De vette cuecken

This is an album that teeters on a razor-sharp edge of being too weird for its own sake, and it would probably fall over entirely if the music wasn't just as good as it ends up being. For all its forays into latent silliness, Lugubrum actually makes some unbelievably menacing and dark music on 'De Vette Cuecken', but more importantly, it uses its more unusual elements as an asset to the atmosphere it generates rather than an obstacle to overcome. Having not heard other work by Lugubrum, I'm not sure if this was a fluke or if the band is honestly that good at writing such tightrope-walking music, but either way, 'De Vette Cuecken' is a very good album which sets at least one sort of template for how distinctly (and even artificially) 'weird' music should be executed.

The base framework of Lugubrum's music on this album is a primarily midpaced and sludgy variety of black metal beholden to no particular geographical 'scene' in particular. This doesn't greatly resemble anything else I've heard in the black metal scene save a very slight resemblance to some French artists, and this is probably because, while this is black metal, it doesn't sound a tremendous amount like black metal at all. Some comparisons could be drawn to Carpathian Forest purely by virtue of the prominent saxophone (more on that later), but that's a rather limited view of this band. Lugubrum plays black metal by way of Goatsblood, very devoid of rock and roll or groove and almost proggy in its resistance of linearity. Song structures tend to slowly wander before arriving back in a wide circle, but it was looking around at so many things you had no idea you were just turning left the whole time.

This is raw without being 'raw black metal'; the riffs are primitive and deliberately awkward sounding, the rhythms are oftentimes more convoluted than they entirely need to be, and as a whole this sounds like a very unformed and primitive version of what the band 'should' sound like. Of course, the trick is that given the subtle complexity of this music, it takes musicians this professional to actually pull this sort of thing off. There's a lot going on in 'De Vette Cuecken' just under the surface of messy guitar tone and bleak song structures which seems shaped by very steady hands, very experienced in the art of crafting strange music. This is pretty clearly evidenced in how, despite the deliberate awkwardness of this music, it all latches together cleanly; it's logically awkward, in a way, and so I suppose it's not really as weird as it appears to be.

But it's the most extreme and unusual elements that make this release: namely the usage of saxophone. Popping up in a number of tracks but most prominently in the title number, it's actually a hugely important part of the release. The melodies it plays are almost wholly unrelated to what the guitars are shuffling around at any given moment, and are generally more jazzy in nature than anything, but when fused with a very deliberately composed set of riffs, it results in a sound that's more evil and bizarre than just about anything else commonly found in black metal. This, in turn, is conducive to producing a mysterious and sleazy atmosphere like some perversion of early 20th century noir themes; it's unique, grotesque, and a great example of how people in black metal can still come up with original ideas.

The convoluted yet elegant usage of these elements is a good microcosm of the album as a whole: something that sounds ridiculous and weird for no reason at first, but upon further listens reveals something precisely laid out and essential to the overall feeling of the music. This is an ambitious and very successful release; I generally don't like albums that are so openly infatuated with themselves, but I can't deny the brilliance of execution present here. With that said, I have to recommend this to any fan of progressive or simply bizarre black metal; this almost assuredly sounds nothing like anything you've heard before, and for that reason alone is a worthwhile purchase.