Just found a few copies of this rather hard-to-find picture disc edition of Aborym's classic 1999 debut album, and it's a beaut, with full color artwork on both sides and a version of their song "Tantra Bizarre" that is exclusive to this release.

Not as off-the-hook bizarre as Dodheimsgard but much more electronically enhanced than bands like Mysticum or Thorns, Aborym would develop their mix of classic second wave Norwegian black metal and electronic music into a much more sophisticated sound on later albums during the early 00's. Kali Yuga Bizarre was still a fine blast of brain-frying electro-infected baroque blackness from this European collective, though. Kicking off with the icy majesty of "Wehrmacht Kali Ma", the disc makes its way through a shadowy labyrinth of frostbitten black buzz and odd carnival-esque melodies, diving suddenly into the synth-heavy black metal of "Horrenda Peccata Christi" that twists through spasms of frenetic drum n' bass and throbbing industrial metal, and slow doom-laden passages backed with soaring orchestral keyboards. The vocals are handled by both lead vocalist Yorga SM and legendary black metal frontman Attila Csihar, who both spew a litany of demonic croaks, Latin incantations, and draconian imperatives while the rest of the band claws their way through these ten tracks of hallucinatory industrial black metal. And that's heavy on the "hallucination"; haunted pipe organs rise out of the mist, industrial percussion rattles in the distance, and deep monk-like chanting drifts in the background, and there's the constant presence of 80's style horror movie keyboards throughout Kali Yuga, on tracks like "Hellraiser", the slow reverberating pace, heavy bass line and gloomy keys evokes the sound of 80's darkwave before the music decomposes into weird effect-laden nightmare ambience. The track "Roma Divina Urbs" flows out of that into the sound of booming kettledrums and medieval horns resembling something off of the Conan The Barbarian soundtrack, and then Aborym bursts into a blackened metal version of the same arrangement now laced with electronic harpsichord sounds and frenzied blast beats, with dramatic clean vocals appearing later in the song. This unpredictable lunatic vibe is all over this album.

On the flipside, "Tantra Bizarre" delivers one of the album's most majestic songs with Attila's bizarre moaning vokills, one killer melodic hook after another, and a wild mix of shredding guitar solos and some very strange shrieking sounds that dive-bomb throughout the whole track. "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is one of the album's most twisted tracks, a hellish mishmash of hardcore techno, Black Mass atmospherics, blackened tremolo riffing, distorted bass lines and synths, and blown-out break beats all wound together into a delirious funhouse nightmare. A maniacal voice rants in Italian while a church choir sings, and then the band rips into the ferocious blackthrash of "Metal Striken Terror Action". That's followed by the delirious gothic blackness of "The First Four Trumpets", which resembles something from Fields Of The Nephilim, down to the deep Carl McCoy-esque vocals. The final bonus track "Tantra Bizarre (Co30 Version)" takes certain elements of the original version and gloms it all back together into a frantic skittering hardcore techno jam, a massive bass line slithering among the distorted fast-paced break beats and swarming synth, blackened shrieks and bizarre gasping vocals swooping back and forth, foreshadowing the more drum n' bass infected direction the band would take on later albums like With No Human Intervention.

Released in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.