Tsjuder — Demonic Possession

There aren’t many bands as archetypically black metal as Tsjuder. From the two inverted crosses and goat heads in the logo to the straightforward second-wave sound, Tsjuder revels in their unabashedly stereotypical approach to black metal. Demonic Possession is the band’s second full-length, and it serves as the perfect stepping stone to Desert Northern Hell.

Tsjuder is about as stereotypically black metal as brutal black metal can get. If you were to boil down basically every early Norwegian black metal band apart from Burzum and recombine them into one band, you’d get Tsjuder. Like the rest of their countrymen, Tsjuder’s formulaic approach to black metal places greater emphasis on brutality than melody. No faffing around with long ambient intros, no happy melodies, and nothing but chainsaw riffing and machinegunned blast beats. There are a handful of instances where there’s a departure from this structure, but like I said, their approach is pretty fixed. Tracks are short, generally ranging from four to five minutes, and largely riff based. And honestly, that’s the way black metal should be (riff based, that is), but it does leave little room for error. For the most part, Tsjuder succeeds. The vicious tremolo riffs take the center stage here from the onset of “Eriphion Epistates” and they do not stop. Unlike a lot of their fellow hell-raisers, Tsjuder gives a lot of attention to the low-end of their work. Chunky rhythm guitars fill out the sound between the higher-end leads and the punishing drum work, and at times make for some black/death riffs scattered throughout the album. I’m not going to say that every single riff is a hit, but those looking for some genuinely mean black metal could do much, much worse.

Given the band’s dedication to following that second-wave sound and refusal to depart whatsoever, the the album suffers slightly from sameness. It’s not a terrible hindrance, but you do get the sense that the tracks are basically all the same with some slight tweaks. To be fair, there’s only so much you can do when you commit yourself to this style, and Tsjuder pulls it off better than most of their contemporaries.

While Tsjuder is most known for their magnum opus Desert Northern Hell, in which they pull off this style unquestionably, their other material is still pretty good. Demonic Possession isn’t something I’ll be spinning too frequently simply because the album that followed it takes this style to the next level, but it’s still a very good album in its own right. For those of you who are new to Tsjuder, I recommend trying Desert Northern Hell first. But if you’re someone who has heard DNH but hasn’t given their other material a listen, you owe it to yourself to check out Demonic Possession. (note- this is the 2012 reissue, the album orignally appeared back 2002)