Doomsday Metal

At a concert in Bergen. Photo by Brendan Austin

For this months parental advisory event we’re putting our money on

Lords of Chaos

the movie. Feral House, who published the gruesome tales of the bloody birth of True Norwegian Black Metal have optioned the filmmaking rights to ZU33. We are looking forward to seeing the results, but apparently not everyone feel the same. We’ve been hearing talk about letters with threats of a lawsuit that have been sent to Feral House, as a result of the planned film, but no official action or suit have been brought before a court. To us, it all sounds like a big oedipal reality drama, but we can’t tell you any more about it right now. We’ll get back to you if anything happens.

Apart from that, the soundtrack is sounding grim and promising, at least by description, with a mix of licensed BM track, mainly from the period of 91-93, and an original score, “We are talking to several Norwegian composers, including musicians in the black metal scene, about working on the score with us,” says director Hans Fjellestad. We’ve been hearing rumours about who some of them might be, and it got our shriveled hearts pounding with evil joy, but nothing is decided yet, so we’ll have to get back to you on that as well. It will be a narrative film and actors are being cast in the US, UK and Scandinavia, and Fjellestad says he’s hoping to “populate the supporting cast with actual players in the Norwegian metal scene.” Casting should be done by November, and the shoot is planned to begin in February, preferably in Norway according to Fjellestad, but the location is also determined by budget and “political factors.” No release date is set, but you can start roaming the cinemas for it sometime in late 2006.

In January 2004 Valfar, founding father of Windir, died of hypothermia. Windir was put to sleep as a result, but the band was convinced by Valfar’s family to perform one last concert, and the result is now being released on the DVD

Sognametal

. The concert in Valfar’s honour is performed by Windir, with Valfar’s extremely berserk-looking brother on some vocals, and there are interviews, behind the scenes and a photo gallery as well.

Deathspell Omega have been getting all the devil worshippers tangled up in black lately, and right now they have some new gut churning music out on three different CDs, the

Crushing the Holy Trinity

compilation, the

Mass Grave Aesthetics

split, and lastly on their own EP

Kénôse

. The first two “is subsequently a part of the global conceptual work that started with

Si Monumentum Requires

,

Circumspice

, but they are not to be considered as chronological descendants of this chapter, rather as parallel or preceding statements that may enlighten certain aspects of this, or of future works,” according to the band. And the EP isn’t a second part of their trilogy, but more like an appendix. And the title is a word that can’t be traced to any language, and if you, like us, are starting to fiddle with your sweater and look out the window by now, maybe this EP isn’t for you anyway. Everything about this band is sort of mind blowing, the art and logo, the pure depth of their concept, the production of the EP, but still, creeping at the back of our minds when we listen to

Kénôse

is, “If we can’t thrash, it’s not our revolution.” But we bet they’re partying like it’s 1349 over the Black Metal fraction of MENSA. Meanwhile us short attention span people will keep feasting on the (we just realized we can’t go a full moon without mentioning him) Arckanum eleven year anniversary record, and bite our knuckles waiting for the Kate Bush comeback CD. The worldwide release of the later is set to October 26, 13 years after her last studio album, and almost to the day matching the European release date of Satyricon drummer Frost’s side project 1349’s new release, which has been titled

Hellfire

.

PS. We just came back from the Hole in the Sky festival, and it might have been the single strangest journey of our lives. One highlight was getting to listen to the new Taake demo. This unholy beast of a band is shaping the future of True Norwegian Black Metal into something truly glorious with their hateful blasts of the purest, most vile metal music in this dark galaxy right now. We could go on and on, but we need to go through all our photos and get some sleep. We’ll tell you all about it next month.

KAOS ULVEN