How to describe BD except as groundbreaking, emotional, heavy music? That’s tough. They in some ways combine Goth & Black Metal, but far more so than most current Black Metal bands who claim this. Maybe if you took recent My Dying Bride and had some tormented vocals mixed in with the clean. But that’s not all. Then you’d need a little Dead Can Dance, and a little (very little) Industrial (or at least the cold, dead, unfeeling horror of it). All this and more would be needed to approximate the despondent, suicidal songs on this masterwork.

This is certainly different than what these guys were doing when known as Demented Ted. It’s still heavy, but now more mechanical, almost Industrial at times. This new sound doesn’t always work quite right, but a lot of the time this is great. Like anything else, they’ll just need a little time to fully iron out all the bugs.

What do you get if you combine atmospheric Doom and Black Metal? According to Bethlehem you get Dark Metal, and that’s exactly what these two songs are. The sound is excellent, but if you have their Dark Metal CD, these are its two bonus tracks.

Less intense and less interesting than before. They manage to come up with a new riff, bringing their total to, I guess, 5 now. Too bad they stole it from Metallica’s “One.” I am not kidding. This is Metal-by-the-numbers. The vocals are maybe even worse, and we’re treated to a plethora of such long forgotten horrors as “hey,” “ooooohhh,” “go!” and even “let’s go!” The weird part is that it’s extremely memorable, but I think that’s because these riffs were old when they used them on their first LP.

It sure has been awhile since I last heard from Belt, but they were kind enough to use a quote from the now ancient Metal Curse #6 on their press release. Anyway, this is insane, electronically altered hate. I wouldn’t be going way too far to call this Noise, but I think the band may prefer something along the lines of Death Industrial. It sounds like the soundtrack to Hell, and sometimes doesn’t bother to give a fuck about anything like a song, as long as the listener is engulfed in Belt’s pain and suffering.

Nice acoustic bits. I wasn’t expecting that from a Black Metal band. They keep the surprises up, although not constantly. Right as I begin to think, “well now this sounds like Emperor,” they throw in a little twist. The production is poor, but not unlistenable. They may even want this sound. But maybe not, as I think this was a demo repressed on CD. Hey, they even do a pretty blasphemous cover of “Deathcrush.”

It’s clear that these guys are really talented, and sometimes that’s enough for them. The arrangements are very interesting, and there’s quite a bit going on in these songs. For the most part, they even have a certain level of energy. The music can be kinda heavy, but usually isn’t much more so than say Soundgarden, and the vocals stay in that range too. However, these guys would kick the collective ass of any “Alternative Rock” band, or whatever they’re called this week. And although Beats the Hell Out of Me (which is an apt name for this diverse band) isn’t always hitting the bulls eye, it’s usually pretty close.

The Thrash of Battalion is sometimes very compelling. They manage to come up with interesting riffs, and always play with a lot of feeling. The vocals are what sets them apart, though. Usually sung in a powerful clean style, they drop into a sort of scream in a couple of places, which erodes what the normal version of the vocals accomplish.

Well, this is way better than the Quorthon “solo” album. Not anything compared to the classic first few releases, but at least he’s trying. Too bad he lost all the Black Metal aspects. Perhaps next time he’ll get that back and not cover Kiss, although Quorthon does sound right at home squealing out all the “oh yeah”s and “baby”s in the ancient “Deuce.”

I think this is one guy and a drum machine. Pretty basic fast Black Metal, but also extremely aggressive, and Gorgoroth’s vocals are torturous, plus there are a few interesting riffs on here.

Imagine a slightly more talented Pantera, without vocal distortion. But, I have to give this band a bit more credit than that. The vocalist has his own style of aggression, the guitar riffs are hard-hitting and the drummer seems to know what he’s doing. And unlike some of the other stuff I’ve heard lately, none of the songs sound the same. They all have been crafted differently, and it shows.

A whole album’s worth of melodic Metal with cleanly sung vocals. Although not as Doomy, I am reminded a lot of Solitude Aeturnus, with perhaps a little Dio or something like that thrown in. If all the songs were as ass-kicking as the first one, “As the Winds Blow,” this would be an easy 10.

Mike and company return with more of their patented Thrash attack. But it’s a little different this time. The production is strangely not quite as good as their last demo [Avatar ‘93 -Editor], although it makes the songs sound heavier, and the vocals are a bit more gruff. Musically, this actually even better than before, which is really saying something. When you write, be sure to also ask Mike about his excellent zine, Dreaded.

As I sit here waiting for the intro (sounds of rain) to end, I am hoping that I won’t have to endure any more tales of Alicia, and what a bitch she is, when all of a sudden the first song starts, and now I’m wondering if this is the same Astaroth who recorded the fuckin’ awesome Lost State of Dreams demo. It is. Well, I guess they don’t want to sound like they’re from Sweden anymore, because the heavy guitar sound is gone. Make no mistake, the production is ultra clear, and honestly, the sound is great, but I miss their previously evil tone. Also, do I hear a woman laughing in the background of - if the intro has it’s own title - “Eyes of Black” (or maybe it’s still “Prelude to Chaos”)? Hmm, well, anyway, the vocals are a bit more understandable now as well, and sometimes they sound great, like on “Drowning in Blood,” where they are multi-tracked, in what is the best use of 2 vocal tracks I’ve heard for a while. This demo has it’s moments, to be damn sure, and these guys are experimenting with their sound, which is good, but although they are excellent musicians, and clearly know how to write memorable stuff, somehow not all the experiments are successful.

Three of these four tracks are new. I would imagine that they are leftovers from the Tales from the Thousand Lakes album, as they are not quite up to that level.

These guys stick with their Thrash/Punk sound, and add a little faster drumming here and there. Some of the 14 songs are really amazing, and the others are all at least good. The playing and recording are both great, though, so that helps.

These guys sure like to put out tapes with one track from their next demo. Anyway, this song (you guessed it, it’s just the one track) sees Avernus trading some heaviness for added atmosphere, and more use of keyboards (in addition to Rick’s guitar synth rig). Also, Kim does a little more singing than before, which is fine with me, but Rick has completely abandoned his Death Metal style vocals in favor of a low-register warble, so the contrast between their voices is drastically lessened. I worshiped his growls (as you’ll notice by the other reviews), and so the new vocal direction is taking some getting used to. Also, this song is much shorter than the epic-length cuts I have come to expect from this band, clocking in at about 4:30, whereas “Anastasia” was about 12 minutes. I don’t know what all the changes mean, except that the band is always growing, which is what good bands do, but the line between too much change too fast, and not enough is razor sharp, indeed. For me, at least, this wasn’t too fast.

Their new label, Earache, has done little to change this band, but were their songs always so short? The longest one is only 3:35. That bit of trivia aside, this is an all out attack of screeched-vocal (shades of Kreator’s Mille?) evil Death. It’s even memorable, and that really pushes it over the hump.

This hard Industrial / Electronic outfit seems to be pretty on top of things most of the time. They venture out into the Thrash realm, and then swing back into a world near Ambient, by way of a Hard Beat dance floor, all within a single track. I’ll admit that not everything they do really works for me, but they are clearly good at this. I am pretty sure that they even sample Slayer. It’s too bad that the “spoken word” hidden tracks almost totally ruin this otherwise good CD.

For the most part, this is fairly simplistic and straight-forward Black Metal. There are some attempts to make things a bit more atmospheric, and some interesting ideas, but generally they fall flat. This isn’t bad, but it’s certainly no big deal.