Quite the crude stuff is what’s delivered by The Way of Purity, from Norway. And no, it’s not because it’s Black Metal, which would be hinted at by the cover of their Biteback EP. It’s something else. The current contribution, by the way, isn’t our first acquaintance with the band, as we reviewed their debut record Crosscore last year. Somehow that went straight past me though, as I personally didn’t get to know the band until Biteback.

When earlier this week we interviewed Heidevolk’s Joris Bochtdrincker, we asked him which band he would donate attention to were he to run The Baboon. His answer: ”Most definitely Hades from Norway. They’re a second wave of Black Metal band who never got the praise they deserved. I feel their first two CDs (“…Again Shall Be” and “Dawn of the Dying Sun”) are very underestimated and deserve more attention. Heaviness, pride, insane vocals, and a folkloristic touch to it.” And so now we’re checking them out as he suggested.

What we find is what Joris says. Hades is fuckin’ awesome, performing the optimum mix of acid Black Metal, melody and Folky Paganism. A brilliant mix and not one that I’ve come across often before. What I read is that the band was formed in the city of Bergen in 1992 by a dude named Jørn, an ex-member of Immortal, with the aim of creating a musical style ”filled with melancholy, desolation, as well as atmosphere, mystery and folklore”. Well, they did a fuckin’ A-class job!

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Dimmu Borgir and therefore also familiar with their lead guitarist Galder. Well, Galder is also the sole full-time member of Old Man’s Child, a band created in 1993 out of the ashes of Requiem, a tribute band who played Metallica and Slayer covers. I guess being from Norway in the early ’90s there was no escaping the blooming Black Metal scene there. Though Old Man’s Child has not been as influential as their peers they still play some fuckin’ sweet melodic BM. I’m a fresh fan and have only recently picked up the latest album, Slaves of the World, which is their seventh full-length and the one we’ll be serving from today.

That Black Metal isn’t a Norwegian exclusive we already showed this morning with Nefertum. So, while we’re at it, we’ll show Norwegian isn’t a Black Metal exclusive either. Am I still making sense? Fuck, I don’t even understand the sentence I just constructed myself. Fuck it, point I’m trying to make is that Norwegian Metal doesn’t equal Black Metal and vice versa.

Chrome Division, as dropped in our suggestion box by HarveyD, is the proof that supports the second part of the argument, after Nefertum covered the first part. They do a dirty type of “Metal ‘n’ Roll” that is about as related to Black Metal as pissing is to shitting. Or something. The fact that they’re both Metal is pretty much the single similarity.

Except perhaps that it also kicks some major ass. Shit just made me rock my socks off!

The last time we did some proper Power Metal must’ve been before Jesus was born. Well we’re making up for a long hiatus today, because we’ve got a Norwegian band today with Mell Gibson on vocals. The band is called Pagan’s Mind and they play their game in the fashion of some of the great German Power Metal from the ages: bombastic, dramatic, fast and catchy as EHEC from German bean sprouts. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t Progressive elements to be enjoyed.

The eleven year old band released Heavenly Ecstasy as its sixth album on May 20^th of this year. It went on sales through Steamhammer records in Germany, making it the first of the band’s records to go out through that label. Heavenly Ecstasy contains eleven tracks, thirteen if you get your grubby hands on a bonus edition.

I don’t know about you, but the combination of the words ‘Norway’ and ‘Metal’ immediately turn my thoughts towards the type of Black Metal that makes normal human beings vomit up blood and shit flaming bursts of gas in fear and plain agony. And despite that I, as a fan and self-proclaimed “knowledgeable” – note the quotation marks to indicate I’m talking shit here – of Metal, should know better than to generalize so ruthlessly, it’s a generalization that persists in my head.

All the better that Norway’s Exeloume was brought under my attention, because these chaps don’t do Black Metal at all. In fact, it’s hardly dark at all and, depending on where your musical comfort zone lies, it’s not even arse-grindingly punishing, though it’s still pretty pounding. What it is, is a naturally sounding mixture of Thrash and Death Metal, directly bred from the living dead remains of late 1980’s Thrash and early 1990’s Death Metal.

Sound like an interesting proposition to you? The mere click of a button will take you to our review of the group’s debut full-length Fairytale of Perversion.

Even though the first issue of this series didn’t seem to grab particularly much of attention, we’ve still got another little something for friends of keyboard and synth heavy Metal. Of the bands in today’s post, Black Comedy is a band that we’ve already seen once before. Synthetic Breed and Mechina, on the other hand, are two new additions to our huge collection of Metal bands.

A short while ago we put up the second edition of this series on Progressive (Death) Metal bands, after we had put up the first installment a short while before that. The title of today’s post says it all: it’s time for part 3!

Now, all of the bands in this series so far have been contributed by our regular reader Zodiac. We cover him in imaginary cookies in gratitude! Of his list of eight bands, today’s post will introduce the last two, Leprous and Star One.

This morning I woke up and noticed Kyle, after a while of absence, returned to us with a considerable list of band suggestions. A list from which we’ll gladly put up stuff for various reasons. Today for example we’ll put up one band because they make beautiful, emotion inducing emotion, even though part of that emotion might want to make you kill yourself.

Another band we’ve put up because it’s a classic 1980’s piece of Power Thrash that might make you feel a little better after the first experience. Who knows it’ll work. And even if it doesn’t, we hope the more solid, World War Two-inspired stuff from another “countryband” of mine will do the trick!

Just a short while ago my fellow perpetrator Byrd36 had the brilliant idea to start up a series called Rockin’ Out with… Why? Because, despite that we’re all drunk, hard-assed, concrete-munching Metalheads without any sense of refinement, we still have to admit that we like Rock. Some Rock at least, the good sort. You know, that soft, boring material you’re dad used to listen to as a high school punk when he hit on your mom, and possibly accidentally impregnated her with the malformed offspring that is you!

So basically you have two reasons to respect the genre: 1) because it got your dad all loose and dandy when he made his dance moves to impress your mom, and so basically because it gave you life, and 2) because it has been an essential to the development of our beloved Metal. So yeah, we better give Rock some love!

Now, this series is Byrd36’s little baby, but I’m sure he won’t mind terribly much if I occasionally drop one into the potty as well. Today’s contribution we thank to a post at No Clean Singing by a guy named Dan – yep, the one that named the burger! It’s Kvelertak. From Norway. It’s a bit of an oddball though, as it’s not entirely Metal-free.