Enslaved - RUUN
As the singer of Venom once said as part of one of his many fantastic bits of stage banter from way back in the day, "RAAAAARRRRRRRRR BLACK METAL!!!!" And that's what this CD is! Awesome metal made by vikings from the cold depths of Scandinavia. And, holy balls, is it good! The vocals are all high and throaty like those of some sort of terrifying demon fellow. The guitars play nothing but the awesomenest of riffs. And the drums make you dance, dance, dance in your underpants! Seriously, this shit is really uptempo and feel-goody, unlike that USBM bullshit (aka FUCKING AWESOMENESS) that all the kids are into these days.
An interesting thing about this so-callled "black metal" is the difference between said musical genre and another called "death metal." For one thing, black metal is a lot "higher sounding" than death metal. A lot of death metal guitars are in an extra special tuning called "drop D," where the lowest string of a guitar (the E string) is tuned down to a note one whole step lower than that E! That's why they sound so danged LOW and DEAD (???) And then there's the vocals, which are all Cookie Monster-y and are all like "OOOOOOOOG!!!!!" all the time. Whereas with black metal, everything is slightly higher. The E string is tuned to the pitch that we most commonly associate with said string, and the vocals are usually a lot more high-pitched and, like I said, DEMON-Y. Interesting factoids! Indeed!
The first time I listened to this album, I noticed that a lot of the guitar chords were really bright and filled with colorful tones of note-y goodness that made them sound almost SHOEGAZEY. Like Swervedriver! I tried to play guitar along with Mezcal Head over the summer, and I just couldn't do it because of all the colorful goodness tones that I couldn't get a handle on. Quite the frustrating ordeal. Hey! Like Opeth (FUCKING AMAZING BAND, BUY ALL OF THEIR ALBUMS TODAY, SERIOUSLY), Enslaved makes excellent use of clean vocals, also, so those of you who are appalled by "metal vocals" have something to enjoy. You pussies! Ha, ha!
Also, I can't tell if the first words on this album are "I AM THE CREATOR OF RUINS" or "I AM THE CREATOR OF RUUN." The second one makes a lot more sense, seeing as the vocalist certainly did help to create this album, which is called RUUN. Still, he may very well also have ruined a bunch of stuff (asshole.) Most certainly not this album, though. Or he's the drummer in that band Ruins! AWESOME BAND! If you have any copies of their albums that you don't want, please send them to me immediately.
Rating: Outstanding!
Song: "Path To Vanir"
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