Fire and Steel

Released in 1987 and limited to 1000 vinyls of it’s original and thus far, only known pressing, the only full length by Flames Of Hell fits right into the loose but firmly enshrined tradition what many now know as the ‘pre-second-wave’ of black metal.

The material here is certainly by no means foundational in the way that the Norwegians were. Though in the ruggedness of production and there is certainly a primitive aura that would befit a less treble, more bass-driven ‘Live In Leipzig’ or Darkthrone’s ‘Goatlord’.

The ‘live in the studio’ approach is of course a product of its time, and as is with the likes of ‘Morbid Visions’, ‘Black Metal’ or ‘Anno Domini’ would not have achieved the effect so exalted in underground 80′s metal had the rough, DIY approach not been conveyed onto wax.

For the record, the band supposedly recorded this album in the studio facility of a local YMCA, only to be permanently barred from entering there after completing the sessions.

The vocal performance here is quite bizarre. A pseudo-operatic shriek with a heavy accent, it hints at the bizarre accentuation that Dead would later put to use with Mayhem, but with one foot in the anthemic wailing of traditional heavy metal.

Compositions vary in scope and length. Whilst the aggression and tonality throughout maintains a consistent stream, the dynamics can be compared to the German black/death/thrash band Poison, particularly their ‘Into The Abyss’ demo, but with a more sludgy, punk-like atavism replacing the speed metal techniques.

Musically, Flames Of Hell have the primitive, ‘unlearned’ approach of Hellhammer, though with an attitude that evokes the engaging, catchy, rock-steady rhythmic approach of Venom and Motorhead. With this is a execution that is chaotic and frenetic, much like Tormentor’s ’7th Day Of Doom’ demo. The guitar work is sometimes similar, though less proficient and without the neoclassicist leanings of said Magyars.

Another close comparison could be with the American band NME, and their ‘Unholy Death’ album, but perhaps more sophisticated and with a more progressive sense of song structure.

‘Fire And Steel’ is an important release, little known, yet heavily sought after by aficionados of the underground. It deserves your attention.

http://stenchofishtar.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/obscurities-flames-of-hell-fire-and-steel/

Iceland. YMCA. Venom worship. Words that don't even go together but in some strange way they tell that strange tale of one of extreme metal's most obscure band. How obscure? You know that yellow goat Bathory LP you own? That's like trying to compare Korn to Necrovore in terms of extreme/obscurity/underground/metal/etc.etc.etc. Damn near impossible to put into words what Flames of Hell is in terms of trying to find their material, both on LP and CD.

It's extremely easy to sum FoH up; Venom and Discharge mixed together by 3 teens. It's an album made in 1987 that sums up how one is able to make good music in such an isolated country. So in terms of originality, yes it's a winner, but in musical terms...nah. Again it's Venom and Discharge. No different than what Exterminator from Brazil did with their "Total Extermination" LP. The only difference between the two is that you can hear the instruments fine but the vocals...well imagine a more comical version of Damien Rath from Canada's Exorcist and you're close. Vocals are very buried underneath the music. The one song that stands out is "Evil" as far as vocal performance goes.

7 songs of this would make most people think they are crazy for listening to something that is based on boogieman-type legends and stories, and that's where it ends. Once the music begins, the 'stories' seem a lot more interesting. "Fire & Steel" is like a movie that is a documentary but also is a comedy at the same time; most of the time I want to laugh, and I do, but a lot of the times I find this very listenable. This album is for the true masochist listener/fan.

The appeal of this record is more than just being obscure, impossible to find (actually, I just got a CD of this from Century Media, and it sounds like it was taken from the vinyl), etc. It's actually enjoyable, partly due to it's Venom-inspired amateurish execution and to a few memorable tracks (Evil, Cut You Down). True, the guitar shredding is often just chromatic tumbling (From the Grave) and the distortion is yucky (and not morbid). Some of the riffs (Heroes in Black) sound like a boring version of Blue Cheer, and the lyrics are pretty standard (e.g., "I'll make you suffer").

Still, the shrieks on Evil really do conjure black metal feeling (as noted by reviewer Zodijackyl below), as does the intro and gradual acceleration into Cut You Down and most of the tortured-cat vocals on the title track. While the sloppiness is pretty extreme overall (it really is hard to believe this is not a poorly-played and -recorded demo), and the good and pedestrian are often mixed within the same song, there are some very good moments. Let's hope no one tries to get them back together for a show. Not everything that dies should be resurrected.

Flames of Hell play a very harsh style of black/thrash metal, reminiscent of early Venom and Hellhammer, captured in the hellish cavern of a YMCA basement. While they are credited as being the first metal band from Iceland, the firsts end there. There is nothing stylistically exceptional about the band - their sound is very rough in both performance and production, reminiscent of pre-'Deathcrush' Mayhem in that it sounds like unimpressive musicians imitating Venom and Hellhammer, complete with awful production.

The production, in proper form, has a fitting dark and distant sound, sounding halfway between the aforementioned YMCA basement and the pits of hell. The extreme rarity for which this album is known makes it very difficult to hear the album in its proper form - most digital copies and the bootleg CDs made from them are excessively distorted due to poor re-production. The production greatly emphasizes the musical performances, and the hellish "feel" of the album is one of the high points.

The vocals fit the music well, ranging from Venom-esque snarls, often slower and dragged out, to high shrieks that sound ridiculous. There is also a memorable shout of "eviiiiil!" on the song "Evil". The vocals are sometimes the highlight, but they also become monotonous and uninteresting at times, especially during longer songs. They lack refinement, for better and worse, and they are mostly naturally distorted shouts and screams with an Icelandic accent making them sound either sinister, or more often, absolutely goofy.

The guitar work is moderately varied in both role and quality. Much of the time when the vocals take the lead, the guitar plays along with the bass, with the bass being highly audible. Even in the very simple low single note patterns, the guitarist is sloppy, and while the non-clean playing does fit the music to an extent, that is not very far, and it usually takes away from the music. The leads and solos mix two things - the ideas are good, but the execution is terrible. While the solos do have a primitive shredding quality, it sounds like the guitarist misses a lot of notes, his timing is not precise, and the notes come out very unevenly, as his hands don't seem to be coordinated as well as they could be. The solo in "Cut You Down" is stylistically similar to music from the "Mega Man" video game, which came out in the same year, and it provides a nice contrast to some of the sloppier playing.

The bass is audible in the mix, and the performance isn't bad, but nothing exceptional. The bass lines are simple and unobtrusive, but they don't lock into the drums or guitar as they could to better suit the music. There isn't much direction to the bass, it is there, but it doesn't do a lot other than fill in the lower end of the sound. The lack of precision in connecting with the timing of the drums and guitar spoils the potential of the bass, and rather than having the somewhat percussive playing and heavy, distorted tone be a driving force behind the songs, it sounds like a sloppy emulation of Motorhead.

The end result is largely unimpressive due to the poor execution of the album, allowing none of the high points to coincide. The hellish sound created in the amateur production is overwhelmed by the amateur musicianship which fails to unify in performance. The various strengths of the album are quite simply not put together - the songwriting is not cohesive, there is not a single standout track without major flaws in composition and arrangement. The songs are far too long for the content that is there, and the content is not well used - potentially memorable parts are not highlighted and utilized in the songs as to make them stand out, and most of the album blends together to make it fairly forgettable.

Metaphorically, the band never fires on all cylinders - Fire and Steel is equal to the sum of its parts, but the parts of it never multiply to create an impressive final product.

The head master of the YMCA in town, Brynjar, signs a manifest for some new soccer nets when there’s a knock on his office door. One of his burly hockey coaches fills the doorway. His face is worriedly puzzled and his voice urgent, “Mr. Sæþórsson?”. *(in Icelandic) “What’s the matter, Oorlof?” Brynjar asks, raising a steaming mug of caramel-nut gusto to his lips. “In the basement. I think someone's skinning a live whale with a lawnmower."

Possibly responsible for uprooting a recording studio from its YMCA residence (what, no leases in Iceland?), brothers in isolation Steinþór and Sigurður Nicolaison and drummer Johann Richardsson, the three guys filling out the membership of the cordially-named Flames of Hell, may have been (one of) the first band(s) to make frothy waves in Iceland’s quaint and unobtrusive musical patterns since eccentric hard rockers Icecross rambled off their s/t lp back in ’73.

Bulldozed by bomb shelter production values, long lost Fire and Steel is a fossil that has lain buried in the minds of only a few metal archaeologists, a treasure that would age to become a pretty nice lottery ticket among collectors, but of that tiny cache even less of them can convincingly descry this album as a ‘must have’ for music’s sake. Much like any third world demo of the time, this disc - an enemy to all groomed sound - oozes underground slime. It’s as inhospitable as it is unnatural to the normal ear, yet it stands in line with that time’s unrecognized troupe who were clashing swords in four sonic kingdoms: metal’s traditional scope, backyard doom, the pubescent death realm, and scantily-clad thrash, much like the bands it fawns over.

Fire and Steel effortlessly evokes the emaciated spirit of trainee-level Venom, which then raises the pitted pistons from some old Hellhammer engine and somehow gets them to work – very earthen, monotheistic in sonic culture, and littered with muddy debris. Perhaps its most outspoken...um...rapture is the pitiless vox of guitarist Steinþór Nicolaison, exploring a hateful place where Trouble’s Eric Wagner is trying to sing while his toenails are being yanked out, then by the end of “Heroes in Black” where he almost collapses into unconsciousness, a grimier Glen May of Tyrant gets taped to the chair for a quasi-duet of painful, draconian distortion. Crone-like and green like vomit, Nicolaison’s phonic bog is the album’s most compelling feature whether he’s filling droning doom passages with cries of havoc (“Flames of Hell”, most of “Heroes in Black”) or slashing his tongue across more abrupt, velocity-burned hellspawn (roiling “From the Grave”, the title cut). The rest of it is messier than a toddler’s gooey nose.

Pace-wise, the three-piece rarely fly off the handle. Their din often lumbers with doom vengeance while choking on the aural sludge of the mix, swathing the ordeal with even more unholy presence. Velocity, notable in dual-speed “Evil”, is regulated to the quickest standard HellVenom, and like their progenitors often roils with lots of bass guitar, below zero progression, and the instincts worthy of base humanity. Solos, save maybe the generic tornado in “Cut You Down”, are badly elementary and disjointed, making Mantas and T. Warrior seem like Steve Vai.

But guess what. Somehow the sands of time manage to stand still even while they're blowing across this album’s seven song wasteland. It’s an unexpected and bewildering discovery to say the least, ‘cos of all the albums out there, this is the one that's timeless? With its mishmash of production worthlessness (forever underground), begrimed and blackened topical leanings (all the rage yesterday and today), still far-fetched geographic vantage point (a musical morass then and now), penchant for the retro-vibe (for the oldsters who miss it and the youngsters who missed it), and triumph in invoking one of the more putrid-sounding rat’s nests the genre (as a whole) has ever claimed, then-young Flames of Hell may have unwittingly powered their sole recording with a timeless lifeforce that doesn’t exist in 99% of pre-’88 releases, and it’s not something you can plan. Seriously, this twenty year old duster could’ve been recorded last week by a South American teenaged one-piece.

But even in the scope of the almighty underground, Fire and Steel is musically an affair of novelty value, kinda like N.M.E., only it’s more of a battle to sit through. For the collector, gaze upon it lovingly, spin it once, then stick it (carefully) in the closet or on a wall away from a window.

If this were an old cassette demo it wouldn’t be half as sought after nor such an opener of the wallet, such is the power of vinyl (or the weakness of tape). And that brings us to one final burning question: lawnmowers in Iceland - do they exist?

From all the obscure releases that exist, this must be some of the most weird stuff ever.

At first, this band comes from Iceland and recorded this LP in 1987 in a YMCA youth hostel (which closed the recording room in the cellar after this blasphemous session). Then the cover is one of the most beautiful covers ever, drawn by a brother of two of the bandmembers. And last but not least, the music is a mixture of HELLHAMMER (slow speed and guitarsound), VENOM (some riffs and atmosphere of Welcome To Hell), MOTÖRHEAD (coolness, attitude and overall-sound) with an insane voice. Imagine a mixture of old Martin Walkyier in the early SABBAT times and Count Grishnackh of BURZUM.
Sounds strange ? Yes indeed, but it also sounds totally obscure and totally unique. Especially the first 3 tracks on side A) receive 100%. Damn, they even have left a lot of playing mistakes in the recording, also inside the guitar solos. Side B) is a bit weaker, therefore the 90% rating. the riffs are not so memorable like n side A).

Totally over the top underground BlackThrash sound also with some heavy doom orgies. And this insane voice just fits perfectly. In my opinion they rule when they speed things up a bit, like "Evil" or "Cut You Down".

I don't know how many copies were made at that time (some hundreds maybe, but not more), but this LP seems impossible to find. It took me 9 years to find my copy. But it was worth the waiting. Good luck hunting that jewel.