Out of all of the different directions that black metal has gone in, the most reviled has got to be the marriage of black metal and techno that started back in the mid 90s with Mysticum. Of course, my perverse tastes in black metal run to almost all of these technoid, dancefloor-wrecking black metallers, with Dodheimsgard, Blacklodge and Aborym being three of my favorites. It had been awhile since I had found any new bands that deal in this sort of beat-driven BM weirdness, but up pops this Ep from a band called Divizion S-187 recently that falls squarely within the mucho-maligned milieu. Made up of several of the corpse-painted heathens behind the pagan Russian black metal band Ashen Light, Divizion S-187 is total techno-BM, chucking vocals for an instrumental assault of buzzing old school riffs, black electronic sheen, and aggressive pounding techno rhythms. Their Blood & Fire Ep came out in 2006 but is a new one to me, a trance inducing twenty minute blast of cybernetic Slavic blackness.

The first track is "Total Destruction", which opens with random street noise and a minor key guitar slowly drifting in, a somber intro that goes on for a minute before finally taking off into blazing old school black metal, buzzing tremolo riffs and eerie dissonance. But as the song goes on, the thrashy drumming is gradually taken over, Borg-style, by a pounding techno beat, and by the middle of the song it has been completely transformed into a barbaric mash up of Beltram-style throb and droning Darkthrone-esque blackness, the band occasionally dropping out with just pounding programmed techno beat and throbbing synthesizers taking over. The following track "No One Alive - No Fucking Religion" is also a hyperspeed blackened storm at first, then this too becomes a thumping fusion of evil riffing, synthesizers and trancey techno, entering into weird ambient breaks where the double kick combines with the pounding 4/4 techno and chintzy gothic keyboards. "Danse Of Light & Death" kicks into a killer black n' roll groove that's combined with the techno throb, and "Blood & Fire" even introduces some drum-machine hand claps and old school snare rushes.

So these guys aren't as complex or warped as the likes of DHG or Manes or Blacklodge, but it's still an infectious, odd disc that sits nicely next to the sort of stuff that Mysticum was putting out in the late 90s, fusing straightforward old school techno to the rotting skeletal carcass of second wave black metal.