Well wishes are in order, finally the three-digit numbers have been reached with the release of Demo 100 - Black Sheep Family. Many cheers, and may you reach the big 1,000 in our lifetime!

Thought you said Luc Lemay for a second.

I Don't know why this guy bothers it's all crap in my opinion.

I maintain my opinion that Zarach 'Baal' Tharagh is, for the most part, average-to-slightly-good raw BM, and that the only reason that he receives so much flak is because his large amount of demos brings him attention from people who would usually not take an interest in such black metal or, for that matter, any black metal which does not sound like Emperor or Enslaved.

I like raw and nasty black metal and don't expect it to be Emperor or Enslaved and prefer not to have bands sound like those 2 cause they always fail to be as great as those 2.

With that being said... I don't like his material from what I've heard it's pretty boring. It sounds more like someone just getting drunk one afternoon... setting up the ol recorder and going at it. Maybe there is one or two good songs but I wouldn't spend my time going through all that material to find out. I gave 6 songs a chance at random and 2 were ambient things which I hate anyway.

I Doubt in his entire 100 demo discography there isn't an albums worth of decent tracks and if there is I doubt there is many people willing to sift through that much shit to find them.

He even has his own youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/URGL1963/videos

His industriousness is admirable, where his musicianship is absurdly poor (what small sliver I've heard of his massive catalog has been quite indescribable, at any rate).

Dude has no life. Somebody get him a job. I mean, seriously.

Wouldn't know where to start if i did want to listen to his band. I wonder if anyone has the full collection?

Guy's doing what he obviously loves to do. Wish I was smart enough to do that.

Ha ha I'll drink to that. Bedroom is the new garage! lol

This is interesting. It would be cool if someone could compile a "best of" ZBT as a primer for those who are interested but daunted.

Woohooo!

I'm with Sunlight. It's great to see a guy so passionate and awesome. I mean, everyone here gushes over Senmuth and I doubt many people even bothered to listen to him. I think the same goes for Z but the other spectrum, everyone hates but no one listens.

He does some cool stuff like this that is cool to watch for a few minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYImF1Z1HM

...and this, which is exactly how all of imagined him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZYQeDw5agk

Too much shitty material to care to find a couple of decent tracks, when you can find plenty of bands releasing excellent albums everyday.

Wait... droneriot likes Zarach 'Baal' Tharagh, yet hates Xasthur? That makes very little sense to me.

all i could say in his defense has been said above jajaja...he does what he loves, he has some (just a few) decent shit and its totally respectable in my opinion. Maybe the amount of demos and the way he releases that stuff may look like a joke ,but its pretty decent raw bm.

Zarach Baal Tharagh! Zarach Baal Tharagh!

Who says you can't have quantity and quality together?

I've spent a fair amount of time listening to his stuff on youtube. Because, you see, I have always had a soft spot for ultra-raw, noisy, primitive death/thrash stuff, and there are a few tracks he's done which are, well, excellent examples of this. But even still, with that said- listening to Zarach is like dropping a diamond ring into a septic tank. You have to wade tharagh a lot of shit to find that one jewel. It seems like the guy just sits down records the first thing that comes to his mind, with no editing, preparation, or production. I guess you'd call it the "St. Anger" approach to songwriting. Once in a while, the result is a truely great brutal, noisy example of evil blackened thrashcore with some memorable great riffs. Most of the time, it just sounds like a bunch of random guitar noise laid down and recorded on a portable cassette recorder and a $10 practice amp, all done in one take, and it's just too random and crappy to listen to. I honestly think that if he approached music the way most bands do, he could probably cull maybe three or four albums worth of great raw black/death metal out of the 100 he's recorded. But that's not how he works, so who am I to suggest that.

I remember droneriot saying that he doesn't like ZBT's music, but he finds Mertz's attitude towards creating music inspiring.

He's putting out crappy stuff non-stop, what's so inspiring about that? Sit down and write something GOOD in place of being a lazy fuck and recording unimpressive shit all the time. I mean, he's probably not even doing his best.

Fuck this guy and his shitty music.

Not that everything he releases is horrible or anything, but wouldn't it be better to release 10 great demos than 100 largely mediocre ones? I guess I can admire how dedicated he is to his craft, though.

I can appreciate the workmanship that goes into releasing that much material in 12 years. But having a filter on it would help I think. Hell I constantly write and release tons of shit under different projects... but I do my best to make sure the quality is there for each item released.

Oh, I don't know. He doesn't force anybody to listen. How much does he charge for each demo? I have no idea. I listened to a demo or two in my bassist's car once and all I remember is a lot of wind noise. But who cares; what better thing is there to do than create music? He could indeed cull everything else and maybe release a couple of albums of solid "respectable" metal, but as someone already said, that's just not how he works.. I hail him for not deigning to hold anything back.

The funny thing is that he is also in shitloads of side bands. But seriously, why do people always come up with, "You're not forced to listen to it!" I mean, why don't we just stop reviewing shit and discussing music and all.

I think the rule is always quality over quantity.

I know this is the rule. Any retard can record 10-12 minutes of shit noise onto a tape, slap a cover on it and call it a demo. It takes real talent to create something that's musically memorable.

Could you give examples of some of his better work?

This song always reminds me of "The Return..." era Bathory- raw, evil and minimalist blackened death metal with totally sick vocals. (He frequently overdoes the vocals to the point where they just sound plain silly, but here it works well for some reason.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noSNS8dg ... B075C946FD

It's not the most complex musically dexterous piece of music but it works well for what it is.


This one has some pretty good, expressive lead work, over a somber, doomish arpeggiated riff. Again, not rocket-science metal, but that lead playing is actually pretty good, great phrasing, and works well with the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPwxVwViRZ8

Pretty raw blasting black metal here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl_s4xhV ... ure=relmfu
A bit like early sarcafago, beherit, etc.

Also, check out the songs "Chaos" and "Death Ritual" for decent examples of primitive yet effective blackened thrash (dont have time to look the links up)

I was going to write the same.

I haven't bothered to listen to any of his stuff but the genre description says a lot!
My gut feeling tells me there's a lot of noise, howling effects and badly recorded guitars that sound like a swarm of bees.

Just reminding you that it's true.



Come on, that's a totally different scenario and one I wouldn't endorse at all. Obviously, for better or worse, releasing that much spur-of-the-moment music leaves you open to as much criticism as you can take and then some. But I have a feeling Luc isn't that interested. The point is that releasing it all pleases him, and it's possible that it pleases a few others as well, since a surprising number of people collect his stuff. Maybe someone out there even has all one-hundred demos! Have to admit that even though I would not care to be a collector of such things myself, finding that person would put a grin on my face. Are people seriously concerned with the resources he uses to make and distribute his music? Shit, I can think of far less worthy and more wasteful application of resources, many perpetrated by large business ostensibly pushing product that "everyone needs", like doritos or makeup!

How about some Monster Mash?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Hvwva6hHU&feature=plcp

We Canadians have our own ZBT-in-training, also:
http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Heirdrain/106412

For the record, he has an average 17% for his reviewed efforts. From those, the most constant value is 0% (5 reviews). 17 of 25 reviews are below 10%.

It's not really encouraging IMO.

Apparently while we were talking he squeezed out a 101st demo.

I haven't really listened to any of his music, but for some reason I have a copy of a Ewe demo (his daughter's project), though I don't remember ever actually listening to it.