(Candlelight) www.candlelightrecords.co.uk
It is, of course, impossible to play a CD at the wrong speed, but I had a teenage Sleazegrinder flashback when I popped in this one, fearing that I was playing a 33 rpm record on 45. Or maybe 78. Alas, 1349 really are that fast, fast as a shark, faster than a speeding bullet, too fast for love or rock and roll. 1349 are corpsepainted Norwegians who have been called "Supersonic black metal" in the past, and if they hadn't been, I would have just made it up myself. This album is one soul sucking blur of utter nastiness, the mother of all blast beats extended into an infinite loop of electric blasphemy. It's so crazy that it almost works. Cats like these guys take pride in producing the most primitive, dirty sounding records imaginable- something about "True black necro cults", I think- and as a result, the quadruple speed drums on "Liberation" end up sounding like a PCP freak torturing some bongos. 'Tis a pity, because I'm guessing that with some real production values, 1349 could probably conjure up Beelzebub himself with this kind of sick, spellbinding chaos. By the way, 1349 do a Mayhem cover somewhere in here, but if you can make it out amidst all this skin flaying flail, then you listen to way too much black metal, Jack.