The Last Supper”. This adds to the unique feel of the material, while also helping it to be that much more memorable.

Feasts is one of the better releases from the LLN, in every way possible, and is definitely essential for fans of Vlad Tepes, Mütiilation, Belketre, Torgeist, etc. Even those into I Shalt Become will, most likely, appreciate the bleak and miserable content of this album. This recording cemented Black Murder as one of the most important bands to ever emerge from the French underground and I, for one, feel as if I have been robbed for not hearing it sooner. Avoid the same horrible fate and seek this out now.

-encyclopaedia metallum

Vorlok Drakkstein still performs those deranged screams. They sound even more deranged on here than they did on the first demo. His crazed nature pierces through the loft production with utter ease. As for the guitars, they too show a greater deal of complexity. Wlad Drakkstein plays a lot of midpaced riffs that, thanks to the tone and reverb, sound ominous and foreboding. The spine chilling atmosphere is present right at the beginning. He also plays a lot of vicious tremolo riffs that demonstrate pure raw supremacy. Some of these riffs even display a hint of catchiness. He even plays a few creepy acoustic guitars, such as those on “Interlude”.

-servile insurrection

What the demo lacks in originality, or even technical skill for that matter, it makes up for in unrepentant ferocity with buzzsaw guitars, powerful drumming and vocals that honestly cannot be explained in words. Surprisingly this demo also manages to create a rather unnerving atmosphere at times, similar to that found in the work of projects like Silencer.

-grim lord of misanthropy

BLACK MURDER FEASTS (FULL ALBUM)

INTERVIEW

 

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The music is low quality run of the mill Black Metal; nothing stands out in the album. The production is horrible; I enjoy raw and difficult listening production a lot in Black Metal, but the production in this one is simply not enjoyable; first mistake is the vocals; they’re extremely high in the mix, plus Para Bellum’s growls are terrible, in an attempt to sound original and fresh he simply sounds annoying. The guitars sound dull and the riffing is simply far from being good; one or two nice riffs thrown here and there but overall they sound sloppy and plain boring. As for the drums the only thing you’ll hear is a constant snare beat; I thought drums had cymbals too, but it looks like Blackdeath hadn’t discovered them yet in 1997.

-metalreviews.com

Yes, the production kinda sucks, even by Black Metal standards. The synth drums are terrible, and the vocals suck beyond belief, they sound like someone’s screaming and moaning random Russian obscenities over a broken phone or something. Anyway, whenever in need of decent BM from Russia, stick to the Blazebirth Hall bands (Branikald, Forest / Vargleide, Nitberg, Ravendark). Far from essential, and nothing terribly original, but generally better than this disappointing album.

metalreviews.com

Upwards and onwards 80%
BM_DM, December 18th, 2007
There are motifs in the third full-length Blackdeath (Rus) release, ‘Bottomless Armageddon,’ that you may initially imagine denote the band as no more than early Darkthroneworshippers. The guitar tone and song structures are cases in point: the former is typically reverbdrenched, sharp and thin, whilst the latter often revolves around sequences of riffs, with little or no repetition. Opening track ‘Baphomet’ would be a typical example. Areas where the similarities end are the pleasantly fuzzy and clearly audible bass and the vocals, which are higher pitched and more rasping than the trademark Fenriz / Nocturne Culto croak. The ‘spoken rasp’ passage towards the end of the third track, ‘The falling of gold Jerusalem’, is supported by a halting bass line and nothing else. It is an interesting device, jarring in a good way and serving to refocus the listener’s attention on the rest of the track. ‘Bottomless Armageddon’ features other elements that set Blackdeath (Rus) apart. The synchronised bass and guitar line underpinning the simplypicked riff in ‘Under the spell of the black moors’ reminded me of similar passages in King Crimson’s ‘Red’. This three minute track drones on without a great deal of development, but is pleasingly hypnotic. In particular, I enjoyed the fact that its lack of complexity is a thoughtful counterpoint on the composers’ part to the barrage of twisting riffs in the track immediately preceding it.

Blackdeath don’t stint on the ‘metal’ on this release. The fourth track, ‘Dominus dusk hammer’, sees the guitar, bass and drums coalesce around the 1:30 mark for a nice head banging break before splitting up to go their separate ways. However, it’s not all good news. The curious ‘three blind mice’ motif which is repeated several times towards the end of ‘Seven towers of Satan’ is disappointingly bland after some of the exotic riffing that the listener has been treated to in the first two thirds of the release. It should be noted that, atmospheric though it is, the final track (‘Apocalyptic dream’) is really just an outro, with a little guitar work over wind sound effects. Other bands have called releases of similar duration EPs, but no matter.

Darkthrone have clearly served as a template for Blackdeath (Rus). However, this release is not merely the slavish reproduction of a blueprint, but more in the manner of a Wittgensteinian ladder: a means of ascent to a plateau upon which the band has created something distinctively their own.

BLACKDEATH BOTTOMLESS ARMAGEDDON (FULL ALBUM)

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The one thing that is problematic about Strength & Honour is the drum production. The bass drum is very loud and punchy, which, compared to the rest of the music, seems like it nears dance club levels. This big and boring bass kick is especially troublesome on track one, “Raging Winter” (which is maybe the worst song on the album), in which the simple, constant eighth note bass drum plod makes for an unpleasantly banal hammering experience. In a more practical sense, the loudness of the bass drum gets in the way somewhat of being able to hear the rest of the music, but it’s not so bad that you won’t be able to hear anything else. Overall, a good raw and basic black metal album.

-maelstrom zine

After the first riff hits your ears you have the scene set for the rest of the album, lowfi, dark, depressing and brutal. The way in which Satanic Warmaster are able to instantly switch from brutal black metal to depressive ambient guitar riffs is quite astonishing. There is also a sense of a dark atmosphere which inhabits every track on the album. Although the drums are typical of the black metal genre they are nevertheless crushing to your ears and effective at piecing this soundtrack together.

-encyclopaedia metallum

The most negative aspect of Strength and Honour is the production. Underground Black Metal is supposed to be raw, and this is no exception. In fact, the sound on this record is very much preferred over the horribly slick and soulless vibe of Horna’s Sudentaival. That said, the drums are far too high in the mix, with the bass drum being particularly distracting. The songwriting is fairly generic and there is nothing here that had not been done much better a decade earlier; nonetheless, for those people that want to hear more of this style, a more guitar oriented sound would have been beneficial. For the majority of the album, the riffs are nearly stomped out by the percussion, which is something that should always be avoided. The vocals are a bit too prominent as well, though the problem may actually be that they sound oversaturated in effects. The cheap microphone did not help matters, as certain puffs of air come through far too much and add to the unprofessional quality that permeates this L.P. Strength and Honour is a fairly mediocre release, though it is actually one of the better albums to bear the Satanic Warmaster name, ranking just below Opferblut. There is nothing about this record that makes it essential for fans of Black Metal, as there were plenty of other bands doing the same style in a much more impressive manner, around the same time that this came out. It is doubtful that it even drew that much attention from fans of the early Horna material, that may have wondered what their exvocalist was up to, since Nazgul’s style is not very distinguishable. If you do not demand a high level of quality from musicians, then this may be for you. Otherwise, you may want to stick with originators, while ignoring those that tried to emulate them.

-rise of the black moon

SATANIC WARMASTER STRENGTH & HONOR (FULL ALBUM)

 

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This album surprised me… what happened to this band? Whereas the other two Judas Iscariot albums that I own (‘Heaven in Flames’ and ‘Of Great Eternity’) seemed to be mainly illustrating Akhenaten’s conflict between ‘traditional’ black metal and the compositional experimentation he obviously wanted to undertake, this record does away with the trepidation or instrumental hesitation that I hear on those earlier releases and instead decides to go straight for the listener’s throat with a strong sense of conviction and determination. Between ‘Heaven in Flames’ and this record Akhenaten must have reached something of a crisis point in his career, as the music here demonstrates a mastery of tone and obscure melodicism that was only hinted at before it’s as if the man went through a trial by fire, and emerged whole and victorious on the other side. Perhaps it is only his musical ‘maturity’ that I am feeling here, the ease with which he now approaches composition. Perhaps it is the sound of a reconciliation he had with his own aims within the genre. I can not be sure. But I am sure of one thing: this is not the Judas Iscariot that I knew from earlier recordings.

-encyclopaedia metallum

I guess I can’t say that any of these songs are bad per se as they’d probably be perfectly adequate coming from another band, but for Judas Iscariot they’re mediocre and phoned in. The first two tracks are conventional blast and tremolo numbers with decent riffs but no real surplus of inspiration, ‘Journey Through Visions Of War’ provides ‘variation’ by being slower than the first two, and ‘March Upon A Mighty Throne’ is a guitar only track because, well, Judas Iscariot does guitar only tracks! The only reason this sounds like Judas Iscariot is because it’s MADE TO SOUND THAT WAY, not a natural outgrowth of Akhenaten’s style. I’m not really sure what went wrong here but it really feels like a case of an artist believing his own hype. This is a pretty unnecessary release and even though it’s not really awful its lack of inspiration is so clear and massive that it’s kind of uncomfortable to listen to. Stick with the project’s earlier output and pretend this didn’t happen; if you get what Judas Iscariot was really about, you’ll be disappointed.

-encyclopaedia metallum

Of course, as Judas Iscariot’s music is only about the minimalistic style popularized by Darkthrone, the rhythms and pace of the songs remain pretty much constant, so Akhenaten really only has to work on one type of playing. But man, this is some great stuff. The production and feel of the songs are just right. This is the fastest material Judas Iscariot has done to date. While the best album of this US black metal frontrunner is still Heaven in Flames, I have no doubt that any fan of necro black metal will eat this up.

-maelstrom zine

JUDAS ISCARIOT DETHRONED CONQUERED AND FORGOTTEN (FULL ALBUM)

INTERVIEW

 

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Ashdautas belonged to the Black Twilight Circle. Disbanded in summer 2011.

“Ashdautas has nothing to do with that pathetic bullshit spouted from the mouth of Edward/Volahn in the [Phoenix interview],” Naeth wrote in a forum on the Nuclear War Now Productions site. “I am not Mexican and I started Ashdautas which is the first of all of the bands that have to do with what has been labeled ‘Black Twilight.’ Since that interview/statement was released I have ended Ashdautas as I and our other members can not be aligned with a person who is a lying, delusional, pseudo racist, wanna be brown power attention whore who grew up and still lives in the whitest part of the entirety of Orange County, CA.”

Naeth was evidently referring to a portion of the Phoenix interview in which Volahn claimed to have been involved in a violent altercaton with neoNazis, and spoke about the group’s solidarity with the Mexica movement. “Being brown in LA is hard,” Volahn told the Phoenix in last week’s interview, “especially dealing with cops and immigration. Settlers on the land of my ancestors want to govern my life. Fuck white occupation of my sacred land! We are to be governed by our own people. I’m an indigenous revolutionary for my people and our struggle, and we’re the true representatives of our culture today.

On another message board, Naeth elaborated on his reasons for breaking up the group: “I ended Ashdautas because Edward/Volahn is against me and my people racially as I myself am Russian/German and not Mexican. If that shit had been posted by a white person ANTIFA [an antifascist network] would be all over it and he and all related persons would be added to their list of hateful groups.”

In a separate email, Naeth added, “He [Volahn] talks about how people around him ‘fell into gangs and prison’ but there is only ONE person he knows who is in a ‘gang’ and served time in prison and guess who that is? It’s me.”

-thephoenix.com

It wasn’t long ago that the words “American” and “Black Metal” in the same sentence would produce laughter and scorn from many staunch supporters of deep Satanic art. Nowadays it would seem that some of the most interesting and violent Black Metal comes from the states. It’s difficult to peruse the pages of the metal mags and miss all the accolades thrust upon bands like Xasthur, and Leviathan. Los Angeles’ Ashdautas may not get the attention of the aforementioned hordes, but their 2005 album Shadow Plays Of Grief And Pain is so harsh and so mephitic that it demands to be heard. Most noticeable are the tortured vocals of Naeth. The guy seems torn apart from within, and combined with the fumbling, discordant chaos of the band, Shadow Plays is a noxious cocktail of pure, unabashed agony. Ashdautas received a bit of attention some time back for their hardline stance against “MySpace bands” and their threats of violence to other bands and individuals in “the scene.” This all makes for interesting threads on the interweb forums, but also serves as a distraction from Ashdautas’s real appeal, their brutally stark and manic cacophony. Ashdautas belong to a devout subject of Black Metal bands calling themselves The Black Twilight Circle. Other bands in this rigid group include Volahn, Aresmenda, and Kallathon. Ashdautas is no joke. If your interest in Black Metal is only an ironic gawking concern to be tittered at between rides on your fixed gear and lines of coke at Pop’s then turn back right now. This is the genuine article, you are not.

-cosmic hearse

ASHDAUTAS (LIVE)

INTERVIEW

 

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Nefarious Dismal Orations is easily more album-focused than their previous record Magnificent Glorification of Lucifer. Where that album had plenty of individual standout tracks, this album is best experienced as a start-to-finish piece of work. Between the melodically-inclined riffs and Dagon’s distinctive (and equally divisive) vocals, I’ve always thought that listeners needed to make a conscious choice between whether they wanted to take Inquisition’s atmosphere seriously or not. Those who choose to see the sound as legitimately eerie and evil will get what they’re looking for. I never understood a lot of the flak Dagon’s monotonous croak has received from detractors; it’s certainly unique, but no less outlandish than Atila Csihar’s vocals. The casual jokes are for nil; the strangeness gives Inquisition a sense of alien Otherness that would seem to contradict the instantly gratifying “hook” factor of their riffs. If you’d heard much of them before, nothing on Nefarious Dismal Orations should come as much of a surprise. Dagon’s riffs are hooked on the same melodic grooves. Incubus demonstrates himself again as one of black metal’s great (and underrated) drummers, launching into fills and intricate playing where lesser drummers might have settled for pure blasting.

-encyclopaedia metallum

Overtly Satanic & subtly violent without even treading into misanthropy, depression, fascism, mindless homicide/genocide or confabulated Nietzsche-inspired themes, this album like all others is entirely dedicated to the worship of The Supreme Lord of Nature.

-mehta kya kehta?

What makes the storming black metal of this Seattle duo so special? Certainly not just their love of Satan, though they do seem more sincerely devoted than most. No, they’re just different from the hordes of hordes out there. For one thing, Dagon’s vocals aren’t the usual high-pitched anguished rasps, nor are they deathly grunts. They’re more like droning cryptcreakings, layered and insidious, truly “nefarious dismal orations”, an integral part of Inquisition’s trance-inducing doomic atmospheres along with the varispeed velocity of their attack, seemingly simultaneously plodding yet blurred with speed. Then there’s the RIFFS. You can’t argue there.

Inquisition understand old school heavy metal hookiness without being overtly retro, y’know? And this stuff oozes METAL as much as it gives off a sinister shine of actual originality and serious Satanic faith. Pure metalness plus weirdness (in the arcane, occult sense of “the weird”), yeah! We’re spellbound. And what the heck is going on with the buried, backwards masked munchkinisms we think we’re hearing at the end of the amazing title track?

-aquarius records

INQUISITION NEFARIOUS DISMAL ORATIONS (FULL ALBUM)

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p.s. Hey. ** Steeqhen, Hi. I don’t know the Ivry bio. Maybe it’s better. Alain Borer’s ‘Rimbaud in Abyssinia’ is good if you end up wanting to read more about his post-writer life. No pressure on a ‘Nosferatu’ review. I seriously doubt I’ll go see it any case. No, haha, no gym for me. I definitely don’t have the patience, and I don’t really have much impetus to reward myself. I used to do yoga daily years ago, but I got so bored and antsy I bailed. I spent NYE doing what I pretty much always do, so that seems like a safe bet predictor of this year. I hope whatever you did felt momentous. ** James, Nice, digging through the dudes and pulling out all those great lines. One could write a very good Burroughsian cut-up novel just sticking to the slaves profiles as a source. So thank you! Hail to you! Oh, drips down the throat, so … post-nasal in that sense of the head’s architecture. That does sound really unpleasant. I’m sorry, and I just hope the upswinging is still swinging. I prefer fiction too, obviously, but I fear we are a rare breed. But fuck popularity. I was an independent, keep-to-myself kid, but it’s true my siblings were around. I think being an only kid would have been horrible because my parents’ attention would have been wholly on me and not scattered around. That sounds like a nightmare. Me too: I’m whatever the opposite of a party person is. Fireworks might’ve been nice though. I’m a fan. Anyway, here we are in 2025 and the future is ours! ** _Black_Acrylic, Interesting. The name on Stoke-on-Trent has a bit of mystery to it, at least if you don’t know what ‘stoke’ or ‘trent’ are, and I don’t. Great that your immune system did its bodyguard number. As presumably did the indoors. ** jay, Top of the year to you, jay. Ah, what a coincidence: ‘Suicide’s’ physical but hopefully not psychological proximity. I need to find me a generous cokehead friend or bypassing stranger. Maybe that’ll be one of my resolutions. I think with visual porn, I kind of feel rather interested in the particularity of the cameraperson’s curiosity and like to compare what they want to see and from what angle and how closely or far versus what I would want to see if I was at the location. Mario was left stewing in his cockpit yesterday, but I hope to advance him towards the game’s presumably fun conclusion today maybe. May the sun be bright and your spotlight today. ** Charalampos, I have a favorite kind of nose too, but none of those slaves had it. Your comment made it safe and sound, obvs. The other Gide novels I remember quite liking are ‘Lafcadio’s Adventures’ and ‘The Immoralist’. HNY, emphasis on the H, from slightly too chilly but not painfully so Paris. ** Misanthrope, I don’t know, it’s even worse if he started out working his ass off and then became what he is today somehow. Humane mouse traps in the future, dude, what do you say. I’m obviously sorry to hear that about David. Is the ballied about idea of him -> military off the table, not that it shouldn’t be? Happy Newest Year, Big Boy. ** Tyler Ookami, That makes sense: your thoughts on how manga/porn manifests via women vs. guys. Yeah , interesting. I don’t know ‘I Made Too Much Pasta’, but now I’m very curious, obviously. Is there, like, a whole genre of furry bands? I’ll find out, I guess. Huh. I watched one of the ‘Megs’, I can’t remember which, on my last plane flight. It definitely wasn’t #2 because that clip looks infinitely more fun than whatever ‘Meg’ I saw squeezed out. Cool. ** HaRpEr, HNY to you too, pal. ‘Tropisms’ is so great, yeah. Sarraute is very underrated, I think, and so little of her work is in print in English these days. I highly recommend ‘The Golden Fruits’ if you ever find an affordable copy. Nice book haul. ‘Nest of Ninnies’ is lovely. Schuyler’s novel ‘What’s For Dinner’ is really worth reading too. Starkie’s Rimbaud is very good, but Robb’s is preferable because a lot of information re: Rimbaud was discovered between the time Starkie wrote hers and Robb wrote his, some of it kind of disqualifying of what Starkie knew/presumed. Happy hopefully fresh feeling day. ** Lucas, HNY, buddy! Nice that the party paid off, with a new friend no less! Vienna is nice. Dominick aka SCAB’s mastermind lives there. As of 9:11 am, i.e. now, I am feeling … no different than I felt yesterday, which I guess is good, right? Considering the alternative. Hope your AM wasn’t groggy. ** Justin D, And New Year Salutations to you, J! Nah, I did nothing-ish last night. Listened to slew of GbV songs to make myself happy, so I treated myself well in my otherwise surrounding normality. Good films? Happiest morning or whenever! ** Corey, I think one can swipe from the slaves without being morally questionable. From their texts, I mean. Those blobs were supposed to be ghosts, but, yes, they were too blobby to be ghosts, I know. I know the name Nico Teen, maybe from you? I’ll listen. Nice name, of course. I’m surprised it was free to be employed. I wish for our film to have a successful birth, whatever that means, and then criss-cross the world gathering fans along the way at a reasonable pace. And me? Write something. Get decently into making a new film. Not get creaky. That’ll do. You? ** Okay. I thought I would start the new year off with a big crunch by restoring a beautiful and informative old post made by MANCY who is better known as the artist Steven Purtill. Eyeball it, crank it up, and luxuriate. See you tomorrow.