For those of you that will admit to having "favorite nightmares", I offer the soundtrack has been created by France's BLUT AUS NORD.

It will assuredly take you a few listens to penetrate this beehive of dark mayhem. There is just so much going on with this disc. Most of the tracks could be described as "epic" or even "orchestral" works of damaging heavy guitar and percussive patterns recalling early GODFLESH. But this album struck me as a much more substantive work than anything I ever heard from Birmingham's finest noise lords or even bands like ZENI GEVA. There are elements of ENSLAVED-style viking metal and death metal infused into this bubbling sonic cauldron as well. At first, I found the death metal interludes (like the noisy eruption in "The Supreme Abstract") somewhat flat and unimpressive, as the band doesn't seem to vary these blasts of speed at all until they launch into their next midpaced epic interlude. Then it occurred to me that the sickening growls and one-dimensional blastbeats are deliberately constructed in such a way as to contrast wit the more mechanical, swelling funeral melodies that the album delivers like "Our Blessed Frozen Cells" and "Metamorphosis". All of these are the perfect soundtrack to your favorite nightmare. You can picture Viking battleships being tossed about the violent black seas or Egyptian slaves painstakingly dragging heavy blocks into place by hand to create the tombs of the Pharaohs. Now granted, this is not the type of album that every KISS and AC/DC fan is going to gush over. But if you're like me, and occasionally need that taste of SWANS or TODAY IS THE DAY to punish your eardrums, then BLUT AUS NORD is for you.

- Marchman

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