Wednesday, October 20, 2010

S.V.E.S.T.
"Homo Fragilis"

Ah, France! Wine, cheese, pastry, and raw, hateful black metal.

^_^

S.V.E.S.T. is allegedly an acronym for Satanas Vobiscum Et Spiritum Tuo. I hated Latin class, so I prefer the short version.

I discovered them completely by accident, oddly enough. Local doomsters Zoroaster were having their CD release show for their first EP, on Battle Kommand Records, and the guy who ran Battle Kommand came to town for the show. He brought a few boxes of distro stuff along, so, naturally, I had to scan through them. I snagged a copy of the first Urfaust CD, Geist ist Teufel, and another called S.V.E.S.T. I'd not heard of the latter and thought it was a new one. Rather than wait to research it, I went ahead and blew $10 on it. When I got home, I discovered, to my shame, that it was the album Urfaust by the band S.V.E.S.T., not t'other way 'round. Oops!

I decided to go ahead and give it a listen, and, holy crap, it was amazing! The songs, much like today's entry, were long and repetitive, to the point of trance-inducing. Then again, no other trance music makes me want to headbang furiously and play air guitar. All of their material is somewhat relatively available on CD except for this track, which appears only on this split with countrymen Inkisitor. The latter's tracks were reissued on CD along with the entirety of their 7" EP plus a live Darkthrone cover. 'Tis good stuff.

3 biased opinions:

Ambassador MAGMA said...

This is black metal. I have never heard this!!!! What label released this?

Lightning Baltimore said...

It was released by End All Life Productions, which is run by Hasjarl from Deathspell Omega, according to Encyclopaedia Metallum. Their vinyl editions are typically limited to a few hundred copies, but I've not seen any numbers for this one.

Biki Honko said...

Interesting! The jury is still out on if i likes it or not.