Intercourse and Lust

At one time, we reviewed Abigail's 2003 LP Forever Street Metal Bitch, which had black metal influences, but had an over-the-top thrash sound. Recently I got my hands on their first LP from 1996, Intercourse and Lust, now being re-released on vinyl by their label. This is a harbinger of their later sex- and violence-filled "street metal" sound, but still mostly a black metal album, owing something to their initial gig-mates, Sigh. The rawness and craziness of their later sound is present in this one, too, as is the sex -- this release of the album has a print of the first tentacle porn ever made as the cover. The darkness of this album is a parallel evolution with the Norwegian scene that has a take that is all its own. The first track, A Witch Named Aspilcuetta, is absolutely ripping. The vocals of bassist/singer Yasuyuki Suzuki are even more extreme than the usual black metal shriek, barely sounding like a human is emitting them, and the listener can forget about deciphering the stream-of-consciousness lyrics, about sex with a witch, without the aid of charitable Internet transcriptionists. Even though the sound is lo-fi, with buzzing guitars and messy musical arrangements, the bass gets way more room to operate in the production than is usual with black metal, and the riffing is very thrash-like as well, including furious solos. That doesn't mean tremolo picking and double-kick drumming is out, though, as Confound Eternal has plenty of that, though even on that track, too, the thrashing soon takes over. Not all is blinding speed and aggression, either; the chugging Attack With Spell has a somewhat slower tempo, a hard-rock riff that shoves the song on its way, and a melodic solo that made the song an instant favorite for me. Strength of Other World is also interesting. It's got a bit of everything; a blast of traditional black metal riffing, followed by a dim interlude of clean guitar, which turns to a mid-tempo tune getting faster and faster until we're back to thrash. Abigail shows a real talent here for taking a bunch of traditional sounds and slopping them together into one big, messy stew of sound that still works and runs rings around some of the other, less adventurous (but still quite aggressive) thrash tracks; Mephistopheles, too, is worthy of note in this regard, especially its combined clean/distorted intro and outro. The final track, a tribute to the Yakuza that is filled with samples from Japanese gangster movies, is kind of lost on a non-Japanese audience, given that most listeners will have no idea what is being said, but the tension in the voices combined with the slow but ominous guitar buildup does have a sort of charm. Intercourse and Lust is easy to overlook even if one is into black metal, but it not only is a good record on its own, it also makes for an interesting example of a completely different culture's early take on black metal; and a very enthusiastic one, at that. Traditionalists used to the Northern European approach might find it a little odd, but it's easy to start headbanging to this one. Bandcamp: http://nuclearwarnowproductions.bandcamp.com/album/intercourse-and-lust.