Store

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Mütiilation - Vampires of Black Imperial Blood - album review

Mütiilation was one-man Black Metal band (featuring Meyhna'ch as the sole member), and a part of Les Legions Noires, an underground group of Black Metal musicians in France, known for releasing numerous demos, EPs and splits.Vampires of Black Imperial Blood is the band's first full-length released in 1995.



The album is the polar opposite of good musicianship, and has received acclaim as well as criticism, solely for the fact that it is an ugly, misanthropic work of sonic interference, dripping with muck and blood. Out-of-tune guitars, fuzzy riffing and almost inaudible bass, and sloppy drumming are the main characteristics of this album, yet, this is the perfect non-music album for expressing hatred towards humanity. The slower parts are nothing less evil than early New York Death Metal or Norwegian Black Metal, and the vocals are demented screams and vomits befitting the misanthropic atmosphere created by the fuzzy guitar riffs. The riffing is varied - sometimes catchy, sometimes depressive, sometimes downright grim. The sloppy drumming does almost nothing to add to the music, but because this isn't music in the first place, it doesn't matter - it just plays, blasting in fast sections, plodding in the slower ones. All songs are just sonic impersonations of hateful ramblings of a misanthrope confined to an asylum and surrounded by white walls, and in a straight jacket. The fact that Xasthur chose to cover one of Mütiilation's songs is enough to support that.

Every song in the album has a slightly depressive tinge to it, leading a lot of people to tag it as Depressive Black Metal, but this is something much primitive, and a lot more deranged than that. This is the epitome of rawness in the genre. It may not be musically good, but this is something what Black Metal has always been about, according to a lot of purists. It's solely the emotion and the hatred of the man behind it, encapsulated in the form of audible violence.

Mütiilation's Vampires of Black Imperial Blood is recommended ONLY if you like raw, badly produced, non-musical Black Metal. Otherwise, you will hate it more than you've hated anything else. Either way, this album achieves it's objective of invoking hatred in the minds of listeners.

No amazon link. Good luck finding an original Mütiilation record.

No comments: