I remember that, back in the mists of time, rock stars were characters. They were bold, colourful and larger than life and they did not give a single, solitary fuck what anybody thought of them. They swore, threw televisions out of windows and, when they got bored, they made albums inspired by a coked-up night spent listening to Miles Davis records at the wrong speed. Above all they were a huge amount of fun (unless, of course, you were the father of a teenage girl when they rolled through your town). Contrasted with the tired, broken individuals that constitute the majority of rock stars these days, there is no contest – rock stars have lost the quality that makes them, well, stars. Not everyone has plunged into the abyss of mediocrity, however, and there is one underground artist who can be perpetually relied upon to release outrageous statements (via Facebook) and outrageous records that sound like they were the product of an acid fuelled DJ battle in which the participants have to drown each other out with progressive jazz fusion and death metal respectively. A guitarist with fingers like a horny octopus (man – his fret board smokes) and the blood and thunder personality of a rapacious Viking on a drinking binge, Norselaw makes records soaked in blood and sweat and fires off riffs like guided missiles. He frequently surprises, but he never disappoints.
And so the Norselaw saga continues with the monumentally weird, frantic and frequently excellent, ‘Kingslayer’, which does a fantastic job of sounding quite unlike anything else out there. To get the negatives out of the way first, it should be acknowledged that Norselaw’s music is challenging. His spinning imagination takes in everything from Metallica to Drakthrone via Godflesh, Miles Davis and ELP with the result that some of the songs sound like they’ve been recorded in the hall between three different rehearsal spaces by Frank Zappa’s sound guy. This is not necessarily a bad thing (I happen to love it), but it’s best to be aware before you enter that Norselaw does not deal in the straightforward. Secondly the production frequently fails to keep up with Norselaw’s vast ambition, the drums frequently drowning out the guitar in a crashing white-out of cymbal pounding rarely heard outside of Animal’s private rehearsal space. Neither of these things damage the album unduly, but it is worth noting that the sound of Norselaw is most certainly not for the faint of heart.
Over eleven tracks Norselaw spends his time demolishing preconceived notions of what metal should sound like, and with the production hissing and popping, it does much to take you back to the glorious days of tape-trading when music fans would gleefully spend hours copying cassettes for one another rather than simply clicking on a download link. This is the world that Norselaw inhabits and for those who still yearn for the days when music pushed boundaries, ‘Kingslayer’ is certainly for you. Opening with ‘Dungeons deep and caverns dim’ the wheat is abruptly sorted from the chaff as a gently progressive guitar riff overlaid with layers of disturbing fuzz pulse in the background only for the track to explode into a weird, blackened proto-thrash that sounds like Darkthrone covering early Metallica in a beer fuelled rehearsal session. It’s complex, crushingly heavy and liable to leave those looking for an easy ride scratching their heads. For those who persevere, next up is the unhinged metallic psychedelia of ‘Elric’ with its otherworldly synths, Celtic Frost-meets-King Diamond vocals and painfully syncopated percussion (courtesy of Jaime). It’s one of those tracks that requires a good few listens before it starts to fully make sense, but given time you start to realise just how convoluted Norselaw’s musical outpourings are and it’s clear that on ‘Kingslayer’ his song writing has moved to a whole new level. The title track is a distorted blast of toxic thrash played with such filthy perversity that you need a shower after indulging in its greasy rhythms and raging guitar overload. It’s not pretty, but you can imagine a mosh pit lurching into action like Ritalin-stunned zombies under such a concerted and ferocious attack. It’s an album highlight and it’s delivered with a raw-nerved rage that will leave you breathless. Without a hint of recovery time, ‘over and on’ appears in a fog of awkward percussive excellence and unhinged bass tones only to prove to be some kind of twisted ballad (or what passes for a ballad in Norselaw’s addled brain) sung by a man who apparently spends his time drinking whiskey and amphetamine from Blackie Lawless’ blood-stained codpiece. Expect solos that are designed to perplex guitarists not familiar with the Frank Zappa school of song writing, earth-shaking drums and vocals piped in from the underworld and you may, just, manage to navigate the unholy genius of the track.
‘Cimmerian’ is another highlight, opening as it does with the twisted sounds of a carnival staged in serial killer’s basement. Shifting easily from eerie synth into slaytanic thrash, complete with an awesomely over the top display of precision-targeted chugging towards the conclusion (not to mention the wonderfully idiosyncratic solo), it’s another song that requires patient work to unravel, but which is more than worth the time. In contrast ‘behind stars under hills’ is a weird mix of jazz, full-on metal and progressive delivered like a sermon in hell. One of the album’s most awkward tracks, few artists would be brave enough to release such a track even if they had the imagination with which to create it, yet for those seeking a complex voyage to the heart of metal’s most exploratory aspects, this song has it all. ‘Ice palaces’ is similarly built to confuse with the riffs proving to be remarkably counter-intuitive and the whole slithering evilly into black metal territory for the chorus. ‘Dragon rising’ offers an initially brutal synth overture before proving to be one of the album’s most accessible tracks with the drums and guitar working in lock step to develop a suitably brutal groove that more or less demands the listener bang their head furiously for the song’s duration. ‘Blitzkrieg skies’ is a creepy piece of Coppola-esque synth work that erupts into a molten fury of sonically devastating thrash and then the album draws to a close on ‘Sailor on the seas of fate’, one last searing blast of blackened thrash delivered with a Faustian skill which recalls Steve Vai’s acrobatic altercations with the fret board as much as it recalls Darkthrone’s primitive chamber of horrors.
It is safe to say that not everyone will like Norselaw, this is primitive, primal, painfully raw music made by a musician for whom the act of creation is far more important than concerns about the number of listeners he accrues. Perhaps because the album is primarily created as a means to serve Norselaw’s own desires, the album is far more honest, open and exciting than much of what you can expect to find in the mainstream and there are a number of tracks here that move from the adventurous to the truly unique. Norselaw is a genuine character in an underground scene where the number of artists now active all but guarantees anonymity and ‘Kingslayer’ is undoubtedly his finest effort yet – if you miss the days when music offered excitement over assimilation, then this is most certainly the album for you.
