If I were asked to make a top list of Minimalist music (yes The Wire you're welcome to ask any time mates), this album would wind up in it most certainly.
1. DARKTHRONE - TRANSILVANIAN HUNGER (yes this is in capitals because it is highly highly relevant to this silly little tract of self-indulgent drivel)
Yes, here I share with trembling hands and shimmering head mop perhaps a very important minimalist work in my opinion despite being what to many would be just a total neanderthal metal racket that must be shut off quickly please. And the reason I share this, is because this here chapter of Misanthropic Musicology, once more written from the confines of my sweaty southside apartment (when will this inferno ever. fucking. end?), is all about a "composer" of sorts, a conceptualist for sure, Gylve "Fenris" Nagell. Fenris/Fenris, named for the wolf that eats the sun in Ragnarok - an event it feels like we'll all metaphorically witness soon enough the way it's going - the end of days of Norse lore. Blow the dust off your eyes dear friends with Darkthrone, his main project, a duo for many years with iconic Black Metal minor chord tremelo-er Nocturno Culto (his real name's Ted, if my real name was Ted I'd also call myself Nocturno Culto). Their 1994 album, the above-mentioned and hilariously named Transilvanian Hunger, the black bible of minimalist grimness in metal, blasted tremelo chords over thundering monotone bass and drums, vocals as though old Ted was gargling broken glass while he "sang", an earnest, urgent and extreme expression of total isolation, each song only one riff, one chord, one stomping relentless beat. The shredded 8 track decayed aesthetic renders the power of this work well into treble, no chugging chords here thank fuckness, but dark, crumbling stucco walls on the edifice of civilization in sound. This aesthetic is part of a conceptual masterpiece which is the entire catalogue of Darkthrone, every inch of it well-considered and drawing from a tradition of underground metal, beginning in the 80s with Black Metal's first-wave, but embracing, particularly on the last few albums, the obscure tape and self-pressed lost world of basement metal that inhabits the 80's shadows like a backyard creeper with long bouffant hair and a weirdly large collection of studded leather clothing and at least one codpiece. But don't listen to me, here's a lesson from Fenriz himself:
OK so he goes way way back to Sabbath and onwards, that's how deep the concept goes for this genius. But did he invent this stuff? No. The great leader of Norwegian Black Metal Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth injected the nascent second wave of Black Metal with an ideological and conceptual fervour no doubt inflamed by his own interest in big ideas and concepts, including being a card-carrying Communist. But I digress, he's dead, and Fenriz is not, and over the last couple of decades, this iconoclast of ripping forest-bound racket has shaped that vision into an international network of underground metal with no chains, no bounds, total freedom. Once again, through seemingly limiting oneself, one can liberate oneself chaps!
Yes. Even the monochrome artwork for Transilvanian Hunger and the other two classic early Darkthrone albums ('A Blaze in the Northern Sky' from 1991 and 'Under a Funeral Moon' from 1992/3 hahaha such great names) is minimalist, degraded xerox photocopies probably printed out at the shitty Oslo post office where Fenriz apparently works and faxed by grinding the printouts between two stones, stuffing it in a bottle, and throwing it in the north sea, where it miraculously wound up on English shores and into the hands of Peaceville record's Hammy in 1994. But what is this sound? Well as per the above school session with our current subject, it is clear that the dirtiest underbelly of metal is to blame, and the degraded tape sound of old passed around metal demos in the 80s surely informs its aesthetic as much as the monotony and brilliance of Bathory and the early pre-nazified sonics of their contemporary Burzum, whose then imprisoned Varg "survivalist loony" Vikernes unfortunately though dramatically penned half the lyrics from his little cell for this blood thirsty rusty classic. The first four Bathory albums probably belong on my minimalist list as well. But before I throw that racket at you and ruin your day even more, I think an important aspect is the influence, though NOT not not musically in any overt fashion, is Krautrock. Euronymous loved Krautrock, even getting Conrad Schnitzler to do the intro to the also highly minimalistic and "primitive" Black Metal gutpunch 'Deathcrush'.
And on a tangent this doth take me from which we may never emerge. A tradition seemingly upheld throughout Black Metal, as inherited from Black Sabbath, seems to continue infernally eternally, a burning fire of Gehenna in small bursts of synth or drum machine, in atmospherics, and in monotonous drums, as though the voice of Jaki Liebetzeit (may he rest in piece) whispered in snow covered grim forests "you must play monotonous".
With bands unfortunately throwing too much of the Kraut ambience into the Black Metal rather than peppering their records with ambient intermissions to break up the head pounding clatter. Strange celestial synth parps inspired by a mix of Klaus Schulze and the dark organ and hardanger fiddle recordings of Knut Buen.
....this one isn't the greatest example but even many of the tape covers for old Buen releases look like they could be Black Metal, depicting wolves beneath the aurora borealis and dark forest surrounds...hell here's an example...
Got to the point eventually, this dark weird poetry synth piece not unlike other things done by Buen involving organ, hardanger and poetry but I won't bore you with that now. And yes Buen even did an album with Black Metal master Isahn of Emperor infame oddly called 'Hardingrock' which is actually pretty damn good. But I won't bore you with that shit, no, rather I'll bore you with a whole train of minimalist ambiance inspired by the work of this arch grimness conceptual master and the predecessors that inspired him because a whole post only containing links to harsh Black Metal is hard for anyone to take and this void noise is something that is surprisingly wonderful in the after hours as I sit still sweltering at 10:39PM in Brisbane while the makers of so much of this work are frozen in the harsh winter vastland.
And I can go on with endless examples til the night ends and I get back on the filthy Beeno for three stops to my current place of work which will remain as Unutterable as the last one. BUT I must state before leaving this topic behind like I leave a sizeable dint in my Monday night Marlborough Sauv Blanc that Fenriz indeed began an entire project dedicated to Schulze style Kraut synth meanderings in the stars with his excellent and underrated Neptune Towers project so here's a slice of that.
And back to Jaki Liebetzeit monotony and Bathory's unwitting channeling of it.
Drumming doesn't get much more monotonous than that. Hell the whole song is bare bones primitivism at its finest that there Bathory number. Drums clatter in certain pounding warlike tones to accompany a single riff belted into a demonic trance, but punk has something to do with it too, and as strange as it sounds so does classical music. When Bathory's aptly barbarously named Quorthon wasn't bashing out primitive minimalist metal racket in his Swedish garage in the mid 80s onwards, he was practicing his counterpoint and spending a lot of time at the local opera house I shit you not. These are wonderfully strange minds at play, driven towards the esoteric darkness and reveling in it like some absinthe-mad Romantic reborn. We return once more to the dark cellar of Transilvanian Hunger and another example of extreme minimalist tendencies in the Black Metal on an album of extreme minimalism, a song called 'I En Hall Med Flesk Og Mjod' (In the Hall with Meat and Mead), the first 60s seconds is just a single tremelo picked noted with monotonous Bathory drumming and then occasionally drops into an abyss seemingly populated by doc martins wearing neanderthals stomping to a beat taught to them by beelzebub himself after a night out on the lagers at a Sham 69 concert. Totally primordial and really quite mean let's face it.
But then, while you scream like a Munch and hold your ears in fear dear reader I take you to another facet of the compositional worldscape of this here arctic weirdo and his other snowblind mates. They're all a little too fond of Tolkien for comfort, references abound and our core protagonist here had another project called Isengard for the dark wizard of mordor or whatever the hell he is, but Isengard the musical project is brilliant, two albums of folky weirdness and pounding Celtic Frost minimalist knuckledrag of the finest. Like Norwegian psychedelic folk band Folque pounding sticks against a stack of unread copies of Celtic Frost founder Tom Warrior's woeful tell-all road book 'Are You Morbid' (sorry Neil I still haven't even got half way no matter what I drink). Yes it's that good. You don't know what I'm talking about do you. Hell, just like Buen, Folque have some serious proto Black Metal album covers.
I rest my case. And myself. Good night.
Next time....I have no idea...but worry ye not, I shall be back for mine misanthropy knows no bounds nor doth mine musicological impulses. Until then.
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