Pro-printed tape, with white print on tape shell.
The Portuguese label Black Gangrene is, in my opinion, one of the strangest and most controversial institutions in the black metal segment today. Their catalogue is full of outstandingly good and definitely interesting releases, but in my opinion there are also quite a few blunders in the repertoire. In addition, I must also mention that in my experience, the attitude and partnership of Gorge, who runs the label, is sometimes perverse, but maybe it's just me who didn't find a common voice with him. The release discussed here is interesting to me in several ways, since the Bosnian VRASËSINERËZVE, which I consider a special favorite, forms a closed circle with the bands HUMNERË and DRÄKAVTRÉ, with serious overlaps in terms of membership. HUMNERË's raw, noisy black metal convinced me at first listen with its ferocity and experimental solutions, and in addition, the psychedelic synthesizer noise that thunders in the second half of the movement, which results in a particularly hypnotic conclusion to the first part, so I'm eagerly awaiting the continuation from them.
In the continuation, on the "B" side of the cassette, DRÄKAVTRÉ also performs noisy, mid-tempo, dissonant black metal, but in my opinion it still lags behind its sister band by several hairs. The creepy and sometimes ear-torn guitars, along with the distorted vocals, merge into such a chilling cacophony that listening to a complete album in its entirety would certainly be a trying task, primarily due to the lack of original ideas, and this brings us to what I think is the only essential difference (that can be established based on these two compositions) between the two groups. While HUMNERË does what it does in an interesting and inventive way, DRÄKAVTRÉ is unable to really captivate me and I don't feel the devilish spark in it. Of course, it would be foolish to draw far-reaching conclusions based on a single recording that I know of, so the better than average score is currently just a situation report, not a far-reaching conclusion.
Factory cassette body, with a black and white cover, without any indication of any limitations. It definitely deserves a try, in my opinion primarily in connection with HUMNERË.
Sample:
youtube.com/watch?v=BMvN9Az7naQ&list=RDBMvN9Az7naQ&start_radio=1
