Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan

Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan has clearly lost none of its ability to shock and provoke in the fifteen years since its release. It's pretty sobering to think that roughly as much time has passed between now and then, as the release of Antaeus' 2000 debut and the first works from Bathory back when this genre was napping in the cradle. While a lot of things have happened in black metal in the new millennium, I might argue that the artistic potential for the lo-fi 'traditional' sound were all but realized by the Third Wave. No, I don't think CYFAWS is the definitive realization of said potential, but it does take some conviction to craft art that's kept listeners on their toes for the better part of a decade and a half.

I'll set aside all pretense; this is ugly fucking music, and a lamentably rare occasion in black metal where the feelings of hatred and negativity herein are contagious. The guitars are noisy to the point of being indecipherable at times. The drums are almost unrelenting in their intensity and aggression. The intrinsically musical elements here are few and far between, and through a purposeful combination of lo-fi murk and similar chord patterns, the memorable riffs on CYFAWS could be counted on half of one hand, and even then that might be stretching it. Antaeus' only real respite from fast-paced black metal fury comes in the form of industrial dark ambient passages scattered throughout the half hour length. They've made little concession to their listeners on the debut. Outside of the interludes (which are themselves quite harsh in nature) there's very little for a newcomer to cling to at first.

It's because of this I can understand why CYFAWS has earned hatred and praise in roughly equal sharing. Because Antaeus have refused to compromise their black metal noise with melody or dynamic songwriting, the music is inaccessible, the listening experience almost certainly graspless at first. With nothing overt to capture the attention, the atmosphere isn't quite so apparent at first. Admittedly, it's taken many listens (and not all of them enjoyable) to become familiar enough with CYFAWS to fully appreciate its atmosphere. The only thing that initially kept me going were actually the ambient interludes. The industrial noise is as harsh and malevolent as any of the album's BM material, but the atmosphere and intelligence are both more readily apparent. Is this because most black metal bands' attempts at interludes tend to be filler garbage? Regardless, I remember thinking during my first listen that I'd love to have listened to an entire album of the ambient material here. Sometimes, you don't need much more than industrial noise and a crackled voice yelling "KILL" to feel something spooky.

In time, yes, the black metal starts to get more intense and enjoyable. Although I'd hesitate to try associating them with any one scene, on a purely musical basis CYFAWS sounds like an unlikely breed of Second Wave conventions and (of all things) bestial war metal. I'm sure a couple of people will scoff at the last comparison, but the completely anti-melodic riffs and dog snarling vocals here reminded me more closely of Canada's Conqueror than anything, albeit with a greater weight on treble. CYFAWS might only have one memorable riff (it's the hook in "Breeding Blasphemy", for those wondering) but the lack of distinct riffs and ideas ultimately serves to highlight the atmosphere itself. As I said earlier, this is a rare case where the negativity is contagious. Where a lot of metal fashions itself as a positive catharsis of bad feelings, CYFAWS serves to amplify, or even produce negativity in the listener. I don't think such a visceral, heartrending experience of atmosphere could be possible with a more structured sense of songwriting. Depending on how familiar and patient you are with the album, CYFAWS's greatest weakness can be its greatest strength.

There is very little of a conventionally musical nature to grasp on Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan. The music passes as a whirlwind of murky, inaccessible chaos; the only truly enjoyable thing about it is its atmosphere, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Antaeus have made no effort to ease a listener into their craft (what's more, I think they would rather repulse their fans away) but given time and patience, the feelings of hate and malevolence reveal themselves to be full-bodied and sincere. More parts Conqueror than Mayhem, it's not a dish intended for all black metal fans, but try to work through the initial stages of ennui and discomfort if you will. The rewards in atmosphere are well-worth it. It's a shame that so many seem to get hung up on the edgy title that they lose sight of the music itself.

I really like Antaeus, but I fear that my tastes are rather limited when it comes to the French legionaries, as I still find Blood Libels their greatest work, and it seems hard to explain that to fans of the band, because, for the most part, Antaeus' formula has remained the same throughout their career. MkM and his roster have always played an incredibly impressive mix of strange atmospheric industrial noises with extremely fast and thin black metal riffing, hate-filled vocals, and twisting layered melodies - and little has changed throughout the development of the band. It's a simple formula - but hey, if it ain't broke. While Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan isn't entirely groundbreaking, it is nevertheless a viciously delightful romp into rust covered straight razors, violent suicidal outbursts, and ever so pleasant hints of insanity and nihilism.

The album opens with distorted vocals and industrial noise, immediately planting images of abandoned hospitals, shattered glass, and padded cells rusted shut. After the brief intro, an explosion of violence shakes the listener awake as "Inner War" begins. The riffs are without melody, without form, just blistering fast atonal pieces shifting into a miasma of noise and fury, and most of the album follows suit. The industrial sections become more and more distorted (just try not to imagine a Silent Hill scenario when listening to them), and are used excellently throughout the album to create breaks from the uncompromising intensity. The guitars are serpentine and slithering, with the occasional squealing lead flailing over the abstract rhythm sections, and the drums spend of their time alternating between blasts and incredibly fast double bass breakdowns.

There are times when MkM and crew decided to shake things up, and this is where the album really comes into its own. Songs like "Devotee" blend the industrial grinding parts with punky traditional black metal sections that slow down only momentarily, and "Those with No Eyes" has bass breaks and hints of melodies over the blasting. The razorblade whirlwind is still present, but it's more subdued and controlled, suggesting a more hateful violence than just some thoughtless exercise in force. It's moments like that, in the midst of the hyperviolence, when there seems to be respite, that Antaeus really shine. The masochism suggested on the title becomes an incredibly vitriolic sadism - where the idea of "cut your flesh" seems more like a command than a lifestyle. These are the moments when Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan becomes truly frightening and intense.

The whole album just oozes filthy raw atmosphere and it's just so carefully packaged and tightly played, that it's really hard not to find reasons to come back to it. MkM's lyrics are introspective and interesting, with entirely new takes on Satanism and violence - focusing on these things are cathartic releases and a rejection of order rather than some divine rite. It's a refreshing take on blasphemy, and something that remains uniquely French about Antaeus.

Sure, most of the songs sound exactly like the ones preceding them, but their are some very memorable moments found from time to time ("Bleeding Blasphemy" and "Specimen 23" have really interesting riff juxtapositions, and tempo shifts and high/low growl mixes) and the industrial tinges make the album seem like a complete picture rather than a bunch of fast songs thrown together a la Destroyer. All in all, Antaeus have made an interesting and poignant look into the world of medications, nihilism, suicide and insanity. It's a quick, short trip, but the passion and intensity more than make up for the lack of complexity and innovation. It'd be a stretch to call this album "enjoyable" but it's really damn good.

If nothing else, this album has a great title - it just cuts through all the bullshit, doesn't it?

But no, we have something superlative here, something that needs to be heard: music that has been waiting in the wings for some time now (this band has been around a long time) and which has launched itself on to the world stage full of conviction. This album has a remarkable presence, and it's not caused by Antaeus's stunning originality or anything of that sort - rather the opposite, I think, because this band will never take away an award for innovation. If I could sum up what they offer in one phrase, I would say: a glorious return to the past. And so you who are familiar with this magazine and my entrenched prejudices when it comes to black metal will see right away why I adore this release.

Antaeus is easily one of the rawest, most vitriolic, and violent black metal bands on the planet (there is something of a tradition in France of this, see Vlad Tepes, et al.), and this factor, their powerful passion for aural violence, is spread throughout the eight tracks included here: both on the songs proper and in the short industrial intros and caustic asides. Listening to this is like being caught in a whirlwind of razor blades. If I could offer you any advice on experiencing this record, I would say: turn it up, the distorted production really brings out the holocaust nature of this material. Guitars screech, rip, tear, and gouge your flesh, the drums pound maniacally at hyperspeeds, full of chaotic instinct, the bass is like a heart attack victim's pulse, battering at the bass drums, and the vocals are excellent: MkM's (he of Spikekult infamy) spits out the blasphemy like a man insane, cursing the heavens in rage.

And while there aren't really any other bands that this release directly reminds me of (and no, it doesn't sound at all like Mayhem, at least not to these critical ears - well maybe the earliest Mayhem songs), I don't think anyone would ever be interested in saying that Antaeus were pushing the envelope of what black metal offers in the new millenium - least of all Antaeus. No, they know what they want to hear, they know the old spirit that they want to recapture and offer here, and that's what they go after. This is traditional, grinding, flaying, pure black metal the likes of which I have not heard in a very long time: maybe not since the first Immortal records, to tell you the truth. All I can say is that I miss this kind of music desperately, and I wholeheartedly wish there were more bands out there like this one. In any case, we have Antaeus for now, and that will have to do. This slice of bestial violence is highly recommended.

UA

Erebus Magazine
http://erebuszine.blogspot.com

Few albums have as charming a name as the seminal debut from Antaeus, Cut Your Flesh And Worship Satan. However, this is typical of what black metal is about lyrically, with many of the bands out there choosing to focus on anti-Christianity and suicide. Bands such as Mayhem focused on the former, with Shining taking on the latter, and bands such as Burzum having the best of both words, with the tortured musician responsible venting his feelings through beautiful compositions. In a similar manner to how the title is typical of black metal, much of the music on display here is very typical of much of the more accessible black metal out there.

Devotee kicks off the blasphemous rout with a minute of guitar feedback before the song kicks in proper. Blast beats are the main course of this song, with various tremolo picked riffs and a few slower ones found throughout, with some nice bass work being particularly audible towards the end of the song, when everything calms down a little, instead of the bezerk style that the song had showcased so far. This is a brutal album opener, that serves as the perfect introduction to the craziness that is to come from this album.

Across the entire album, the listener is gifted a glorious array of riffs, from the tremolo picked riffs that define black metal through to the slower, much more thrashy style. Many of the riffs on this album are as tight as can be asked, but they do become repetitive. It is only so many times that one can be forced to listen to a flurry of notes played as fast as possible before it all becomes too monotonous to bare. Bleeding Blasphemy is the best example of this, being full speed ahead for the first half of the song, which fast becomes boring. However, the middle section of it is a lot slower, with more emphasis on laying down a solid groove whilst the vocalist shrieks and growls his way through the usual bible bashing lyrics so typical of the genre. The first half of this song is one of the weakest moments on the album, before the more interesting riffs seep through towards the end of the song.

The vocalist of this band is effeminately one of their strongest aspects, having a fairly wide range for a black metal vocalist. His screams come in a number of tones, having a real power behind them, never once coming off as feeling weak nor underwhelming. He frequently switches it up to a low death growl, which serves as the perfect contrast for the styling of the music, giving the band a real asset to be proud of. This guy is undoubtedly among the best in the genre at what he does, for the simple fact that he has a wider range than many.

One thing that is, for the most part, missing from this album that is found on many black metal albums is the building of an atmosphere. Many black metal albums use their songs to create a truly haunting atmosphere and, in turn, make the album one harrowing experience for the listener alongside the brutality of the music. That contrast of beauty with utter insanity is something that made albums such as Burzum's debut and many Darkthrone albums so good. However, on here, only a couple of tracks really have any form of atmosphere to them, with the song writing formula clearly being speed based. The hyper fast blast beats may well be a huge plus to the album, but its this full throttle style of playing that inhibits them from creating said atmosphere that would give this album its much needed variation.

This album is a solid enough debut that never comes close to threatening the big guns, but instead sticks to its own, well crafted sound. The abundance of tremolo picked riffing throughout this album is its one major downside in that it fast becomes tiring, but the drumming and vocal work more than counteract this. If the band had spent a little time trying to develop a feeling of dread or sorrow throughout this album akin to bands such as Burzum, then this would have real credibility as one of the best in the genre. However, as it stands, this album is just a great black metal album, nothing more and nothing less.

This particular brand of black metal has come to its own in France recently with Antaeus and Merrimack. Antaeus being the viler hate-filled one of the two, although admittedly, both are pretty deranged. I see this relatively new breed of black metal as a milestone in black metal's unhallowed history- it pushes the cold, hate –filled grimness to a new height and infuses it with something far more violent.

My first thought upon hearing the opener was "holy Hell, this is Tsjuder meets Marduk." It has an extremely riff-oriented structure of what some call "deathened black" and the relentlessly pummeling blast of late '90s Marduk that persists through the album. This may sound like a mindless blastfest of stupid proportion, but, while at times this may be the case, it has moments that make it all worthwhile.

Bearing that in mind, one has to take the good with the bad. The moments where the drums and riffing interlock perfectly and throw the listener into a headbanging frenzy are spaced apart with long, boring sections of mindless blastbeating and arduous vocals. As long as I'm on the topic of long boring sections, I'll bring up the nauseatingly bad electronic passages. It seems this band can't go a full song without some stupid electronic sequence that's supposed to sound entropic and menacing (think early-2000s Gorgoroth). Unlike Gorgoroth, however, these passages incessantly feature some retarded vocal bit that sounds like it's stuck on replay (one of the earlier songs has one that just repeats "kill" over and over). In an attempt to break up the blastfest and add variation, they just make what could be a pretty solid album lose critical momentum and stagnate.

The vocals are something else entirely. The vocalist is a freak. His lows rival those of bands like Infester and Incantation, and his throaty black metal growls are far gnarlier than average. What he lacks in punctuation, he makes up in uber grimy vocals of all pitches.

The production here is sludgy for a black metal release. Those wafer-thin treble notes don't resonate so strongly as most second wave stuff. Instead, the guitar is made to produce a far more gravely tone that sounds great against the backdrop of double bass. This tone is perfectly suited to the brand of downtuned, fast shred that this band so abundantly uses.

All in all, this is a pretty precise, staccato piece of black metal mania that, despite its obvious shortcomings and lack of innovation, is still an enjoyable listen and a good outlet for some pent-up anger. Standout tracks have to be the first and the last two, due to the tempo variations and sludgy mid tempo riffs that interact well with the more selectively blasting drumming. This release is all about individual moments. Wading through the stagnant boredom of some parts is rewarded with some very fine, well-placed blackened firepower.

I started listening to this album with the feeling that I would hate it. The band, the album title, everything points to a particular brand of primitive black metal that I usually despise. Yet, somehow, I don’t hate this album half as much as I anticipated.

There is little to be said for the message in Antaeus’s music, it’s the usual blasphemy and satanic devotion of the black metal underground, but in this case it’s without any subtlety or taste. So no groundbreaking lyrical themes or poetic ideas then. The music is similarly unsurprising, incredibly aggressive black metal. Scathing blastbeats of varying speed make up the drums, but it’s not tight enough and at times the blasts fall behind the pace which is very irritating. The drums are effective nonetheless, searingly fast and heavy. The guitars do the usual rounds with repetitive power chords and tremolo riffs, no innovation, but not at all horrible, effectively tight and well-written. Bass is almost entirely inaudible, except on “Devotee”, where it is fast and fitting.

The vocals are an impressive highlight on “Cut Your Flesh…”. MkM shows immense hatred in every squeal and shriek. The vocals here are particularly high-pitched, and absurdly aggressive in delivery. I can’t hear the lyrics, but it is clear what’s being said, the satanic fury can be felt in every hellish utterance. The voice fronts the music well and gets the message across effectively.

The production is surprisingly good on this album, all the instruments (except the bass) are clear and distinct. The sound is thin and distorted, typical of the genre, lending a cold and clinical atmosphere to the songs. There is enough variety in the songs to keep one interested for the duration of the album. Most of the songs are decent, except for “Daemon”, which is a low-quality live recording of a particularly noisy song from Antaeus’s back-catalogue. The ambient droning and other noises which serve as intro’s and interludes on some of the songs work well to promote the dark atmosphere of seething evil.

This is by no means the greatest BM album I’ve heard, and there’s no surprising innovation or technicality present to change this. With the title of “Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan” Antaeus isn’t headed for stardom any time soon, but they are more talented than I initially expected. This is one of the better underground black metal releases I’ve heard in a while, and I rather enjoyed it.

Black metal and grindcore work like a charm. It worked at Blasphemy, and it works a lot at these French bastards. While it doesn’t add something “new” to the scene (as the band itself has admitted so), there are many improvements that Antaeus did at this release, notably the more grindcore drumming which works like a charm with the fast, raw and cold riffs.

Production is surprisingly clean, they could have got it louder when mixing (especially the vocals, drums and of course the instrument which seems to be unaudible in most extreme metal acts, the bass guitar), but that’s just a small “turn-off” (rather a small detail).

Guitars, as other reviewers noted, are somewhat “limited” in their technical capacity, but they’re done well and mix great with drums. As far as vocals go, they’re mostly high-pitched screams (and sometimes a deep growl). Drums are more like grindcore, fast paced and with double bass drumming and fast snare hit, making the music to be very dynamic, upbeat, which is great and what the musicians wanted to achieve (a fast explosion of satanic, misanthropic chaos).

Now there’s another thing I like about this album: Intros/Outros. Most metal bands which have them are just adding them to detract from the shitty overall music, but on Antaeus, they’re actually freaky and great, especially when considering that you may never know when they could blast into the violent chaos that is the music itself.

Overall, It’s clear that Antaeus were and still are disgusted by modern black metal and how it tries to be ,,innovative’’ by being so “avant-garde”, unique, original (double etc.)
A well done release, and one of the better “modern” black metal releases.

When it comes down to so-called "Raw" black metal we could be talking about a variety of things. Either really shitty, "grim" production or black metal that aims to be as brutal, uncrompromising, and nihilistic as possible. The former might be used to describe this by someone who had nothing else so say, but the latter is absolutely fucking true.

"Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan" starts off really well with some sort of creepy soundscape that really sets the mood for Antaeus' black metal onslaught. I really like intros like this because you never know when some ultra fast paced drums and brutal riff is going to come out and blow out your eardrums. Despite the quiet build up to full sound, the album does indeed accomplish this. Chaos insues.

The second song has a bit more structure than the first, but doesn't lose any of the brutality. An explosion goes off and once again fast drums pound through. The riffs, as in every song on this album, are tremelo-riffed. However, they aren't as high-end as Gorgoroth might play them. They're low, heavy, and well..raw. The vocalist really has the black metal vocals down, but it would be cool if they were turned up just a bit louder in the mix. He's just like the music, very cold and hateful.

By the third song you realize how unique and unheard of Antaeus really is. Once again the mood is set by dripping water(maybe blood?) and a strange background noise that also appears on their second album. The noise goes on for awhile, so I figured it might be an ambient track.....fucking wrong. Once again the vocalist's voice tears out of the speaker with even more hate and anger than before. At about 2:20 the riff assault gets a cool spin with a keyboard effect in the background. Just when it couldn't get any heavier the riffs and drums get slow in the headbanging moment of the album with *gasp* audible bass. The singer even throws in some death metal vocals for a line or two.

As the album goes on the intros get a little monotonous, but they provide a good transition between the tracks. The drums are always, more or less, the same. Tons of snare and tom pounding over a double bass beat. The riffs however, are always new and well played. You can tell that when these guys went into the studio they aimed to make a totally misantrophic record and they accomplished just that. I especially appreciate the slower moments interlaced with the chaos of this disc because they show the talent that the guitarist has for creating the perfect, unique black metal riff like in track six where we have new creations and more Burzum/Old school BM influences.. Where other French bands fail Antaeus succeeds. Perhaps a bit repetitive as far as drumming, but this album sure kicked my ass.

Any bad mood will be increased tenfold when you have this album in your stereo....full of hate and full of speed.