HELVETESPINE

My introduction to black metal was gradual...read a few interviews and got intrigued in the the early '90s (take my brief but ridiculous fascination with BLACK FUNERAL, for example), and I recently saw a picture taken during my first trip to Japan of me wearing a BURZUM shirt...I guess that was weird because I never really listened to them (I think I traded it with someone for a FUCKFACE shirt based solely on the fact that the dude was a weirdo? Didn't learn about the aryan shit until later...live and learn, I suppose). I made a few random purchases, shots in the dark, and most were forgettable (though I have a KVIST disc that has lasted several purges). Then WEAKLING were just the new metal band in town and Aesop lived down the hall and played all kinds of shit and some of it was good and some of it was stupid but all of it was different than the German metalcore I was probably immersing myself in at the time. The point is: I don't know that much, but THIS sounds like all of the good stuff that made me think that this subgenre was worth delving deeper into. And sometimes when you delve deeper, you find bands like Norway's HELVETESPINE. Harsh, bleak, plodding raw black metal in the tradition of the first wave of Nordic heavyweights. Maybe someone else will tell me that these sounds are unworthy for one reason or another, but I think you will find that this 2007 release is more than capable of making your skin crawl. Guitar solo at the 4:22 mark of "Helvetespine del I" is a particularly grim moment....let yourself sink in.

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