Live in Venray

Holland's Bestial Summoning were one of the earliest bands to throw in their hat with the then pretty obscure black metal sound, becoming infamous because of their raw, semi-improvised music. Because of that knowledge, I totally expected this EP to sound as if it were recorded on a packet of biscuits, but to my utter surprise, this sounds really good. Well, really acceptable is perhaps better said, I don't think the words 'really' and 'good' have ever been used in relation to Bestial Summoning.

In sound, Bestial Summoning were related to old Beherit, their side project Goat Vulva, and the earliest works of Profanatica and Impaled Nazarene. It's raw and unhinged in its sound, utilizing tremelo picked washes of guitar grit, supported by either slowly pounding sections crawling forth, or else primitive uptempo hammering. On top of this come the distorted screams of a vocalist who does his alias of The Unsane every honor, because this guy sounds utterly demented. It probably goes without saying that the overall execution isn't exactly tight, but I can't imagine the band actually caring about that a whole lot.

As mentioned, on this live recording, the band sounds surprisingly coherent and pretty balanced out when it comes to their instrumentation. The vocals take the spotlight, but both drums and guitars hold up pretty well throughout. It's probably the lack of any bass that makes it sound this transparent, because there's no low end to distort the device this was recorded on. It also makes the guitar sound kinda thin, but again, I can't imagine the band losing any sleep over something like that. Perhaps the best thing about this, is the deranged atmosphere emanating from it. Not only the somewhat ramshackle performance musically, but I can also imagine that the unhinged music bewildered much of the audience back in 1992, so the silence between the tracks says a lot. On the B side, the band starts hurling abuse at the crowd, which is confirmation enough that the band probably didn't go down too well. It had me grinning like an idiot when hearing this, I'll tell you that.

This is not going to win any prizes for beauty, good execution or proper behaviour, but dammit, this stuff hits a nerve with me. I love this type of underground rumbling, and this EP has that in droves, giving off primal black metal vibes, unhinged atmosphere and a dose of smirking to go with the abuse the band gives the audience. This is certainly not meant for mass consumption in any way, but I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone into raw underground metal from the early 90's.