With 666 International, we see Dødheimsgard creating, of course out of the famous black metal hole where they came from, a whole new way of playing with sounds. Already on their previous EP Satanic Art, we could hear more and more traces of the upcoming chaos, but nothing was so certain yet. Whatever happened to guitarist and prime composer Vicotnik, singer and lyricist Aldrahn and their now partners-in-crime between 1997 and 1999, there’s an obvious dive into psychedelic adventures within the music they then put into form, just as there are clear evidences of schizophrenia in the way many absurd musical details happen to create, once placed together, kind of an attractively strange meaning. The music here is as much groovy as it is disordered.
Out of all the nine songs, there is for instance “Shiva-Interfere”, an almost ten minutes sick industrial floating opera, where Aldrahn sings some unpleasant tales of mythology and outer space, with a uniquely bizarre and angular beauty in his tragic-comic vocal tones. As he’s just about to cry, being all sweetly delicate and nostalgic, he then explodes into a perverse, sadistic and out-there laughter. I would even go as far as to say that there’s a certain “alien” quality to his voice – it is simply out of this world. All of his vocals, in this song, are performed over a mysterious desert-riffing style which follows some sort of a deep, pulsing electronic drum groove. Quite special, to say the least! Well the majority of 666 International is performed on the thin borders normally placed between sanity and common sense, in such a way that at first, you always feel a sort of uncertainty, an odd unpleasantness, a real feeling of discord and paranoiac terror. You’re not really sure if what you hear is supposed to be kick-ass black metal or a horrible mind-fuck. Then again, that’s what avant-garde music is all about: to first question what has always been conceived as normal and natural, and then create a whole new universe.
Be very attentive when it comes to all the textures and the wrappings of the musical content displayed here, because that is where Dødheimsgard do shine through the most on this album. Ginge from Norwegian electronic band Subgud had his hands on the final product and its easy to hear why, as there’s a serious attention to a certain atmosphere of sounds, clearly reminiscent of techno music. I’m not saying that form wins over content; quite the contrary actually, because if it weren’t for Vicotnik’s singular guitar twists and how he builds these up and down in the most unusual way, along crushing groovy techno drums and all kinds of synthesizers and grand piano, I couldn’t be writing these words.
Every black metal possible experimentations has been given a try on 666 International, for the better or for the worst, all depending on how far you can actually take it, and it’s as much death, thrash, black and rock metal music here as it is noise and ambient related there – usually at the same time! From pure mayhem blast beat chaos to slick, techno avant-garde rock, Vicotnik and his super-hero mates cover it all up around here. Come and discover how sick and perverted excessively aggressive attitudes in music can become in the right (or wrong) hands. Only for those who can find real pleasure deep in pure psychosomatic madness and drug-infused cosmic fantasies.
-Oliver Side
VITALS:
Release: 1999
Label: Moonfog Productions
Avantgenre: Kosmische Techno Black
Duration: 66:06
Origin: Norway
Official site: http://www.myspace.com/dodheimsgard
Review online since: 30.06.2007 / 21:26:41
| TRACKLIST:
1. Shiva-Interfere |
This album changed my life