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vortexstreet · 5 years ago

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Mat Brinkman, Screenprinted poster, 1999

#matbrinkman #fortthunder #blackdice #concertposter #noiseband #verminscum

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dustedmagazine · 5 years ago

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Okkultokrati — La Ilden Lyse (Southern Lord)

Photo by Remy Eik

La Ilden Lyse by Okkultokrati

Sorta crusty, sorta blackened, and sorta like a deathrock record, Okkultokrati’s La Ilden Lyse features one of those hybridized sounds that are rapidly proliferating in contemporary heavy rock. That’s mixed news for those of us who generally like our doom metal glacial and our death metal pustulant. But Okkultokrati come by their experimental tendencies pretty honestly. Since 2012’s Snakereigns the Norway band has been spiking its blackened punk with increasing doses of goth drama, inspiring longer, more ambitious songs. In 2013, founding guitarist Pål Bredup injured his hand, but rather than leaving the band, he learned to play synths. Okkultokrati’s sound changed with his shift to the new instrument, in an organic fashion. There’s still a lot of d-beat, and still a lot of punk attitude, but the music’s textures are more complex.

A run of songs at the heart of the record indicates the mix of tones you’ll hear. The first three minutes of “Freezing Vortex Death Dreamer” sound like early Killing Joke at that band’s most truculent; sheets of dissonance deliberately accrete as the song progresses, and just when it feels like the climax is coming, the song abruptly fades. “Cold and Cruel” picks up immediately, relentlessly paced and melding a glistening frigidity (the synths are buried pretty deep in the mix, but they could come from a Greek black metal record, c. 2005) with a head-on, four-minute-plus käng-punk sprint. The suggestion of Nordic punk is then intensified in “Kiss of Death”: a d-beat rhythm and guitar tone invoke the Gothenberg sound and collide with the song’s Goth sensibility.

The turn toward more forcefully articulated deathrock elements suits the band. They tend toward the grandiose: most bandmembers have adopted goofily “creepy” stage names, like Verminscum (who finds ways to make his little rodent paws work the drumkit with considerable force) and Empyrean. Longtime vocalist Henning Wisth identifies as Dionysiac, a romantic moniker that’s a decided improvement over the one he used to use: Black Qvisling. Which is kind of gross.

That sort of showbiz shtick frequently wants to distract from music that’s not fully conceived or well executed. But La Ilden Lyse mobilizes the band’s performativity into sonic excitement. It’s a pretty good record. The strongest songs are in its final third. “Mother Superior” flirts with some muscular black metal dissonance. “The Dying Grass Moon” closes the record, and the deathrocking, black-spandex-and-spikes attitude roars back to the music’s fore. That’s a good thing. The midtempo song roars and bashes, executing big musical gestures and convincing rock’n’roll panache. Cold and cruel? More like thundering and theatrical. Which in this case makes for a lot of fun.

Jonathan Shaw

#Okkultokrati #La Ilden Lyse #southern lord #jonathan shaw #albumreview #dusted magazine #doom metal #death metal #heavy rock #blackened punk #goth

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plot-nagasaki · 7 years ago

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