ILDJARN s/t 2XLP REISSUE cult Norwegian black metal, blackened punk NEW bone awl

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27

ILDJARN self-titled 2xLP

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(Season Of Mist)
*** This is a new and unplayed item, direct from the CRUCIAL BLAST shop. ***

DESCRIPTION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:
  With all of the black metal-influenced punk that has been popping up like plague sores over the past decade, a reissue campaign for the first three Ildjarn albums that laid the groundwork for this sort of slime has been long overdue; as far as I'm concerned, Ildjarn's earliest records are ground zero for the "blackened punk" sound, a filthy low-fi assault of noxious three-chord guitar riffs and monotonous thrashing tempos and snarling vocals choking on black blood. A one-man band formed by Vidar Vaaer in 1991, Ildjarn was a contemporary of other Norwegian black metal outfits like Enslaved, Mayhem, Burzum and Emperor (and had in fact been a member of Ihshan's pre-Emperor Thou Shalt Suffer), but sounded totally unlike his peers, going for a much more savage and punk-influenced sound that more often resembled some rabid, barbaric strain of hardcore than the more baroque directions that bands like Emperor were heading in. After releasing a handful of demo cassettes earlier in the decade, Ildjarn finally began to release a stream of albums midway through the 90s, the first three albums all coming out over a two year period from 1995 to 1996, the self titled debut, Forest Poetry and Strength And Anger. After that, Ildjarn would go on to explore a radically different style of music via a series of largely ambient recordings that were co-produced with new member Nidhogg; these later albums were icy, serene synthesizer driftscapes that, while pretty enjoyable for fans of dark 70's-style space music, were more like Tangerine Dream and nothing like the band's roots in crazed blasting violence. Those first three albums remain essential assaults of primitive Norwegian hatred though, and anyone who has been grooving on the filthy, violent aggression of bands like Bone Awl, Willing Feet, Malveillance and Sump in recent years needs to get their hands on these records as soon as possible. Not that that was easy until recently; these albums were all tough to find in the past, so the new Season Of Mist reissues are much appreciated. Now available on both CD and on limited-edition gatefold 2xLP (hand-numbered in an edition of five hundred copies) with new and improved album art, all three are crucial attacks of frostbitten necro-punk barbarism.
  Ildjarn's debut album has long been derided as an unlistenable mess of low-fi filth by many black metal fans, but fuck 'em - for me, this is one of the most interesting and twisted rackets that ever came out of the early Norwegian black metal scene. Aside from the new and mucho improved album artwork provided by Tern, this is essentially the same raw, violent blast of monotonous black metal primitivism as the original 1995 release on Norse League Productions; if there's been any re-mastering or "touching up" of Ildjarn's notorious self-titled debut, I'm not hearing it. Which is exactly as I had hoped, as these twenty-seven tracks of barbaric, punk-like crudity were never in need of any additional polish in the first place, their stripped down, spartan arrangements and instrumentation along with the raw-as-hell recording quality all an integral part of what makes the early Ildjarn recordings so vicious and hypnotic for me. While the track titles look like your typical second wave Nordic black metal musings (ie., "Skogsslottet (Castle Of The Woods)", "Skogssvinet (Beast Of The Woods)", "Vinden Biter (Frostbitten By The Wind)", "Nordiske Mørke (Northern Darkness)", etc.), the music seems as if it was directly informed by the most abrasive sectors of early 80s American hardcore, the songs rarely clocking in at longer than two to three minutes, some under a minute even, Each one carved out of a minimalist three-chord riff that is repeated over and over ad infinitum, the songs rarely changing direction, driven by simple primitive thrash beats in the background, or playing over an even more wrecked percussive backbeat that sounds more like someone banging on a trash can than an actual drum kit. When songs like "Skogssvinet" come vomiting out of your speakers, it's as if you're hearing some snarling frostbitten take on Negative Approach's rawest recordings, the vocals admittedly much more harsh and animalistic, a raspy blackened shriek emanating from somewhere off in the background. But these songs, those riffs, it all sounds a heluva lot like classic scum-thug hardcore punk, and I absolutely love it. The songs just suddenly drop out abruptly without warning, and there's a couple of slower songs like the clanking, murderous war-dirge of "Krigere" and the hideous blown-out bass sludge of "Himmelhvelv", and there's some deliberately weird out-of-tune, atonal guitar riffery going on with "Atter En Gang" and "Skogrommet", The circular drone-guitar and clustered discordant noise of "Blikkets Storhet" is almost more like a Skullflower-like guitar-noise piece than anything resembling black metal. Then there's the strange post-punk tinged sound of songs like "Som En Ensom Borg" and "Nordiske Mørke", where Ildjarn's moaning vocals and the droning chiming guitars come together to resemble something akin to the blackened death rock of Von side-project Sixx. It all adds up to seventy five minutes of crude low-fi Nordic stomp; obviously, this is the stuff hat would go on to have quite an influence on the more punk-damaged black metal bands like Bone Awl, Malveillance, Sump (as well as almost the entire Legion Blotan roster).   © CRUCIAL BLAST
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