1349 - Demonoir

Demonoir is a ferocious, blasting beast with enough venom to put most of the black metal scene to shame. Mixing volatile, confusing, almost mathematic song structures with endless battery attacks and monolithic, pensive vocal contributions, Demonoir is surely the calling call for the black metal pure bloods. Marrying brutality with subtly, dissonance with solidarity, grimm with the khold (sorry haha), 1349 are on top form as ever. There is simply no way I can ever fault a 1349 record. It just isn't possible, unless Pink Floyd is involved.

There is a puzzling array of cover sleeves for this record. None of them are particularly amazing, but I find the one I chose above to be the most profound and intriguing. The text and brilliant red seem blazing in comparison to the muddy nature of the actual art itself. Perhaps it is meant to highlight the cold clashes of 1349's lightening fast blurs and searing precision? Who truly knows...

1349 - Massive Cauldron Of Chaos

Urrrrrghhhh! 1349 returned from the misty fjords last year with the excellent Massive Cauldron Of Chaos. Personally, I would have called it Massive Cauldron Of Endless Blastbeats to more suitably match 1349's sound, but that would just be silly. Despite the expected ticking of mental drumming speeds, MCOC gets fairly melodic now and then, something which admittedly caught me off guard at first (see the tinkling passages between brutality in "Slaves" as an easy example of what I'm waffling about).

This album screeches past at lightening speed, breaking pace for song intros and then slowing somewhat for the beginning of "Postmortem" (which definitely isn't a Slayer cover). "Golem" is a strange one, at one minute forty in length (right up my alley haha), "Chained" returns to Hellfire speed/territory, mixing up extreme precision with Venom-esque riffage and swagger. Finally, "Godslayer" rounds off the swirling maelstrom with a six minute dose of epic black metal savagery. Beast. 

They might have taken a four year break between records but 1349 are as fresh and vibrant as ever. The sheer speed of this band never fails to totally floor me. 

1349 - Hellfire

Another smashing Back On Black black metal pressing (did you have to read that twice? Ha ha). This is really fancy, smooth and shiny and looking as sexy as black metal can in all its gatefold glory. I learned my lesson after purchasing Burzum's Burzum and instead got this from HMV for the fucking criminal price of £9.99 including delivery rather than being raped by Plastic Head. Why go direct, eh? 

1349 are something else. I'm not particularly massively into black metal anymore but they are one of the modern day black metal bands that continue to impress me. This record is fucking nasty! It is just so fast, so brutal, so necro! Frost is an absolute animal on the drum kit. I heard "Sculptor of Flesh" by accident back when this first came out and I was totally blown away by it. After finally seeing the band live recently I decided it was about time to get some records. Whilst some of their other albums have been a tad questionable for various different reasons, Hellfire is relentless and absolutely punishing and is a must for die hard black metallers. Listen and love, reading masses!

It is hard to pick stand out tracks so I'll just go and put the first song "I Am Abomination" as this post's video link. The drumming is absolutely insane on this record, even if it sounds like Frost is playing on cardboard boxes. Also, somehow I forgot to take pictures of the actual discs (Ha) for this post (what a twat). I almost put my girlfriend's camera back together and took some more but all you need to know is that they are black and rather boring, so I decided against it. Another Lines In Wax first; a vinyl blog post with no pictures of vinyl. Stayin' original, that's what that is.