Mz.412 — Burning The Temple of God

“Burning The Temple Of God” is the second in the series of five reissues by the dark, violent and satanic singed Swedish collective who mixe together pitch black ritual tinged industrial sonics, dark ambience, power noise, and black metal to create a thick, nastily atmospheric  to pounding brew of black sounds that the group call black industrial.

The album was originally released back in 1996, and I guess it can be seen as one of the projects most known and controversial works. The main controversy came from the albums original cover artwork which featured a picture of a burning stave church- the photograph originates from the mid 1990’s when members of the Norwegian black metal underground decided to start burning down the beautiful and ancient wooden churches in some sort of bizarre and extreme protests against Christianity in Norway. The other controversial thing about the album was it’s mixing of grim black metal guitars and vocals into a industrial, noise or black ambient context, which up until this point had never really happened before.

So  does the album still stand up to it’s controversial image all theses years on?….well the original artwork has now been replaced by a matt black and white gloss ink cover/ digtipak( just like all the other reissues in this series), but sonically this still sounds very fresh and dangerous as the album moves from satanic and bombastic industrial beat work-outs that are ribbed by human bone percussive poundings and blackly serrated electronics, onto brooding and evil sounding ritual noise electronics, through to creepy church organs runs and simmers that drift to slow motion ritual ambient dwells, and of course the black metal tinged moments which find the collective mixing spiteful blacked guitar tones and guttural vocals with brooding and seared electronics. Only one or two tracks here really have a fully defined black metal current running through them, so don’t expect this to be an all out black metal/industrial/ dark ambient high-breed. But the way the black metal elements are melded into the album makes for a surprising and effective turn of events when they do turn-up.

So all in all “Burning The Temple Of God” is another very effective and disorientating trip into dark and satanic tinged black industrial sonics, which stills sounds as darkly fresh, devilish fiery and blackly atmospheric as it did back in 1996.