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Fenriz Presents... The Best Of Old-School Black Metal
(Peaceville Records)
71:31min

With all respect to DARKTHRONE’s Fenriz and his good taste in extreme music – where’s the point in putting out a compilation of previously already released and mostly wellknown material? And why has Fenriz been asked to present / compile this disc? Well, because it wouldn’t sell shit otherwise! As simple as that. But by adding a picture of the drummer in action on the sleeve, using some of his comments to compliment the booklet and going for the title "Fenriz presents…" at least all the DARKTHRONE diehards will go out and buy this… and there’s quite many of them as you most certainly know. The music in itself is incredible of course, but hey – you can’t really go wrong if you put together some of the most exceptional tracks by SARCOFAGO, CELTIC FROST, NATTEFROST, MERCYFUL FATE, SODOM, TORMENTOR, AURA NOIR, DESTRUCTION, SAMAEL, BULLDOZER, MAYHEM, HELLHAMMER, BURZUM, VENOM and BATHORY, right? It’s actually pretty funny that BLASPHEMY is also mentioned in the regular tracklist of the album, for they are just featured with the intro (‘Winds Of The Black Godz’) to the 70min+ rollercoaster ride of music that touches every true (…) black soul in one way or another. Unfortunately also MAYHEM and BURZUM were both put together on here, which seems pretty tasteless considering their tragically connected past… "One can analyse a piece of music and deduct that it is Black Metal, but Black Metal is a FEELING. And that feeling cannot be analysed", Fenriz gets quoted in connection to this release… well, that obviously results in another question of mine: why does this compilation use the term "Black Metal" in its title then anyway? Figure it out for yourselves…

Frank Stöver

Frank Stöver

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