���Some more offbeat raw black metal on another one of the recent cassettes that we picked up from the self-described "Vinland Black Metal Label" Vanguard Productions, Equinox's Of Blade And Graal is a vicious little blast of outsider black metal mayhem from this somewhat mysterious trio. The band's second release following a split with Intolerant, this seven-song EP opens with an ominous chord progression played on acoustic guitar, the solemn strummed melody stumbling beneath a spoken word recording, then hurtles straight into the utterly raw, low-fi black metal that comprises the rest of this tape. Really raw, the sound quality of Graal sounds like it was produced on an old four track recorder, totally unpolished, that rough ratty sound quality giving the band's tinny treble-cranked guitar and blasting background hiss of the drummer a nicely vicious edge. That fierce no-fi assault and Equinox's mixture of church-burning Satanic imagery and pagan themes sort of resembles the demented violent energy as some of the early Graveland demos, and the performance itself is as raw as the recording, with the occasional flub or fuck-up, but these guys nevertheless whip up an intensely dank basement blast of fucked-up blackness on songs like the title track. Other songs on the tape like "To Taste the Energy of the Otherworld " are slower, doom-laden dirges with nearly nonexistent drumming, the mournful minor key riffs slowly uncurling beneath more of those spoken lyrics, while other tracks sometimes slip into messed-up Sabbathian riffage or abrasive, out-of-tune guitar noise, and there's some interesting use of diminished chords and expressive bass playing that you can hear buried down in all of that fuzz-drenched hiss, that give brief moments on the tape an odd, vaguely jazzy feel. There's lots of Furze-like dropouts and amplifier malfunctions adding to the unhinged energy, and even a short interlude of spoken word melodrama and chortling flute. In spite of the stripped-raw, often totally atonal mania on display, though, there's some furious stuff on this tape; Equinox's mixture of boombox black metal aesthetics and manic weirdness is something that will probably appeal to fans of the Legion Blotan / Dipsomaniac / Illinoisian Thunder strain of ultra-raw, brain-damaged necro-fuzz. Limited to one hundred copies.