Blood & Vomit

How did this happen? When listening to this, I found myself frequently asking myself this question. This album reeks of mindless repetition, lack of originality, and blasphemous deviation from black metal.

I had high hopes going into this album, considering Nattefrost is from Carpathian Forest, and, as we all know, Carpathian forest is, quite frankly, amazing. Not to solely base this album on the works of Carpathian Forest, nor to bash this album for not living up to the high standards of Carpathian Forest, but honestly, Nattefrost has desecrated what he helped to create with this album.

Call it artistic expression, or whatever you want, but trash like this is mindlessly repetitive. The same styles are used in song after song, the same faux-industrial feel is lamely inserted into this otherwise average black metal. There are neither tempo nor key changes, making the soundscape of this album flat and uninteresting. The drumming is redundant and unoriginal, the gravely guitars just plain grating.

The lack of originality on this album is so apparent because it sounds like some kind of third-rate Aborym copy. The idea of industrial black metal is old and used up. We can see good examples of this in bands like Aborym, Helel, new 1349, and early Anorexia Nervosa. Nattefrost desperately wants to join this group, so he tries to emulate these bands but just isn't cut out for the job.

Finally and most wretchedly, is the gross deviation from black metal. Bands like Arcturus can execute this well, but when I listened to this album, I thought, "If I wanted to listen to industrial, I would have bought Ministry." This is highly processed, tightly wound, techno infused, Hot-Topic-friendly black metal, and it disgusts me.

Am I right? You are just jealous that no one invited you to join the Swedish black metal 'super band' War in the days they recorded their two 'legendary' recordings. Pieces that pushed the boundaries of what can be tolerated in the scene in terms of the lyrics and music to new levels. You had to sit at home in Norway, had to record music with Carpathian Forest, were not praised by the world like you wanted to, presumably all this and maybe even more, while they had fun. But you decided to have the last laugh on them; especially as War first changed their name to Total War for the US market and disbanded shortly after that. Then there was no one left to dispute your position as an elite black metal maniac and so you decided that the time was right. The Norwegians would regain the crown for having the most hilarious black metal bands... ever... and it would be up to you to lead the path. Am I right, Roger?

So you sat in your home and wrote this album. Simple melodies would be necessary, catchy riffs, nothing too complex and something that would go right into the listener's ear; better than Vondur and not as minimalist as the Swedish War. A certain level of quality has to be kept, though, yet the black metal basics had to be applied to and anything modern had to be avoided at any cost; be it in terms of the arrangements or the instruments. The music needed to be brutal, aggressive and without mercy and you decided that except for a cover of a Beherit song nothing slow would find its way on the album; intro and outro are a different matter of course. Satanic lyrics are another prerequisite for such a recording, but not expressed subliminal like those written by Satyr but right into the face and without a single compromise; this is not philosophical black metal, this is true, true to the core. Satanic Victory, Sluts of Hell, Mass Destruction ... buzzwords are always good, so you made extensive use of them.

But you soon realized that this would not be enough. There was something missing. People would take you serious and see this first recording in the wrong light, so you decided that you had to push it even more ... yes, something annoying might be good, something that would make young teenagers giggle and girls to finally hump you before/after a concert, so a recording of you vomiting would do the trick, you might have thought. Was one session enough or did you have to do it several times in order to get it right? I see it right in front of my eyes: you rehearsing 'your performance' and realizing that it sucks. Or did it not sound right because you threw up your entire stomach contents all at once? To record the pissing was certainly much easier, am I right, and presumably more fun, because all you had to do is drink beer and let it flow; every metalhead knows the trick and true black metal maniacs like you Roger of course, too.

And now to something completely different. Roger, what the fuck? Is this supposed to be a sample from a porn movie in the track The Art of Spiritual Purification or what? Or do you want to make us believe that this is even a recorded live scene? One performed by you? Dude, it is lame. Ask Godemiché, they know the trick and also a good deal of porngrind bands could help you with this. Don't ask Gaahl, though... might turn out to be odd.

And the outro Roger ... the outro ... at least you have got this one right; and so did Karjallan Sissit on Tanssit On Loppu Nyt on a side note. Good work, dude. It comes unexpected, as a surprise and works as a nice parody of the preceding black metal parts of the album. The final laugh is on you. Sadly, the rest of Blood & Vomit is not of similar quality. So, the final point remains vague and without a basis. Where is the coherence in your approach? Blood & Vomit is simply too nice and too friendly. The production is too powerful and everything mixed far too well. Is this supposed to be dirty or what? Where is the true black metal attitude? Bands with such a true mindset are different and come most certainly not with such a polished and kid-friendly tune. Where is the punkish spirit on this release, hm? Went it down the drain in favour of some easy earned money?

Roger, even though you think you are so true and so evil and so grim ... War from Sweden are much more grim, true and evil than you and this will never change. Face it.

War's first ep would get 75 points from me, but you Roger have to live with less: 50

Best songs: Sluts from Hell, Still Reaching for Hell

Blood and Vomit is a blasphemous assault hampered by a stripped down punk intent within a black metal framework. This has been a tried and true approach when done right but here it falls well, flat. That’s not to say there aren’t good songs on here because there are. But if you are looking for anything memorable in style of playing, you will be disappointed. This is not Carpathian Forest and Nattefrost’s guitar seemingly plays slight variations on the same power chord throughout the whole time. There is not one solo on this album or any traditional ambiance in the way of notable arpeggios or alternate picking that you might expect (more or less) from his regular band. This is just a brazen, blasting solo outing that sounds as if Nattefrost was playing on meth which is great to a point so long as your expectations are reserved.

I won’t delve into every song nor will I even go into the standout tracks too deeply because frankly, this album doesn’t have much depth to require it anyhow. I would consider this album if anything, a fun side project of Nattefrost to be enjoyed in between Carpathian Forest releases or whatever other band you might want to go to for the more classic details heard in black metal. What I did like about Blood and Vomit was its incessant intensity of beats. True, the drumming is not a tad more interesting than the guitars being played (on a technical level) but they do come at you with memorable aggression in the mix.

The record gets off to a very good start with Ancient Devil Worshipping. This track is a full throttle beating that my ears where glad to bleed by. This is probably one of the three best songs on Blood and Vomit. I like second tracks on an album to be towed tightly to their predecessors and Sluts of Hell accomplishes this perfectly. It stays close to tone with the opener and doesn’t let up one bit. Satanic Victory and Universal Funeral follow in accordance but properly to a lesser extant. The bass guitar on the latter two is pronounced with a little more authority. That works. After these songs is where this album starts to get a little ragged.

The Art of Spiritual and Whore (Filthy Whore) are the only other somewhat decent tracks left on this brief excursion into the perverse. They are played with unholy fury but by this time I was starting to lose interest from the lack of variation in notes being fired.

There is a cover of Beherit’s Gate of Nanna that Nattefrost improves on somewhat. Why he chose to cover this song and on this album is a little shaky and its inclusion does little to improve on the identity of the record. It probably would have been more appropriate on a Carpathian Forest release.

For me, the album ends with the Gate of Nanna cover. The closing track though is Still Reaching for Hell. It starts with a bland ambiance on the first half and builds up to jokey horn section that proceeds for the remaining three minutes. It’s nothing more than a boring attempt by Nattefrost to get cute with spastic contrast and the already predictable punk leanings on Blood and Vomit. I usually dismiss it with the stop button after track ten concludes.

While this sophomore solo effort by Nattefrost does have some fine moments, it is not a record that I can wholly recommend to the black metal faithful at large. It’s just too uneven to justify its brevity and while I admired the album’s cutthroat savagery, I felt it to be a little too cartoonish for the base genre. This will however, probably be enjoyed by those who are willing to go along with it just for its overall reckless impiety and speed. There is no short supply of that on Blood and Vomit. Nattefrost has that in buckets but not in content.

Nattefrost has always been a controversial musician. He always shocked many people while he was in Carpathian Forest and now he’s back with his first soloing album. Let’s tell the truth: he shocked a lot of people that were not into metal because to me he’s mostly “image” than other things…he is like a funny poser for black metal but he doesn’t get on my nerves like the other, real posers.

With this project he decided to free all the primordial influences that maybe he couldn’t express with his main band; so prepared to be annihilated by high dosage of raw, primordial, Hellhammerish black/punk/thrash metal. Tell me what you want but I like this album. It has some of the narrowest minded sounds I’ve ever heard with that omnipresent black humour and will to exaggerate, lyrically and musically.

The first great track to me is the hyper simple but catchy “Sluts Of Hell”. The tempo is really old school in this genre, ala Hellhammer as the other “Universal Funeral”. They are made to headbang. “The Art Of Spiritual Purification” is made of a 1 minute intro with Nattefrost who’s puking, followed by fast tempo and black metal riffage. But the one I like the most is the terrific, fast and truly primordial “Whore (Filthy Whore)” full of crazy, porn lyrics.

It’s incredible how these songs result catchy in their primordial feeling and in their simple structures. The screams by Nattefrost are really sick and perverted. There is also a track where you can hear him taking a piss…crazy motherfucker…He plays all the instruments on this album but to me, the drums are artificial because they are too triggered, especially on the hi-hat. Anyway, the production is fucking good and pounding, conserving that twisted touch the instruments deserve to play this kind of music.

If you like truly narrow minded music, full of sex and Satanic lyrics, get this album now. It’s voluntary exaggerated and for those who don’t understand the burden of black humour of an album like this I can only say: “Try it and make up your mind”. For the other ones, enjoy some old school stuff.

“Blood and Vomit” is the first soloist album of Nattefrost, singer and guitarist of the Black Metal band Carpathian Forest. In fact, some rhythm influences from that band are clearly audible in this album. However, Nattefrost’s approach to the music is substantially different: here the music is a sort of raw Black Metal with occasional punk and thrash influences.
The guitar riffing is simple, aggressive and fast paced, with small or no solos, and expresses hatred and extremity. The drum work is efficient: very brutal, minimalistic and raw. The singing is a step further than other Nattefrost’s bands, with tons of rage and some good vocal effects. It suits very well with the music, according with rude and offensive lyrics.
Nattefrost has been called the “Johnny Rotten” of Black Metal. Let’s say that “Rotten” is the right word: in two songs he takes a piss and he barfs (bah…).
The cover of Beherit’s song “The Gate of Nanna” is very well made, and it contains the strange and creepy atmosphere of the original one.
This, of course, it is a very controversial album. Raw Black Metal fans without doubt will like a lot this piece of painful art. But everyone else will notice that the same power-chords are used all over the album and that the drum is sometimes boring, for example. Also, the cacophonous sound of certain songs (for example: “Ancient Devil Worshipping”, “The Art of Spiritual Purification”) teaches you that this IS NOT an album for every metal/black metal fan.
However, if your ears are not fussy and you like Black Metal, buy this album without doubt.

BEST SONGS:
#2. Sluts of Hell;
#6. Sanctum 666;
#7. Whore (Filthy Whore);
#10. The Gate of Nanna [Beherit cover].

Nattefrost is my favorite black metal bastard. The guy just has the cool of a black metal Bon Scott with the attitude of Johnny Rotten to book. There is no doubt that his filthy brand of black metal with Carpathian Forest produced some classic records and his newer work has been even more flippant. The rock and roll element to his black metal is actually toned down a bit on this, but the attitude has been turned up a notch. This is hard the best album in the world despite his claims on the back of the sleeve ("Probably the best album in the world") but the claim itself shows the attitude this album was made under.

Nattefrost is in fine form, delivering his expertly played black-thrash with such hilarious titles as "Whore (Filthy Whore)" and "Sluts of Hell" at maximum speeds with a fair amount of hook. While nothing here is as catchy as "The Angel and the Sodomizer" from the Carpathian Forest days it all works to create fun headbang that recalls a mixture of faster CF material combined with a strange punk-vibe. Nattefrost is ever the black metal clown prince, dancing in an out of anti-human sarcasm to less-than-kind references to his ladies as naturally as any heroin-addict punk ever did. Flippant, brazen and nasty...this material may not be his best in terms of hook...but it most certainly carries itself through with attitude.

There is no reason to give up Carpathian Forest based on this work and there is no reason that Nattefrost should continue as a solo artist. This works as the perfect "fuck you" one off and fufills the need for fun-loving-christ-beating black metal all at the same time.

It's not really a classic...but it didn't have to be...