RH-13

From the people who gave us RH-11 and RH-12, both of which I've reviewed elsewhere on MA, comes ... RH-13, yet another missive of black metal psychedelia, this time a more aggressive and brutal effort than those other offerings. All tracks featured on this set have no titles and each clocks in at under four-and-a-half minutes so they have limited time to say all they have to. The effect is to render the entire tape as an over-arching work of furious and dense punky black metal episodes.

Most tracks pass by in a fury of blast-beat percussion, maddened guitar melodies and riffs, distant angry demon voices and a general blurry, steamy metal ambience. This in itself gives the recording cohesion and an identity as each track may have different musicians playing on it: certainly Track 3 sounds very different from the previous two even though the all songs are equally fast and appear to share the same singer. Track 4 escalates the speed and introduces some definite lead guitar melody, however crazed it gets.

One major departure from the standard blast-beat blizzard template is Track 5, an all-ambient foghorn piece. Later tracks still hew to the template but there are now some deviations: there may be variation in the lead guitar melodies, often in the form of additional effects added to give a horror-film soundtrack ambience to the entire track; bass guitar gets an opportunity to assert its own voice; and an extra layer of rhythm, psychedelic in inspiration, added to the already dense noise-guitar buzz textures (Tracks 6 and 7). The final piece is an all-instrumental affair that burns holes in your head through the sheer force built up by the long droning guitar tones.

For those who like their black metal fast, heavy and no-nonsense, and who are prepared to tolerate just a bit of experimentation here and there in the music, RH-13 would be an ideal introduction to a label connected to a scene combining black metal with elements from particular genres and influences (psychedelic and trance music, ambient and horror-film music soundtracks). The music gradually builds up from a basic blackened death metal thrash through ambient to fusion black metal / psychedelic, all done well in a way that unifies the songs and allows energy and passion to flow from one track to the next.

The cassette front cover is worth a mention: a fierce fire-storm engulfs and burns up everything and everyone in its way. Listeners might feel that the music treats them in much the same way, figuratively if not literally of course.