A TRANSYLVANIAN FUNERAL – The Outsider (Forbidden Records)

by Janet Willis

ATF is not your average USBM band by any stretch of the warped imagination, it’s vigilant and bestial archaic black metal with some melody and brooding , sometimes outright violent atmospheres that completely cover all classic ideals of black metal in its raw and natural form.

The following selections should give a slight hint as of what to expect, but if you’re a true black metal aficionado than I thoroughly encourage you to cast aside the onslaught of media houndings about new “Black Metal” these days and go classic and underground with hints of crimson psychedelia courtesy of ATF.

From the great sonic mass of guitar and raspy Hellish vocal damage on “Winter’s Worm”, with a nice buzz tone and cunning use of distortion, the band plays a bit with the traditional black metal sound and style elements in terms of sharpening their blade-like slicing melodies and even going a bit industrial as with the murderous rampage of “Worship a Dead Fucking Goat “.

“Worship a Dead Fucking Goat” is literally like the industrial stomping militaristic rampage drum machine/electronic maniacal drumming of Ministry with an even bigger shot of adrenaline into the already testosterone-overloaded kill-machine they are, and reminds me a lot of the cranium bashing anthem “Thieves (The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste)”.

“Premonitions” is a very melodic and funereal atmospheric song that reminds me of Forteresse. It’s very wintery and mystical, beautiful and absolutely dark with intense desperation and a massive blizzard of distorted guitar buzz that’ll bury just about anyone in it’s wake.

“When Sky and Ocean are One” starts out with a highly treble saturated and simple arpeggio intro that sounds as if it was recorded on really basic equipment and in some hollow cavern, as it has an almost isolated/solitary vibe that really fits with me personally as well as the genre. The song is pretty much what many would want and expect form anything with the title of “A Transylvanian Funeral”: the overall feel is of being lost and wandering, but the tones used are really distorted and machinelike that it gives the song some serious artillery to start an annihilation of the senses, which it does but it’s also continually cryogenic in temperature; there’s also some great rhythmic parts that are just pure metal toward the end with some nice solid leads;and the stripped down melodies and skeletal structure keep the track raw yet there’s always plenty of aggression to keep things in a high octane barrel-roll for the~5-minute song. Just for any one of those reasons just mentioned, makes “When Sky and Ocean Are One” a standout track on this album.

“To Die in the Dark” is scathing a cyclone with this incredible sudden break from the chaos with an atmospheric melodic passage consisting of a pumping bass-line and minor effects that reminds me of a dark psychedelic meets post punk black metal style sort of in the ways of Hateful Abandon. It’s remarkable to me how some bands can completely capture the essence of a style and yet still take it to a new dimension of artistic and metallic craft as ATF does quite well.

In Summary: THIS IS ESSENTIAL and it’s a sole individual doing the entire thing!!!!!

http://forbidden-records.com/

Audio samples:
http://www.myspace.com/atransylvanianfuneral