BLUT AUS NORD — The Mystical Beast of Rebellion (review)

BLUT AUS NORD — The Mystical Beast of Rebellion album cover Album · 2001 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Vehemency
Blut Aus Nord’s third full-length has been sold out for a good while now, so it was only logical to see Debemur Morti Productions reissuing the album, and not merely making an identical package in comparison to the original; in addition to the new artwork, a second disc of wholly new material is attached to the package as well, comprising 37 minutes of fresh material in the same vein as the original record.

The Mystical Beast of Rebellion was the beginning of Blut Aus Nord’s transformation into the dissonant, mechanized style that has been further explored in the band’s latter albums such as The Work Which Transforms God and MoRT. There’s only little trace left of the atmospheric and melodic style that was presented on the first two albums: The Mystical Beast of Rebellion is a stripped down, weird, meandering piece of black metal where the drums are more clearly programmed, almost incessantly playing a stable blast beat throughout the album - it’s not until ”Chapter V” when the pace slows down. What’s left of the first records’ ambient elements is mere quiet humming between the seven tracks.

The three new songs, all simply named ”Chapter 7”, venture further into slower-paced, dark and doomy soundscapes, production-wise close to the first disc’s material. The last of the three takes this pattern the furthest, being a really slow 19-minute monster. I see no reason for a Blut Aus Nord fan not to like these newest offerings. In my books, nothing ever tops Ultima Thulée out of all the band’s releases, but that is not to underrate this convulsing weirdness that this album offers - on both discs.

To truly grasp what’s going on in the confusing maze of The Mystical Beast of Rebellion, careful attention is needed. As a background music this easily turns into a meaningless mess with little worth. This is what makes Blut Aus Nord’s unique style challenging on the album, even more so on the following records. The Mystical Beast of Rebellion is the most logical place to start discovering the band’s second style as it’s probably the most accessible of the bunch. I’d go even as far as saying that this is an influential album in the sense that it was among the first black metal albums to properly incorporate this sinister atonality.
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