Black Metal History Month - Tulus : "Fandens Kall"

 This might be the most fitting album for this month yet. They are a piece of black metal history, but if you do not recognize the name do not turn in your cvlt card yet as you more than likely know Khold. If you do not know Khold, then you are a poseur and should burn a church with yourself in it. Granted Khold is not as big of a name in Norwegian black metal as Darkthrone, Mayhem, Emperor or ... well you can see where this is going. They are most impressive due to the fact they retained their rock n roll sense of groove, making their songs catchier than your average blast fest. Or really any blast fest for that matter, since they all sound the same. By the time we get to "Slagmark" they have solid footing under the songwriting, which is deliberate, with guitars well layered with creepy melody , but never forgetting they are here to rock the fuck out.  

They touch on the more conventional black metal sounds on "Allstott" but refuse to conform to them. "Israk' is more up-tempo, almost more black n roll. "Sammuelsbrenna" finds more melodic elements like clean guitars surfacing but in terms of the momentum that has keep this album moving , it is not as strong as the first half of the album, but still better than most. To their credit they do switch things up. This is not Motorhead or Venom just charging through things like a punk band would. Female vocals glide in and add a nice sonic color. It's eight songs in until they blast at you, which I can not complain about given the variety of sounds and commitment to songs already shown. They do not even stay a blasting for long. They understand the value of dynamics. 

While riffs alone does not a good song make, they pull out some good ones and make a song with them on "Snomyrkre". They shift from these well, though it does create more of an Immortal like sound. There is a more punk edge to the guitars at times here as well. "Barfrost" is more of an outro than an actual song as it's whispering over acoustic guitar. I will give this one a 9.5, these old pros know what they are doing and it shows. They key to all of this is not how cvlt they are but that they write some damn good songs that are also black metal rather than trying to be black metal first then writing songs.