Now that several of their older titles on Regain are once again available to us, we have finally managed to get a bunch of Abruptum's import CDs in stock at Crucial Blast. I've been spending the last month getting reacquainted with these demented Swedish black metallers while working on writing up the reviews for these discs, and have basically fallen in love with 'em all over again. Out of all of the bands that made up the second wave of the Scandinavian black metal movement of the early 90's, there was none weirder than Abruptum. Their sound was a black pit of anguished screams and chaotic, mostly improvised ambient noise and mutated metal, and not surprisingly Abruptum were disliked by many black metal fans who came to their albums expecting something more, um, "structured".

This EP from 2000 is one of Abruptum's last releases, a three song disc that features three very different sides of this infamous Swedish improv-black metal band. The disc opens with the most structured song that Abruptum has EVER released, "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet" from 1991, which had previously appeared on the Nordic Metal - A Tribute To Euronymous compilation. It begins with vintage horror movie synths and synthetic vocal choirs playing this over-the-top cartoon Gothic intro, and then moves into a crushing blackened doom jam, plodding drums and boiling double-bass underscoring grinding slo-mo riffage while gutteral vocals roar over top. Kinda sounds like Thergothon with some maniac screaming random blather in Latin over it, at least until random Casio sounds, electronic tinkling and other weird bits enter the picture...and a backing chorus of "lalala"'s that pops up for a brief moment towards the end? Utterly fucked up, and genius. That one is one of my favorite Abruptum songs ever. The other two on the disc are just as crazed,. but each in a very different way. Where the first song is the most "accessible" and structured that Abruptum has ever released, the second track "D�dsapparaten" recorded in 2000 is without a doubt the most abrasive and harsh, over eight minutes of crushing blackened NOISE that begins with a clanging bell but which almost immediately explodes into an avalanche of lead pipes and sheet metal, exploding amplifiers and the screams of the demonically possessed. It sounds an awful lot like Merzbow, MSBR or Incapacitants or some other blazing wall-of-noise Japanese distortion wrecking machine, but infused with pure evil. Stalaggh is another comparison, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the guys behind Stalaggh were inspired to start their project after hearing this particular Abruptum track. And the third and final track "Massd�d" is a super brief (two and a half minutes) but ominous piece that combines a heavy, distorted synth squelch loop and marching troops into a hypnotic industrial jam that ends in a triumphant fanfare of anthemic orchestral music. As always, Abruptum succeed in creating an abstract, hellish atmosphere from both metallic and decidedly non-metallic sounds, and like all of their releases, this EP is essential to anyone into ultra-weird, improvised blackness.