AN NCS INTERVIEW: RUNE “BLASPHEMER” ERIKSEN (VLTIMAS, EARTH ELECTRIC, AURA NOIR)

 Interviews  4 Responses »
Jul 182019
 

 

(Our Norway-based contributor Karina Noctum scored a coup with this interview of Rune “Blasphemer” Eriksen at the recent Tons of Rock festival in Oslo, where Blasphemer performed with his band Vltimas, which also includes David Vincent and Flo Mounier (their debut album Something Wicked Marches In was released by Season of Mist this past March). Blasphemer has left his mark on the history of metal through the music of such bands as Mayhem and Aura Noir, and more recently with Vltimas and Earth Electric. This interview touches on all these experiences, and what the future holds for him. All photos accompanying this interview were made by Andrea Chirulescu.)

 

How did the idea of forming Vltimas originate?

I’ve been playing so much extreme metal for so many years that it was always a mission of mine to form a band that I could call my little baby. Something that I created from the start, because with Mayhem, I didn’t start it; I joined Mayhem. The same with Aura Noir, I just joined them.

So it was something that was on my to-do list, you know. Starting something from scratch and building something up from the ground. So when I quit Mayhem I was thinking about it, but at the time I just thought I had to take a break from extreme metal, from Black Metal, so I did not pursue it. I did other styles within metal instead. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HELLHAMMER (MAYHEM)

 Interviews  7 Responses »
Jul 082019
 

 

(Our Norway-based writer Karina Noctum had the good fortune of interviewing Mayhem drummer Hellhammer recently, following a Mayhem festival performance in Oslo, and we present the conversation here.)

This interview with Hellhammer was conducted after the gig at Tons of Rock in Oslo on June 28. I will have the opportunity to see them yet again at Beyond the Gates festival in Bergen, which has an incredible line-up and has not sold out yet. In addition, there is going to be a European tour by Mayhem (with support by Gaahls WYRD and Gost) in late October-November as well.

I think it was a pretty good timing for this interview, as I got some tidings about what to expect when it comes to the new Mayhem album that is currently in the making at the renowned Necromorbus Studio in Stockholm. Continue reading »

MAYHEM PERFORM “DE MYSTERIIS DOM SATHANAS”: A PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

 Concert Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 092017
 

 

Editor’s Introduction: For years I’ve been an admirer of the photography of L.A.-based magician Levan TK. In my humble opinion, there is no better concert photographer to be found. And so we feel fortunate indeed to present his photographs from the performance of the legendary Mayhem in southern California on February 7, 2017, along with Levan TK’s thoughts about the show. To view more of his photographic art, go HERE.

And by the way, to hear the first time De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas was ever performed live in its entirety (in Norrkjöping, Sweden, on Dec. 18, 2015, at the Black Christmass Festival), it’s available on Bandcamp HERE.

******

Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas US tour hit LA — well, Santa Ana, which is part of the greater Los Angeles area to be precise. Though the band had performed the album in its entirety last year at Maryland Deathfest, as well as a few European fests and shows, they have never before attempted a full stateside tour for the pivotal album. Continue reading »

BLACK METAL WARFARE PT. II

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jul 202015
 

Black Metal Warfare Pt II

 

I’m just going to put that flyer up there and bow out pretty quickly so I can go back to moping about the fact that the just-announced Black Metal Warfare Pt. II tour is skipping the Pacific Northwest region of these United States. I have sympathy for all Canadians, too. And for people in the other 34 states besides Washington and Oregon whom the tour is passing by. Continue reading »

THE BLACK METAL WARFARE TOUR (MAYHEM, WATAIN, REVENGE): LIVE IN SEATTLE

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 272015
 

 

(In this post BadWolf reviews the live performances by Mayhem, Watain, and Revenge at El Corazon in Seattle on January 27, 2015, with photos by Madison Lieren.)

For a minute there I was so inundated with European black metal, its tropes, and its lyrical hullabaloo, that I forgot about the genre’s troubled, violent, church-burning past, and in a sense that’s where I wanted to be from the get-go, since unlike some people I actually found the genre’s flirtations with homicide and terrorism to be a turn-off before I actually listened to the music.

Leave it to Norway’s Mayhem, original purveyors of quote-unquote dangerous black metal to drag me back into my discomfort zone by headlining the Black Metal Warfare tour, a nationwide trek wherein the second generation provocateurs, alongside Watain and Revenge, inspired mosh pits, threw blood on the crowd, and peddled tee shirts lionizing “Panic, Terror, Arson, Metal, Chaos.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I thought to myself, looking at the merch rack hobbled in the corner of Seattle’s El Corazon, “I fucking love blowing stuff up. Silly me, where *did* my balls go?” A prescient thought, as the night wound up being a testament to testicular fortitude. Continue reading »

TOURISM: MAYHEM AND WATAIN WILL BE ASSAULTING NORTH AMERICA

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Oct 132014
 

 

Today Norway’s Mayhem and Sweden’s Watain announced that they will be mounting a co-headlining North American tour together this winter. Named Black Metal Warfare, the tour will also include support from the Canadian black/death band Revenge.

Mayhem are touring in support of their new album, Esoteric Warfare, while Watain are touring in support of their most recent full-length, The Wild Hunt. I really enjoyed the live performances of both bands the last time they separately ventured to our shores, and I have high hopes for this tour. I’m also very interested to see Revenge.

The full schedule appears right after the jump (it neglects the South and Southwest, among other regions): Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: A STREAM DUMP (PART 2)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Apr 132014
 

John Martin: “The Deluge” (1834)

As I mentioned yesterday, the past week brought good song and video premieres in a flood, which was unfortunate only in the sense that I didn’t have time to write about all those discoveries day-by-day as they happened. So this weekend I decided to just flood you with them, leaving behind all but some short snippets of my own sparkling prose and mainly delivering the streams, along with release info.

Yesterday I collected 11 (!) new songs and videos, plus a couple of tantalizing news items, and today I’ve got 12 more, plus a few more news items. Once again, I present them in alphabetical order:

AMBIENT DEATH

The Song: “Apotheosis of the Hangman”
From: Dismembering the Image of God
Release info: self-released by the band on April 7; below is a new video for the opening track
www.ambientdeath.bandcamp.com
www.facebook.com/ambientdeath

Vicious melodic death metal with flying fretwork that gets more interesting and seductive as the song progresses. Punches pretty damned hard, too. Continue reading »

MAYHEM — A NEW ALBUM, A NEW SONG, A NEW VIDEO (“PSYWAR”)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 182014
 

Are you sitting down? You should sit down for this: Seven years after the release of Ordo Ad Chao, Norway’s legendary Mayhem have recorded a new album due near the end of May from Season of Mist. This morning the band premiered the first advance track, named “Psywar”, through a lyric video with very cool artwork by the very talented Costin Chioreanu. It appears that “Psywar” will be released as a 7″ vinyl EP in advance of the album; it’s already available for pre-order here.

The song is very much worth hearing, wholly apart from the fact that it comes from Mayhem (whose ranks now include Attila Csihar, Necrobutcher, Hellhammer, and new member Teloch). It combines black metal venom, death metal might, and a fog of alien atmospherics.

If for some reason you’re unable to access the video below, Mayhem have provided links on their FB page to other locations around the world where it can be streamed: Continue reading »

BURZUM OUT OF METAL

 Metal News  23 Responses »
May 062013
 

In every field of artistic endeavor, whether it be music, painting, writing, sculpture, acting, filmmaking — you name it — there are examples of people who have created great works of art but are deplorable as human beings. They make you question yourself: Is it right for me to admire, enjoy, and even praise this person’s artistic work if the creator is someone whose actions or expressions outside of their art clash with my own principles and beliefs?

Metal is no exception to this quandary. Perhaps the single most notorious example is Varg Vikernes. On the one hand, he played a leading role in the origination and development of Norwegian black metal under the name Burzum (and as a member of Mayhem), and he has continued to create notable music under the Burzum name nearly two decades later. On the other hand, in 1994 he was convicted of murdering Mayhem guitarist Euronymous and burning churches in Norway, and he spent 16 years in prison for those crimes.

He has also written extensively about his own beliefs in the racial purity of Northern Europeans and the superiority of its pagan traditions, filling volumes’ worth of words with racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic diatribes. In Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, director Sam Dunn described him as “the most notorious metal musician of all time”, and it’s hard to disagree.

Well, metal may have seen the last of Varg Vikernes. In an April 30 post on one of his blogs (Thulean Perspective), he summed up his own role in the history of black metal and the evolution of that movement into what he terms “nihilstic shit”, ending with the proclamation that “I no longer play metal music”.  Continue reading »

BLOODSTOCK 2012 – A REVIEW AND MUSIC FROM THE FESTIVAL (Part 1)

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

(Our NCS comrade Andy Synn has recently been making me green with envy by attending summer metal festivals on the other side of the Atlantic, which for me might as well be on the other side of the solar system.  However, gentleman and scholar that he is, he didn’t just go and have a ridiculously good time. He also sent back this review of his jaunt to the UK’s BLOODSTOCK festival on August 10-12, 2012. We’re dividing it into two parts, with Part 2 coming up tomorrow [now posted here].)

Ah, Bloodstock. Always an interesting festival, caught between its early power/trad-metal roots and its steady expansion into a more rounded, extreme/non-mainstream metal festival. This year’s line-up was pretty enticing, but circumstances and finances looked set to prevent my attendance. But fate and serendipity stepped in (thank you Sahil!) and on Friday 10th of August I found myself once more pulling into the festival’s parking lot, with a song in my heart and a shiny guest wristband on my arm.

 

FRIDAY

Carefully timing my arrival to coincide with that of Moonsorrow, I wasn’t disappointed, the band utterly on fire, despite the occasionally washed out sound. It helps that the set-list comprised some of my favourite Moonsorrow tracks, I’ll admit that, but the performance itself was brilliant either way. The only downside is that, due to the length of their material, it always seems like too few songs

Sepultura put on a damn good show, their new drummer certainly doing his best to live up to Igor Cavalera’s enviable legacy, while the triptych of Derrick, Paulo, and Andreas showed again and again why they stuck with the name – they just do it all better. The new material sounded great live, while the quartet give the old stuff, including a brace of Beneath The Remains-era material, new life and vigour. Props as well for the welcome, but unexpected, guest slot from Tim “Ripper” Owens on “Territory”.

Dio Disciples were, in many ways, something of a curiosity for the festival. Essentially Dio’s band with a different singer (and a few guests), it’s hard to judge them on merit alone, as their appearance was due to far more than just an ability to play the songs well. This was a tribute to one of the genre’s legendary figures, and while it would be churlish to say it was simply a well-received cover set (the downright dedication to this band’s slot bordered on the fanatical), one can’t help but be moved by this show of respect, and by being reminded of the sheer quality of the material on display. Continue reading »

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