I really hope you readers appreciate what I do for this site, because I’m pretty sure that listening to Blut Aus Nord‘s latest effort and De Magia Veterum‘s latest album in close succession for review purposes, I’ve exposed myself to irreparable mental and psychological damage. Damage, that may require long term treatment and anti-psychotic drugs.

Listen, I doubt few will argue Blut Aus Nord‘s status within black metal and you’d think that I had been all over this review months ago, singing praise. I’m still going to do just that, but a strange thing happened upon each and every listening of 777 – Sect(s), the first part of a ambitious and prolific trilogy. You see, each time I started listening to the album to finally pen a review–which I typically do at night on head phones–I would literally not be able to finish listening to the album. Not because Blut Aus Nord‘s new album bad or boring, but because it’s hypnotically brilliant and each listen would send me into the semiconscious, dream state and I’d never actually finish listening to the album. However, with the band recently releasing a teaser for the trilogy’s second part, 777 The Desanctification, I was spurned into action.

After the heralded organic return to the Memoria Vestusta -era, the band’s slight return to the more mechanical and cold feel of The Work Which Transforms God is delivered with a calculated, undulating precision and rhythmic, deliberate, though still discordant atmosphere.  And it’s this, hypnotic dissonance, which lulls me into a semi comatose altered state where I wake up hours later covered in strange marking and chanting in tongues. Especially when they delve into many mid-paced, metallic atonal sways as heard in the last half of opening “Epitome I”, and parts of “Epitome II”, “Epitome IV” and “Epitome VI” . These ritualistic, throbbing, droning moments complement the expected swirling,  uneasy vortex of the band’s trademark atonal blasts (“Epitome III”, “Epitome V”) but also give the album a much more mystical otherwordly atmosphere that resonates of a deep, subconscious level that–as the band have done for a while now–transcending mere black metal or even music.

For years now the enigmatic Blut Aus Nord have been considered elite with albums that simply elevated a genre, but what truly strikes me about the band is how adaptable and unpredictable they’ve become with their brilliance. They have shown the ability to morph and deviate from album to album, while still retaining their unique stylings. From their early frosty days, to the industrialized albums, to minimalist drone, back to their early days and now a blending of everything and a frigging trio of (I’m guessing brilliant) albums in under a year — which most bands can’t even do in an entire career! That being said, I don’t see 777 – Sect(s) ending up on my year end list , as it comes across as a mere teaser or warm up for something much bigger with the rest of the trilogy; it’s hard to review the whole monument beforehand.

Still, I don’t know how Vinsval (guitars, vocals) and WD Feld (drums, programming) keep delivering such high quality material at this rate…other than the fact they are extra dimensional beings with aurally creative  capacities not of this earth. Which would explain a lot of their riffs.

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