Urfaust

I dislike the word "evil" when describing metal. It's overused and really doesn't say anything. "Evil" has been used for music as esoteric as Ride for Revenge, as self-aware as early Mayhem, as sexual as Abigail, and as capital-c Catholic as Black Sabbath's self-titled song.

So when I say that SVEST's Urfaust is one of the most evil black metal albums out there, I mean that fully.

Urfaust sounds like a whirlwind; the sonic equivalent to John Martin's painting Satan Arousing the Fallen Angels for Milton's Paradise Lost. The album is extremely lo-fi - to the extent that those unused to this kind of production have dismissed it as underwhelming noise in comparison to the fairly mid-fi split with Deathspell Omega. But there's a point here: SVEST is the closest to a "psychedelic" influence in black metal not in the sense of drug-induced, but in total sensory subjugation, with guitar leads and melodies very clearly laid out under the mix. The extraordinarily harsh production is not for masochism or pious inaccessibility, but for a sonic depiction of this level of fire.

Speaking of DsO - while that band gets most of the attention in French and "orthodox" black metal for their allegorical lyrics on philosophy and theistic Satanism, SVEST also has remarkable lyrics that address the relationship between man and the pursuit of both knowledge and life, eventually coming to the conclusion (throughout this LP and the EP) that the dogma of the Christian God shackles man from the very existence he was created to experience. While one can debate the theological details, at the very least SVEST ranks up there with some of the more well-constructed lyrics that deal with Satanism as opposed to the "Christ bad / Satan good!" schlock that felt up the glut of norsecore in the late 90s and early 00s. (DsO included - by this point, they were only up to Inquisitors of Satan, which is very much more-of-the-usual in Satan-themed black metal).

If you're both willing and able to appreciate the mix as a benefit to the music, you'll hear some incredibly proficient rhythm guitar leads, especially in the "chorus" of the first track "Putréfiance Rédemptrice" and the oscillating progression on "Nuit de Walpurgis". The whirlwind metaphor comes to mind again, as both the production and the speed of the guitars feel like they're pushing back and forth and channeling through rapid-fire guitars rather than aimless madness. It's a very controlled sense of production in which SVEST wasn't choosing this form of fidelity for kvlt status or because they didn't know better - but because that level of madness truly benefits the message of the music in a way something clean would neuter.

I love this album. At first I didn't know what to think about it given the mix, but after several years it is now one of my most-listened albums in my music library, 18-minute tracks be damned.

Originally posted to RateYourMusic. Edited for Metal Archives.

It's just amazing how the French keep on cranking out top-quality black metal bands and the wonderfully named Satanas Vobiscum et Spiritum Tuo has to be one of the rawest and grimmest of such bands. "Urfaust" has an incredibly epic feel and the black metal guitar fuzz that pours out of the speakers is so strong and forceful that if you get too close to your CD player you'll be sent flying against the wall by the sheer power of the music. The SVEST guys shred their guitars with nuclear-powered muscles and the drummer pounds his skins so fast and so hard, it's like hearing sonic booms of a plane breaching the sound barrier. These men are waaay beyond chaos and power!

The first track "Putrefiance Redemptrice" comes in at 21 minutes but your brain will feel as though it's been through torture about three times as long! A militaristic charging intro leads you into a series of chaotic blastbeat explosions, each and every one of them a brain-frying mindfuck that builds up tension and aggression continuously until about the eighth minute when the Mother of all Psychedelic Mind-Destroying Pyrotechnic Explosions bursts upon you in all its atom-smashing glory and the devious musicians unleash slashing guitar wobble tremoloes that scythe and laser their way into your frazzled brain cells and nerve synapses and cut and reduce them into quivering plasma pieces. This ongoing 3-minute orgy of lightning guitar violence and booming percussion is surely one of the most magnificent moments in the history of demented music torture. SVEST continue the psychological assault with more blastbeat bursts and gibbering sandpaper vocals for yet another 10 minutes though after just half the song is done we surely have little grey matter left in our heads to suffer the rest of the onslaught.

The rest of the album is no less of a total mind-crushing experience though it's very much a footnote to "Putrefiance ...": the deranged psychedelic feel continues in the sparkling piercing tones, reminiscent of early Mayhem guitarist Euronymous's work, in the second track "Nuit de Walpurgis". This piece has definite guitar riffs that repeat throughout so it's more coherent if no less single-minded and, as with the previous song, builds up to a climax in the fourth minute with brain-numbing echoing booms of tom-toms and hellishly screaming guitars. The repetitive riffs become nauseous but no matter how much the brain cells are frying and screaming under the sonic torture, you keep on listening because the sheer intensity and ferocity are just so overwhelming and have such a tremendous momentum, you just have to follow all the way to the end!

We're into the last track "Epitaphe" and - those guys just don't know when to stop! - "Epitaphe" has a stop-start rhythmic approach but it's extremely violent with gravelly roaring vocals and more jaw-dropping stickwork. The drummer must be onto his third or fourth or fifth set of skins by now, he really bashes them into the ground. His pals continue on their merry whirling-dervish shredding way through several sets of guitars which they grind down into sawdust or cat litter, they play so fast as though they eat heavy iron-fortified croissants all day long. A constant baleful guitar-produced drone is very apparent in this track (it appears in the other two tracks as well but seems more noticeable here) which adds to the atmosphere of turbulent hell.

If you're a sucker for punishement, the coda to "Urfaust" is the same as the intro so Little Masochistic You can have your CD player on automatic replay and the entire album forms a loop that keeps on mowing down any grey matter you still have left in your head and turn it all into protoplasmic jelly.

For sheer savagery and intense raw power this album has few peers. There is a very full-bodied sound and momentum with layers of guitar licks everywhere especially during the climax of "Putrefiance ..." and understandably the music drowns out the deep and raspy singing which does not vary much. With everything so over-the-top the vocalist could afford a few high-pitched ear-splitting screeches here and there but that might mean fighting against the music resulting in chaos of an unwanted and messy kind. No - this grim and blasphemous sonic attack, despite its appearance of extreme turbulence and explosions going off all the time, has a certain single-minded precision of its own, cutting down with laser ray-gun psychedelic guitar blasts and thunderous drumming all those who get in the way. If SVEST do not record another full-length studio album, I won't be worrying because this is already the band's finest moment and the guys will find it hard to top this effort.

France has been spewing out a lot of raw grim black metal bands in recent years and S.V.E.S.T. is no exception. Engulfing their blasphemous music with an extremely heavy load of static makes this ones of the rawest recordings I have heard. Surprisingly it is even rawer than the demos. The static sounds fairly artificial but unusually this doesn’t detract from the overall effect. Static often raises alarm bells for me as most of the bands that use a lot are crappy amateur bands who should never have even released their fischer price recorded shit, even if they are only limited to about 50 copies or only handed out to friends.

The band that springs mostly to mind is Mayhem back when they didn’t suck with releases such as Out from the Dark and Live in Leipzig. This is especially the case with Epitaphe which uses a riff that is very similar to the backbone riff of Necrolust. This is one of the only occasions where S.V.E.S.T. sound more in the vein of the first wave of black metal.

The lead guitarist is very talented and uses a shit load of breakneck speed tremolo picking resulting in the chaotic nature. He often plays much in the style of Euronymous. The drums plod along at mid pace and there is very little emphasis on them as with many black metal bands. The bass is heavily distorted and mostly results in more static. The vocalist uses mid ranged raspy screams with very little variation but who cares the vocals rule.

The album moves in and out between melancholy and chaos and the overall effect is one that is very grim and relatively epic. Unusual to most of black metal S.V.E.S.T. often build up the intensity until breaking point and then release it and you are wondering where the climax has gone, being similar to what many of the bands in the doom genre do. Around 10minutes into Putrefiance Redemptrice the band do reach climax and the guitarist drops some jaw dropping tremolo picking.

So overall it is nice to hear a band playing more in the vein of early Scandinavian black metal as opposed to the overproduced shit and the stupid teenagers who should never have picked up an instrument in their life that plague the scene today.