VED BUENS ENDE - "Written in Waters", 1995 (Misanthropy Records)
THE HISTORY: Norwegian black metal is most famous for its connection to church arson incidents and the phenomenon that it's normal for two or three musicians to have five to ten different bands and projects exploring dissimilar atmospheres and genres of music, often crossing over to non-metal. The true Norwegian black metal phenomenon was about so much more than SARCOFAGO-inspired corpsepaint, death metal-influenced blastbeats and BATHORY-inspired production values.
VED BUENS ENDE was the avant garde black metal project of two busy individuals: Vicotnik from MANES (a very rarely heard band, not to be confused with the other MANES, which is known for the semi-classic "Under ein Bloodraud Maane" album), whose ghostly appearance in photos was very much in line with the classic iconography established by MAYHEM and DARKTHRONE and whose vocals deserve to be mentioned as some of the sickest ever, reminiscent of an old witch woman suffering from serious throat problems, and Carl-Michael Aggressor from AURA NOIR, one of Norway's most underappreciated drummers and a veritable conjurer of black-thrash tours de force when grabbing his guitar in the other band. The bass on the album under review was handled by Skoll from FIMBULWINTER and ULVER, which actually featured Aggressor on drums on their most impressive recorded work, the "Vargnatt" promo tape '93.
Around this time they also formed the very good DODHEIMSGARD, which sort of proves that they must have been still living at home and eating from their moms' fridges, to have all this time to work on possessed and obscure black metal variants. They must have been getting some very special psychedelic foods from those fridges however, because this material is nothing short of twisted and awesome. Whereas AURA NOIR was more deeply rooted in the SODOM and BATHORY and while the nowadays very experimental DODHEIMSGARD got their start as an exercise in DARKTHRONE-esque coldness, one can hardly compare VED BUENS ENDE to anything else than SLINT on acid with a drummer syncopating as if his life depended on it, fronted by an Ian Curtis-impersonating Nick Blinko, or the other way round, except at the rare but precious moments when Vicotnik starts impersonating his throat-infected granny. Sadly this band was disbanded after one demo and one album, possibly because of a general lack of understanding for this kind of disturbed weirdness.
THE MEMBERS: Vicotnik - guitars, grim vocals. Skoll - bass. Carl-Michael - drums, clear vocals.
THE PRODUCTION: The first thing revealing itself to fans of old Norwegian black metal is that the production is raw, but not exaggeratedly so. The drums have a sort of clear, high-end production whereas the guitars are more in the usual style of razor-sharp distortion. The impression one gets is of coldness and softness alternating as emotions.
THE GUITARS: What Vicotnik and Carl-Michael came up with on "Written in Waters" was rather alien when compared to other black metal of the era. Maybe THORNS had dabbled in serious dissonance, but was very little heard because it had not released anything and BURZUM did it in short, fleeting moments. VED BUENS ENDE single-handedly created a style of slow arpeggios with chords that are dissonant but beautiful, only occasionally pulling more traditional Norse black metal tremolo minor key melodies from their magician's hat.
THE VOCALS: Carl-Michael gives most of the voice to the
album with his depressive crooning, travelling in and out of tune like
an astral traveler, sometimes reminiscent of post-punk but with melodies
totally unconventional. He sounds like he is carefully improvising the
vocals over the dissonant chords. Time and again Vicotnik interrupts
OPETH never dared to do it in a disturbing way like this. Hell, even COMUS had only a few bits as frightening!
with his dry husk of a black metal voice, which is so cool as to make
one wish they would have let him sing more on this album. It's possibly
Carl-Michael's vocals that made this album rather hard to stomach for
the black metal audience back in the day and because of that this album
has been mostly forgotten, except by the deepest underground delvers.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO JELLO BIAFRA? Well, both Einar Sjurso, the drummer of VED BUENS ENDE's short-lived reunion in 2006 and DODHEIMSGARD's vocalist Aldrahn have cited DEAD KENNEDYS as an early favorite and influence. Thus it is not a stretch to imagine that some spiritual mentorship from the Jello would have passed on to this project too. Also Misanthropy Records has also released a compilation called "Presumed Guilty" which was dedicated to the fight for free speech against censorship, which is a recurring Jello Biafra theme if anything. But if Jello had managed this compilation, he would not have invited the infamous BURZUM to participate!
SOME KEY TRACKS:
"Den Saakaldte" - This is possibly the best single track to represent the magic of VED BUENS ENDE and it would be a fully appropriate, if generally unlikely, candidate for a top 10 list of Norwegian black metal songs. Possessing perhaps the most beautiful minor key melodies on the album, it has time and space enough in its 9 minutes to contain moods from chilled-out jazz metal midway through the song, carried by Skoll's foreboding basslines, to grim black darkness in the last part of the song, when the grim vocals suddenly appear, distorted to telephone quality for some obscure reason. In the end the drumming speeds to a blast and the band lets loose with a cruel tremolo riff and alternate it with another riff which is half thrash, half triumphant viking melody. This kind of climax creates urges to throw boxes of mediocre CD's out from the window!
"Carrier Of Wounds" - This song starts with one of the more convoluted spidery slowish post-rock parts until it weaves in more black metal elements such as, guess what? Tremolo riffing, blastbeats and grim vocals! Have your Bibles at hand. There is a multitude of bands in the black metal underground considered experimental because they are combining post rock parts with grim-as-fuck parts in 2008, but hey! Guys! A newsflash! VED BUENS ENDE composed your songs in '94.
"Coiled In Wings" - Many of the tracks like this one would probably individually work best if the listener would not know to expect any black metal elements. Initially, mesmerizing moody arpeggios and fusion-inspired free-scale jazz bass picking lead into strangely anguished and distorted riff walls spiced up by the inventive drumming and melancholy vocals. Halfway past through the album it will not be a surprise to anyone anymore that the last one and a half minutes are spent with some very traditional risen-from-the-crypts DODHEIMSGARD-style epic tremolo riffage while Vicotnik's throat is torn by the wolves of winter. It would be another surprising climax though, if this song was heard as a single or something.
"Remembrance Of Things Past" - This song starts spookily with an acoustic picked melody, intimate quiet vocal lines and whispers. What is this, Syd Barrett gone evil? No matter what, it still has that semi-improvised but intentional feel one finds in late 60's psychedelic or experimental and OPETH never dared to do it in a disturbing way like this. Hell, even COMUS had only a few bits as frightening as this interlude! Around 3 minutes the band gets tired of the hippies that are crowding to listen and blasts us with some scathing throat-torn screams and some of the best multi-string tremolo picked melodies since early MAYHEM and BURZUM. The riff is such that it should be obligatory studying material for new black metal musicians. To wrap this all up, there exists a weird part at the end of the track that sounds like half SUN RA, half poltergeist in an orchestra pit.
AND IN CLOSING: One of the most strange and unique Norwegian metal albums of all time has expectedly become obscure and forgotten, as there is simply something too "out-there" about it for the extreme metal community and on the other hand the purely apocalyptic parts from the fiery depths of Hell will scare away the prog metal geeks. It's interesting to get back to this album now as bands in the vein of DEATHSPELL OMEGA, LEVIATHAN and XASTHUR have been the last few years' hipster black metal craze and much of their characteristic style from dissonant riffs to ambient/SWANS/post rock/drone parts and most importantly, the atmosphere of schizophrenia, dramatic melancholy and altered states of mind as opposed to the Tolkien paraphernalia of summoned demons, trolls and epic battles which is the bread and butter of normal black metal, is so totally VED BUENS ENDE it's impossible not to get sucked into the black hole of deja vu.
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