I first encountered Romanian black metallers Negură Bunget through the tape trading scene back in the mid-1990's with their 1996 "Zîrnindu-să" debut release not doing very much for me to tell you the truth. I wouldn't encounter them again until Ben introduced me to their fourth full-length "OM" upon my return to metal from a decade-long hiatus in 2009 & I have to admit that I initially found it to be a challenge for a few reasons. Time saw me warming to it though & I now find myself returning to "OM" semi-regularly, if not claiming it to be the masterpiece that many punters would have you believe it is.

"OM" possesses a very clear personality that's all its own with its array of different sounds & influences being presented in a fairly coherent way throughout & the main attraction being the full, lush synthesizer sounds of front man Hupogrammos (Dordeduh/Sunset in the 12th House) & fellow guitarist Sol Faur (Dordeduh/Sunset in the 12th House). Hupogrammos' vocal performance is passionate & authentic too which fits the requirement nicely. Unfortunately, all is not roses though with the thin rhythm guitar tone & weak snare sound leaving a little to be desired & not doing a very good job at masking the instrumentalist's obvious technical limitations. The six-string performances of both men are fairly sloppy at times while drummer Negru's blast beats are an absolute rabble that should never have been attempted on the evidence presented here. Thankfully though, the atmospherics on display throughout "OM" are generally quite stunning which allows the album to overcome those deficiencies reasonably comfortably. It certainly helps that the opening three tracks are nothing short of marvelous & it's a little disappointing that the quality dial never quite reaches those heights again for the remainder of this lengthy 67-minute release. Progressive folk metal number "Hora soarelui" is the only genuine disappointment included though with its bouncy folk melodies being a little too much for this battle-hardened extreme metalhead to cope with.

For all its failings, I find "OM" to be an endearing listen these days, as well as being the clear career high-point of Negură Bunget's inconsistent recording career overall.

For fans of Dordeduh, Marțolea & Darkestrah.

An initial listen to Swallowed's "Lunarterial" left me somewhat dumbfounded and confused I must admit. From Vinny's effusive description of the album in the feature thread's introduction this was apparently right up my street, yet I really wasn't feeling it. The disconnection was so pronounced that I really doubted my own ears and my interpretation of what I had heard. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I persisted and have now clocked up four or five listens over the last few days, both through intently concentrated listenings and as background whilst doing other tasks. Whilst my initial reticence has been alleviated somewhat, the truth is, I am still not completely sure how I feel about this, or even if I will ever be able to make a definitive judgement on my appreciation of it. I think this is one of those albums where there are moments that make me think "OK, right. Now here we go" when things click and fall into place and show glimpses of the album I envisioned getting at the beginning, but on the flipside there are also parts of seeming random chaos that literally make me want to turn it right down in order to lessen the discomfort I am feeling.

Anyway, this is an album that draws on a number of extreme metal influences, old-school death metal, death doom, disso-death, war metal and even drone metal, all combining to produce an, undoubtedly intentional, disconcerting feeling that all is not well or right with the world. To this end, at least with me, this was inordinately successful, although the effect was to alienate me from what I was hearing rather than drawing me into its aural maelstrom. The transitions from doomy oppressiveness to outright blackened violence overlayed with jagged shards of dissonance just overwhelm me I am afraid. At times the band sound a lot like Mayhem at their most experimental, a phase of the norwegian black metal legends that I have never been a big fan of. In an inversion of Vinny's view it seems, my favourite track is actually the 25-minute closer, "Libations" which appeals to the doom and drone fan in me and within the drone-y confines of which the band's tendencies towards dissonance makes more sense to me and if it had been released as a stand alone EP I may even have toyed with the idea of purchasing it.

I would claim to be a fan of extreme metal, but I guess an album that really pushes deeply into unconventionalism such as this, makes me question whether that is truly the case. Things still have to make sense to me and for many stretches "Lunarterial" really doesn't. "Libations" aside, which is actually really growing on me, I can't in all honesty say that I would return to this in the future.

I introduced Ben to these Chicago industrial metal legends through the more popular tracks from their classic 1992 fifth album "ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ [Psalm 69]" shortly after it was released & those experiences saw him racing out & purchasing the CD post haste. We both went pretty nuts for that record for a long while afterwards & Ben would subsequently go about picking up a handful of other Ministry CDs in the coming months, including 1988's excellent "The Land of Rape & Honey" third album which is the centre of this discussion. It was the first Ministry record to see mastermind Al Jourgensen's signature sound starting to take shape with songs like the brilliant high-octane industrial metal anthem "The Missing" & the very solid industrial rock/metal hybrid "Deity" being closest to the mark. "The Land of Rape & Honey" is very much a story of two halves though with the B side being dominated by more of an electro-industrial sound like we'd heard on a chunk of Ministry's more-than-decent 1986 sophomore album "Twitch". For this reason, I'm gonna suggest that "The Land of Rape & Honey" feels a little like a transition record as it hasn't quite committed to its sound as yet but is still full of high-quality industrial music. Thankfully, I'm more than down for some well-produced electro-industrial material, as evidenced by how nuts I've gone for the powerful dancefloor number "You Know What You Are" this week which I'm pretty devastated I never considered dropping into my club sets while DJing during the 2000's. The quality does fade a little over the last couple of tracks though with electro closer "Abortive" in particular sounding like a bit of a mess.

I'm sure there's probably a bit of a nostalgia factor with how much enjoyment I've gotten out of this release this week but I'm gonna suggest that it's a slightly better record than 1996's highly regarded sixth full-length "Filth Pig" or the previously mentioned "Twitch", even if it doesn't reach the upper echelons of Ministry's potential like the incredible trio of "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste", "In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up (Live)" & "ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ [Psalm 69]" did during their 1989-1992 heyday. Any Ministry fan worth their salt should definitely be well versed in "The Land of Rape & Honey" though because Al hasn't produced anything of this quality for well over three decades now.

For fans of Skinny Puppy, Front 242 & KMFDM.

Ben picked this debut album up on CD back at around the time of release & seemed to like it quite a bit from memory. I traditionally used to struggle with it though so I haven't returned to it since but I thought I'd give it another chance to impress me this week. Parnassus was a one-man solo project from a Swedish gentleman going by the name of Fredrik Söderlund who you may also know as one half of martial industrial act Puissance. "In doloriam gloria" sees him presenting us with a clear musical direction that's built around some fairly unintimidating & positive sounding keyboards that have been consciously brought right to the front of the mix with the lightning-fast, tremolo-picked guitars & continuous bombardment of high-velocity (not to mention quite repetitive) drum-machine blast-beats being left at the back & sounding pretty thin for the most part. The atmosphere is undeniably centred around fantasy with that Lord of the Rings style feel being pretty easy to buy into. Personally, I find most of this to be far too high on lightweight melodies for my taste so I only really find myself enjoying a couple of the eight tracks on offer, namely the half-decent "Void of All Desires" & the hypnotic instrumental interlude "Cum trist issimo dolore". The rest of the tracklisting is more or less none of my business but I'd be overstating things to call it low quality. It's just designed for a fairly niche audience that I'm not associated with so, on this occasion, I'm gonna have to leave Ben to galivant around his bedroom in his Parnassus undies all on his lonesome (not that I'd ever consider joining him in that undertaking anyway because... let's face it... I don't have a plastic Viking sword & helmet worthy of the exercise). After my initial experiences with this debut, I steered well clear of Söderlund's 1997 sophomore album "Let the Stars Fall & the Kingdom Come" so I have no idea how it compares with "In doloriam gloria".

For fans of Dies Irae, Eldrig & Tartaros.

Sorhin's album Apokalypsens ängel is a record that fares a lot better in comparison to other traditional black metal albums of the 1990s. It still suffers heavily from the production issues the plague most of the black metal scene even today, but Sorhin at least do something interesting with the sound. The heavier thrash grooves that appear throughout the record make for a unique sound and a cool change of pace from the straightforward black metal riffing. The songwriting can be hit-or-miss but more often than not the songs do have some solid through lines making them memorable. The downside is that this is a black metal album and the production of those instrumentals is quite lackluster. Above all of the typical concerns, the stereo mixing is super weird. Like you'll hear on tracks like "Ett sista monument ståtligt" a stereo split in the guitars and they sound so fuzzy and uncomfortable. Perhaps that's part of the point, but the feedback is brutal and it never sounded this bad when the guitars are closer to the center of the mix.

This record did mark for a nice change of pace for me and brought to light a lesser known name in the old school black metal sound. But even by my very low standards of that era of music, I cannot rate this any higher while bands like Dissection, Emperor, and Summoning are making albums of greater quality.

Best Songs: Där allt svunnet är, där ingenting är allt, Ett sista monument ståtligt, Misantropi & död, När döden sträcker ut sina vingar