Bruyne troon

Lugubrum is indeed a mystery, one of the true pardoxes of metal. Goofy but at the same time sinister, raw but musically refined, infantile but also ambitious, there are a lot of contradictions floating around in their musical quagmire. This is the album where their more interesting tendencies started to emerge, and where they shed some of their Darkthrone worship-- the split with Fenestris that preceeded this album has an interesting sound, but did not contain a lot of the goofier and more unexpected elements that you find on Bruyne Troon (the first track, for example, takes you from the filthiest black metal to knee-slappin' country music and back again). I could do without some of the goofiness (particularly some of the samples before the songs) but in a way, it seems necessary and adds to the experience. The same goes for the general sloppiness of the music-- I usually look for more precision and technical finesse in my music, but somehow it just couldn't be any other way with Lugubrum. The riffs slither and shamble along like a drunken swamp creature, creeping under your skin. The guitar tone is the best thing about the band-- it's maybe the filthiest ever heard, and at the same time very deep and strangely dynamic. There's a strange atmosphere running through Lugubrum's music, too, that calls up a distant past where people lived out of grimy little huts and lived in fear of wolves and witches. This album doesn't reach the brilliance of the following one, De Vette Cuecken, where they achieve an avant-garde sound somewhere in the general territory of Ved Buens Ende or maybe even a latter-day Gorguts (without the emphasis on precision or technical mastery, of course), but this is is still one of the more unique black metal releases out there.