2008 has been the year for me to discover and obsess on black metal bands that don't fit neatly into the usual Burzum wannabe category. These more recent bands and often one man recording projects are much more experimental and Nahvalr's version sounds as if Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music was murdering MBV's Loveless in a cacophonous tribute to Euronymous.
In fact black metal over the past few years has become the only style of music I keep one eye on at all times just to follow what sort of wacky direction it will move towards next. It has become one of the few genres of music that seems actively willing to take dare devil risks and heavily experiment. We haven't seen rap or indie rock take that kind of leap into the creative unknown in I don't know how long. Forever?
You can stick as many name tags as you want on this S/T record: black metal, shoegaze, experimental noise, new age doom... but the point really is that Nahvalr have made a curiously brilliant one of a kind record built from the ground up by sound donations from others. These submissions were then sculpted by Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga (from the group Have a Nice Life) into a shimmering ear shattering record that will have you believing that the sounds of hell can be ghastly as well as gorgeous.
In fact if hell is as fantastic as this record sounds, you can count me in.
Note to self - send Dan and Tim some of my stuff so I can have in on whatever masterpiece they are Frankenstein stitching together now. My goal of taking dream doom to a new level of evil might just happen yet. A girl can dream....
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