Thorr's Hammer: Dommedagsnatt EP (1998)

It's one thing to name your death/doom band Thorr's Hammer and sing/croak lyrics in Norwegian, but quite another when a 17-year-old Norwegian exchange student is doing it after bumping into a pair of depressed stoners in Seattle, Washington.

So goes the tale of Dommedagsnatt (Norwegian for "Doomsday Night"), which paired Runhild Gammelsaeter (the aforementioned Norwegian waif, a.k.a. Ozma) with future Sunn O))) and Southern Lord label masterminds Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley.

Recorded in 1995 and released in '98 as SUNN01, the three-track Dommedagsnatt EP was the product of a brief, six-week "career" during which Thorr's Hammer (augmented by bassist James Hale and drummer Jamie Sykes) performed all of two shows.

But they had the presence of mind to visit a nearby studio long enough to record three examples of their crawling, crushing, mythologically-inspired death/doom, topped by Runhild's haunting wails and unbelievable, inhuman roars.

Seriously, you may have to watch some vintage live footage for yourself to fully accept this incongruous reality as fact.

First cut "Norge" is basically an ode to Norway, extolling its frozen nights and midnight sun, virgin forests and deep mines, its sailors and adventurers, while "Troll" pits legendary beasts against the Viking gods (including Thor, of course) in an epic battle over Midgard.

And the title track recounts the Norse apocalypse itself -- Ragnarok -- and draws yet again from ancient texts to describe that final battle between gods and giants, as mankind helplessly awaits to learn who will be their masters after this immutable "doomsday night".

Southern Lord's first CD pressings added a live bonus cut entitled "Mellom Galgene," which translates to English as "Between the Gallows," and places Anderson and O'Malley's colossal, corrosive guitar tones somewhere between Electric Wizard and their most successful subsequent endeavor, drone lords Sunn O))).

These bands' names alone should stoke raging fires in the souls of extreme metal enthusiasts (and strike fear in poseurs' 'nads), and indicate the overwhelming power and enduring cult surrounding Thorr's Hammer and their small but seminal musical canon.

It ain't for everyone, but ... Happy Halloween!

p.s. -- Today, when she isn't being called into very sporadic tour duty with Thorr's Hammer, Runhild works in the field of biology, in which she holds a Ph.D. in cell physiology.

p.p.s. -- Some of these words were edited from my All-Music Guide Thorr's Hammer biography and Dommedagsnatt review.

SERPENTINE PATH

"Erebus"

(Album: Erebus/Depravity 7" Vinyl, 2012)

Debut.

Parasitic Records.

~

SERPENTINE PATH consists of current and former members of

Unearthly Trance: Season of Séance, Science of Silence (2003)

It’s hard to accept that over 20 years have elapsed since I was handed a copy of Unearthly Trance’s Hadit demo at a Brooklyn North Six show they opened for Sons of Otis and Electric Wizard -- my friend who ran The Music Cartel label said, “just wait until you hear the finished record!”

Well I duly obtained a copy of the finished record, 2003’s Season of Séance, Science of Silence, albeit on CD format, before securing this limited-edition double vinyl pressing on Parasitic Records, and being reminded of the band’s precocious talents for grinding out blackened doom and sludge.

In my All-Music Guide review, I lamented that “Long Island’s Unearthly Trance arrived just in time to fill some of the void left by the sadly disbanded Warhorse,” and if you’ve never had the pleasure of sampling that colossal doom/sludge power trio from Worcester, MA, there’s no better time than today.

Well, after you finish reading this blog, of course ...

In that same Unearthly Trance review, I added that the “impossibly low-ended frequencies attained by expansive, snail-paced sludge-fests” like “Wandering Winter Winds,” and “The Aftermath Was Morbid” (held down by bassist Jay Newman and drummer Darren Verni) simply must be heard to be believed.

By contrast, more digestible ‘snacks’ like “When Anti-Humanity Flourishes” and “Black Heart/Black Lung” condensed main man Ryan (credited here as ‘Rion’) Lipynsky’s inventive riffs and mixed bag vocals (ranging from a hoarse rasp to tortured clean-singing) while upping the tempo to manageable thresholds.

But Unearthly Trance were still at their best when drawn-out, thrumming monoliths (each averaging nine-minutes) like “Raised by the Wolves” and “Mass of the Phoenix” (whose lyrics are credited to Aleister Crowley!) came perilously close to causing bowl-releasing disasters.

In other words (or rather, MY words in that ancient review), while certainly not for the faint of heart (nor the dangerously incontinent), Season of Séance, Science of Silence’s adventures in musical extremity achieved a promising start for Unearthly Trance.

(Which, by the way, still ranks among my favorite heavy metal band monikers of all time!)

From this point forward, the group would steadily tame and even finesse their corrosive sound (see this album’s closing “Pyre” for clues), without outright abandoning extremity, on the sophomore, In the Red, and, after signing with Relapse Records, follow-ups like The Trident, Electrocution, and V.

dISEMBOWELMENT: Transcendence into the Peripheral (1993)

Normally, my grammatical O.C.D. forces me to restore missing apostrophes to song titles and to refuse vanity band names that defy the natural order of upper- and lower-case letters (especially the dreaded ALL-CAPS), but I have to give metallic extremists dISEMBOWELMENT a pass.

Still deservedly revered in underground circles for their pioneering fusion of doom, death metal, and death-grind, these residents of Melbourne, Australia were active for less than five years starting in 1989, and, as far as I know, never even performed live before disbanding.

But dISEMBOWELMENT, which, in its longest-lasting line-up consisted of Renato Gallina (vocals, guitar), Jason Kells (lead guitar), Matthew Skarajew (bass), and Paul Mazziotta (drums) nevertheless excreted (sorry!) an influential and enduring body of work in that short span.

This consisted of two demos in 1990’s Mourning September and ‘91’s Deep Sensory Procession into Aural Fate, one EP, ‘92’s Dusk, that earned them a deal with Relapse Records, and one, absolutely essential full-length in today’s subject, ‘93’s Transcendence into the Peripheral.

When it was released, 30 years ago, the album’s epic compositions helped lay the foundation for what would later become known as ‘funeral doom’ with their hypnotic, glacial tempos and sudden bursts of double kick-drum speed, titanic riffs and ethereal melodies, unintelligible Cookie Monster vocals and oppressive atmospherics that lent a symphonic quality, even without the aid of synthesizers.

And, just like the album title says, the group was all about pushing musical boundaries, since ‘transcendence’ is defined as “the quality or state of extending the limits of ordinary experience,” while ‘peripheral’ “relates to the external boundary or surface of a body.”

In layman’s terms, or at least my chosen terms in another review, theirs was “a sound built to vibrate and loosen the viscera of its hapless victims with razor sharp riffs and subterranean tones.”

Sure enough, noteworthy emissions like “The Tree of Life and Death,” “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory,” and “Excoriate,” trafficked in surprisingly cerebral lyrics, well worth reading, even as the surrounding, mercilessly grim and suffocating music appeared determined to destroy the listener’s body!

“A Burial at Ornans” and “The Spirit of the Tall Hills,” while less distinctive, are both heavy beyond belief, and yet the anomalous gothic interlude, “Nightside of Eden,” features guest vocals from a pseudonymous young lady credited simply as I’da.

Finally, comes the album’s -- and maybe the band’s -- signature cut, “Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores,” which had already appeared in an earlier guise on the previous year’s Dusk EP, and here gained extra heft from the double bass of Paul’s brother Tony Mazziotta, though nothing else is known about these two collaborators.

Come to think of it, little more was ever heard from band principals Gallina, Kells, Skarajew, and Paul Mazziotta, who all but vanished from historical record, except for brief associations with lesser known bands like Inverloch, Feralian, Wurms, and an ambient folk project called Trial of the Bow. 

What is known for certain is that dISEMBOWELMENT cast a very tall shadow, beyond their premature demise, and every funeral doom band that followed owes something to Transcendence into the Peripheral, whether they know it or not.

p.s. -- Some of these words hail from my All-Music Guide biography of dISEMBOWELMENT and a Loudwire article I can no longer locate online. 

Solothus: Realm of Ash and Blood (2020)

After gamely “checking out” a few of today’s god-awful, commercially-oriented generic metal bands (Spiritbox, Siamese, etc.) on the recommendation of a “friend” who reads Revolver Magazine, I was reminded of another friend’s far more welcome suggestion that I “check out” Solothus.

The Finnish quintet’s third long-player, Realm of Ash and Blood, arrived through the exceptionally reliable 20 Buck Spin in 2020, and I was immediately gripped by its hybrid doom metal wonders/horrors, as recorded in aptly named studios like Desolate Dungeon and Sounds from Below.

Well, Helsinki, anyway, far as I can tell ...

Solothus formed there in 2007 and issued their first demo, Ritual of the Horned Skull, in 2011, followed by their official full-length debut, Summoned from the Void, in ‘13, and the sophomore No King Reigns Eternal in ‘16 so, yes, I’m a little late to this party -- I mean funeral.

But hang on just a second, because typical fare (on this LP -- I’ve yet to investigate its predecessors) such as “Father of Sickness” and “Chasm of Shattered Bones” actually rises out of the murkiest depths with a sound that’s pretty evenly balanced between funeral doom and less extreme death/doom.

In fact, it’s primarily vocalist Kari Kankaanpää’s laborious, bowel-loosening, sub-human rumbles that drag the album’s minority, ten-minute epics, “The Gallows’ Promise” and “A Rain of Ash,” down to funeral doom’s oppressively lightless and claustrophobic abyss.

Meanwhile, his bandmates, Veli-Matti Karjalainen (lead guitar) and Sami Iivonen (rhythm guitar), rarely hesitate to flash their melodic auroras across the starless sky (and really light it up on the melancholy interlude “Last Breath”), while Tami Luukkonen (bass) and Juha Karjalainen (drums) frequently pound into third gear with death/doom’s more dynamic, twin kick-drum tempos.

Then there are the album’s twin standouts, “The Watcher” and “Below Black Waters,” which find Solothus encroaching upon a downright infectious, gothic death metal clarity, that reminds me of their exceptional countrymen Swallow the Sun, or Sweden’s Mammoth Storm.

At all times, Solothus’ tasteful mastery of these dark metallic forces is never in doubt, and while there’s nothing here I’d dare call revolutionary -- or even evolutionary -- Solothus’ utter disdain for commercial concerns makes Realm of Ash and Blood a victory of both musical creativity and integrity.

Meaning that only a lack of time or short-term, middle-age memory loss will stop me from “checking out” Solothu’s first and second albums, while doing everything I can to politely avoid those abhorrent ‘Revolver Bands.’

Serpentine Path - Serpentine Path (Relapse Records, 2012)