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Rating: At the 27th second of the first minute of the second track, we find what I believe represents the lowest point of extreme music: with a chorus like
"Sluts Of Hell, Cunts Of Evil
Sluts Of Hell, Slaves Of Satan"
"Sluts Of Hell" strongly competes as the worst song in the history of extreme metal; considering the obscenities this genre has witnessed: the brilliant cover of Carnivorous Erection (it's worse than you are imagining…) by Regurgitate, the subtle necrophilic allusions of "Love You In Decay" by Antropofagus, the Impaled Nazarene (why discriminate, let's consider them altogether!), the elaborate concept behind the albums of Caligulae Crucis, engaged in a philosophical dissertation on the journey of human excrement to the cloaca, etc…
The fact that Metal often represents the unfortunate and ignorant cousin of "pop" music has never been questioned; however, careers like that of Nattefrost help to concretely understand what this evil is that taints a genre otherwise so popular (see the number of bands) and characterized by the presence of musicians of great technical depth (Hoglan, Hellhammer, Roads, Di Giorgio, Matos…).
From the promising beginnings with the early albums of Carpathian Forest (up to Morbid Fascination Of Death), our man gradually plunged headlong into a series of ghastly projects, both on the side of the mother band and concerning the solo career, which indeed opens with this "Blood And Vomit".
Specialists and enthusiasts of the genre have literally split their heads trying to decipher a work like this: most have labeled it as an idiocy, a few others have presented themselves as defenders of what they considered a work of avant-garde. After the release of the follow-up ‘Nekronaut part 1’, a photocopy of the first, interest in the character waned, also due to the peak of bad taste reached by Carpathian Forest with the latest releases.
"Blood And Vomit" is a deliberately provocative album: it gathers trite songs with banal and stupid lyrics, and it is evidently, even after a first and distracted listen, a parody of machismo related to Black Metal (it would appeal to Maledetta Primavera).
The generation of bands succeeding the first wave of Mayhem and Satyricon aimed to proclaim the greatness of Black Metal, increasingly emphasizing the satanic element, with results often gaudy (amply documented by Gorgoroth, Enthroned, Tsjuder, Dark Funeral…). Nattefrost has always expressed his disdain towards these forms of exhibitionism, but in doing so created a cult of his own in antithesis to the True Black Metaller, falling in turn into the ridiculous cul-de-sac; emblematic are the images of our man roaming backstage wearing a Minnie T-shirt, making two old ladies perform a lap dance on stage, flaunting a bassist in a thong… Hard to say, therefore, if with this album Nattefrost wanted to mock the "tough guys of black metal" by engaging with their themes, or wanted to continue tracing in an increasingly extreme way the coordinates of that personal way of conceiving this music.
What matters is that "Blood And Vomit" absolutely sucks! The lyrics are terrible and deliberately parodic, divided between narratives of infernal prostitutes, cosmic apocalypses, and black masses; the cast of friends and characters accompanying our man during the work does not prevent the music from also being horrendous and banal, hackneyed and simple, without a shred of originality, centered as it is on those Black ‘n’ Thrash coordinates that have also worn out in Carpathian Forest. As if that wasn't enough, a couple of songs show Nattefrost dealing with intestinal disturbances of all kinds, recorded and fixed indelibly on the album!
However you want to consider it, "Blood And Vomit" (the title does justice to the music at least…) perfectly represents that caricature character that is Nattefrost today, a victim of his own immense ego, like Dani Filth, Shagrath, and dozens of other buffoons who make Black, and Metal in general, a sort of Red Cross to shoot at will…
…and someone has called him a Genius…
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