Black Winds

Somehow I'm angry right now, I feel worthless, drained and completely exhausted by myself. The good old depressive phase is back and the inner critic is tearing me apart. This cycle has been repeating itself since I was 13, but over the years I learned to accept things and even let go of some of those destructive thoughts that were keeping me trapped. But the rest keep coming back and won't let me live in peace. With these feelings of anger and worthlessness, the need for primitive, brutal and perverse black metal sometimes comes back, mostly in the form of Roger Rasmussen aka Nattefrost and his Carpathian crew.

But instead of the good ol' Carpathian Forest albums, I dove into their first demo when they were called Enthrone. And I regretted it a bit because... this is a fart. Not a powerful smelly fart that will wither your flowers and make your friends puke, something to be proud of in the end. No, it's a gentle breeze with a slightly foul smell and in fact there's nothing more to be said than that. It all goes through in just 15 minutes, the drums are inaudible, the singing could be from an angry bulldog (you could easily confuse the vocals with a background noise that was caused by the poor recording technology), the songs seem to be based on just one riff that is played sometimes faster, sometimes slower. That's it, waste of time.

The only reason to hear the "Black Winds" demo are the ambient and acoustic songs. These couple of tracks are really awesome because they have a great and dark atmosphere about them. I wonder why the hell the rest of this demo turned out so crappy. There was talent, there was a sense of atmosphere, there was so much more, but the potential was wasted.

In the end, this is a good example of how you can simply mess your talent. Okay, it's only the first demo, but my personal taste forbids me to enjoy this work again and again, although I can't deny that this demo has the 90's black metal charm. On the other hand, "Black Winds" is also an example that not everything that is Trve Kvlt Black Metal has to be good. Basically I tried to find out more about Nattefrost's career, as I am a Carpathian Forest fan. So far I've only dealt superficially with the musical outpouring of Nattefrost but the first stop is and remains a hurting dry fart disguised as a storm. So I'm not open-minded enough to enjoy this, maybe you can. I am very curious about where the journey will lead next. Thank you, my friend!

"Black Winds" is an apparently forgotten 1991 black metal demo released by Enthrone, the Norwegian band which would later be renamed Carpathian Forest. Here, Lord Nosferatu (Nattefrost), and Lord Karnstein (J. Nordavind) display their full powers in less than a 15 minute time span, yet still accomplish a pretty fleshy release regardless, it consisting of 9 tracks in total.

The fact that this demo never had any relevance whatsoever in the scene amazes me to no end, since I consider it to be the essence of what black metal was actually meant to represent, back when Euronymous started “riffing for Satan” with Mayhem on "Deathcrush", in an attempt to distance himself from the trendy death metal bands in other countries at the time. As it seems, this was a pretty serious deal back in the day. Everyone feared the young Norwegian satanists, and that was precisely their aim. They wanted to express their nihilistic, hateful worldview artistically through some sort of anti-music, releasing the most rotten, evil black metal they could make; panic and shock value were what they were after.

On "Black Winds", the music sounds cold, yet abrasive, angry, yet eerily calm, and evil, yet still welcoming to the ears of those who dare withstand being trapped in the mad environment of dark forests and moonlit cemeteries they created through this brief, heavily atmospheric, ritualistic output.

Both the production and the quality on this demo are bad, which is good. The different instruments (some tracks feature some daunting keyboard work, showing how advanced and progressive the material was at the time, while still rancid to the core) are still somewhat distinguishable, if enough attention is paid. The riffs are truly grim, repetitive, and constantly hammering. The brutal, growling vocals, akin to voices from an underground tomb, sound disgustingly morbid, and are absolutely unintelligible, yet obviously referencing Satanism and darkness, the two main themes throughout the short project.

This demo had everything that was great and authentic from the early Norwegian black metal scene packed in less than 15 minutes, which is pretty surprising, considering how it didn’t gain any notoriety, ever. Honestly, I think Carpathian Forest would be one of the best bands in the genre, had they stuck to this raw, occult style of music, perhaps slightly improving their production if signed in an alternate future. I guess that’s something we’ll never know.

Finally, the sections from the 1979 Nosferatu film version are a pretty nice addition, and not out of place at all. "Black Winds" is undoubtedly one of my favorite black metal releases of all time. I’m going to give this demo a score of 90 out of 100, merely out of pure discontent due to the fact that we will never hear anything new from Enthrone ever again, and I believe much better was to come.