Review by ZeroSymbolic7188 for Mütiilation - Vampires of Black Imperial Blood (1995)

I love anything having to do with vampires. I also love SDBM, and this seams to be the prototype for that! This is absolutely sublime!  I'm even going to give that silly ass cover a pass here. 

You only thought early black metal had raw production values. This very well may not have had any production values. Where as a lesser band would just buy a cheap casette recorder, put it down in the middle of the room and press record, these guys went the extra mile by taking that recording, playing it through a telephone, and then recording that. I'm not even being satirical here, that is what the production sounds like, and it works. It works extremely well. The drums were made with just a bass drum and a pair of hitstix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Stix. Seriously, I had some as kid, they sound exaclty like the drums here. The guitar tone is nothing special but it sounds a little bit diferent again because of the production values, it's just unique enough to stand out. I'm spending a lot of words on the production because it is the engine that makes this whole album go. If this was polished, even a little bit the whole thing would fall apart. 

There are a couple of other secret weapons here. Despite claiming to have made a "fuck you" record, I actually think they cared quite a bit. The lyrics occasionally do venture into satanic territory, which I insist is a crutch in the sub-genre, but it's not the identity of the album. What this album is really about is gothic atmosphere, and feeling like a vampire-like something that looks human, but is so horribly twisted on the inside that it really couldn't be farther from human. To get that across in lyric form is not easy to do, but it has been done expertly here. The guitar rifs as lo-fi, distorted, and harsh as they are, are also very catchy and memorable-again not the product of a musican who didn't care. This was carefully constructed thoughtful stuff-but at a time where a black metal musician didn't dare say as much.