Finally! A band on the Fredo Corleone of the Necropolis subsidiaries worth a piss! These guys are perhaps the most intense Death Metal band to ever echo from the Land of the Rising Sun. Twisting, snarling, complex rhythms and dark, unsettling harmonies combine lethally in the form of what I like to call “anti-tempos.” Those unpredictable song structures that defy the norm and keep you on the edge of your seat. But unlike the “anti-tempos” of a band like Dillinger Escape Plan, for example, which come off as a non-musical blur, these bizarre tunes actually have character. Of course, repeated listens are a must. Hail the beasts of the East!

I hate to say anything less than 100% positive about Death’s main man, Evil Chuck, considering his fight with brain cancer and all - but as far as I’m concerned, this live album could be better. Sure, Death knows to end a live set with “Pull the Plug,” and we’re treated to good renditions of “Suicide Machine,” “Together As One” and the classic “Zombie Ritual,” but I would have liked some more older stuff on here. I guess that’s just showing my age, or maybe it’s that this band has gotten less heavy and intense with every release. Still, this is an excellent recording, and Chuck could certainly use the money. Live in L.A. is also available on VHS and DVD, so provided I can locate one (Nuclear Blast DVDs are impossible to find!), I’m going to check and see what, if any, extras the digital video format has to offer.

As with the above reviewed DVD [DMPO’s on Braodway -Editor], I’ve had a tape of this for a long, long time. This digital version offers somewhat improved sound and video quality as well as short features on the band members and the band itself. And those are interesting, but probably unnecessary to anyone who would buy this. As the title indicates, these live clips are from early on in this seminal Punk band’s career (from 1979 - ‘81), and include such classics as “California Uber Alles,” “Kill the Poor,” “The Man With the Dogs” (which is one of my all time faves), “Holiday in Cambodia,” their cover of “Viva Los Vegas,” a news report on Jello from when he was running for mayor of San Francisco, and more cool stuff. Obviously, this is a necessity!

This latest album by Darkthrone is… Well, it’s a Darkthrone album. It sounds like a Darkthrone album and it has that Darkthrone feel, but at the same time it doesn’t go anywhere that previous Darkthrone albums haven’t gone before. The speed is almost uniformly mid-paced, and if you’ve heard one song off of this album, the rest sort of sound similar. There are no acoustic bits, no clean vocals, no keyboards, no female vocals, or even very many tempo changes. There is an occasional use of flange on the guitar but essentially, if you have Goatlord, Total Death or even Under a Funeral Moon, this doesn’t sound all that much different that those albums. I get the feeling that Darkthrone is in a rut, much in the same way that I feel Incantation is in a rut. They’ve defined their sound and now they really can’t go anywhere else. You can mix and match songs off of this album with songs off of the other albums in their back-catalog and if you look at structure, nothing has changed in almost a decade. Let’s face it folks, Motorhead and AC/DC can get away with releasing the same album over and over, year after year because people want to see them live and they need an excuse to keep touring. Darkthrone doesn’t tour much - if at all - and face it, I already own five or six albums of this already. That’s not much of an incentive to run out and buy this album and I can’t honestly recommend this to anyone who already owns a couple Darkthrone albums.

In these times when Black Metal is clearly dying of suffocation from a global plethora of bands all competing to sound the same, and longtime pioneers of the genre unsuccessfully trying to pave new paths using everything from Electronica masturbation to Ass Rock splicing. Somehow, Norway’s Darkthrone sounds as raw as ever by changing practically nothing. They can take the most simplistic hook and make it the coolest riff of all time, a continuance of the tactics employed by their previous album, and possibly finest moment ever, Ravishing Grimness. The most significant of changes for this band the last couple of years is the clear, solid production that was abandoned after their first album. It works wonders with the primal instinct this band has at making truly evil-sounding melodies. They actually give their music a personality; a misanthropic charisma that so many of today’s Black Metal bands lack. With Darkthrone it seems to come effortlessly. If Ravishing Grimness re-ignited that miscreant flame in your soul, Plaguewielder will keep those embers burning brighter than an 18th Century Norwegian church in the pale Scandinavian winter.

At times reminding me of Testament, while others, Strapping Young Lad, Darkane is difficult to describe. And even more problematic is the fact that there is something about this album that doesn’t sit will well with me, but I can’t tell you exactly what that is. Everything is played well, the recording is good, and the energy is high. But something’s not right. The staccato vocals, maybe? The riffs? Perhaps it’s a lot of little things adding up, and dragging this down…

Many people are hailing this as the best Dark Funeral album of them all, and after giving this a spin, I can definitely say that all the hype is well deserved. This is probably one of the tightest albums on the market right now. I don’t know if this is the best album of 2001, but it sure comes close. Compared to their previous two full-length albums, this is much more varied in terms of speed, mixing slower, heavier parts with hyperspeed guitar-work. Where the previous albums failed was in the speed department. Vobiscum Satanas and The Secrets of the Black Arts were both so fucking fast and furious that you had almost zero song memorability. Rest assured, however, that these guys have not slowed down that much. There is just enough variety to make the songs stand out, but not enough slowdowns to change the band’s sound. Add to all of this the golden touch of Peter Tagtgren and you have a well produced, well executed gem of an album that adds luster to the blackened crown of our master Satan.

While other well-known Black Metal acts have either sold their proverbial souls to the almighty dollar or drifted down the path of Electronic and/or Goth commercialism, Dark Funeral has stayed the course and continues to feed the flames of Hell with blinding speed, intricate melodies, and all-out aggression. Diabolis Interium, the band’s third full-length, shows maturation in song-writing abilities while still retaining their raging, brutal intensity. Featuring hyper-fast drumming courtesy of Defleshed’s Matte Modin, Lord Ahriman’s speedy yet melodic guitar-riffs, and the demonic screams of Emperor Magus Caligula, this is Dark Funeral doing what they do best - Black fucking Metal! Recorded in Abyss Studios and produced by genius Peter Tagtgren, the production is dead-on. These guys are seated firmly on the throne of the Swedish Black Metal scene and show no signs of being usurped anytime soon.

The marketing for this German horde’s album says that it sounds a lot like Dissection. That is only half true. The first half of Tales from Eternal Dusk sounds a lot like Dissection that you can seriously tell the influence is there. The second half of this album sounds more like Rotting Christ than Dissection. There is more slower material in this particular half and the general atmosphere reminds me more of albums like Non Serviam or even the newest Rotting Christ album than The Somberlain or Storm of the Light’s Bane. In some ways, it almost sounds like a different band starts up after the fourth song, and if I had to compare, the second half is much better. Granted, the Dissection influenced stuff is really hard driving and brutal, but the slower, more atmospheric stuff just plain sounds better.