Rating: 10.0

Country: Italy

Release Date: 1985/2006

Record Label: Andromeda Relix /Black Widow

Track list:
1. Demoniac City
2. Land Of Mystery
3. All My Evil
4. Bells Of Death
5. Blind Men And Occult Forces
6. Spectral World
7. Obscurity In The Eternal House
8. Midnight Madman (Demo 1985)
9. Mental Shadows (Demo 1985)
10. Black Hole (Demo 1985)
11. Spectral World (Live In Verona 1985)

Black Hole - Land of Misery (Reissue)

Luther- Drums
Robert- Vocals, Bass, Keyboards
Nicholas- Guitar

What words are left to describe a work of art that exists independent of such petty whims as time and space? From my first exposure to this record two years ago, I have been vainly groping for adjectives that would appropriately describe the way this album makes me feel, but I fear that my woefully limited lexicon cannot properly cohere the feeling of weightlessness and whimsy that overcomes me each time this comes on the stereo. I shall venture a try, though, if only to convince the DC public that this is a journey that must be experienced by ALL pious pilgrims of enigmatic, obscure and phantasmagoric doom METAL. Your quest is at a conclusive end, this is the fruit of all your tireless labor, THE holy chalice of horror-based doominess that will have you convulsing, writhing, frothing at the mouth in ecstasy.

In so many senses this is such a flawed album- the album sounds as though it were recorded in a vacuum, and the fill-intensive, tireless drumming (a hallmark of Italian doom, it would appear) can at times be ungainly and even endearingly, but glaringly clumsy. Structures meander and undulate, ebbing and flowing without any perceptible objective, teasing and prodding the listener as they guide him through ash-stained, shadow-haunted labyrinths of the psyche. There is no question in my mind that this record fits squarely into the DOOM METAL peg, but in every conceivable sense it flouts our conventions of what doom should sound like- there is a sense of ominous ponderousness, but it is not heavy-handed, nor does the band belabor this aspect of their sound, eschewing the blunt-mallet pummel of other post- Sabbath kin in lieu of delectably indulgent, yet impossibly eerie explorations of the expansive space that doom affords as a medium. Yes, this is perhaps the most atmospheric doom recording I've ever had the pleasure to revel in, and while the band certainly grafts their Goblin -schooled sensibilities atop a base of metallic 1979 Angel Witch-isms (most prominent on opener “Demoniac City”) and project a devilish sloth that is characteristically Sabbath (a tendency that materializes in some rather bizarre forms, like the reverbed-to-hell-and-back wah riff that nudges the title track along), but just like aesthetic parallels Pagan Altar and Cirith Ungol, Black Hole are a vehemently original proposition, assertively esoteric like all the greatest occult metal.

Isolating individual highlights is a futile endeavor, as individual hymns are less effective when liberated from the grand corpus- the entire recording somewhat resembles Pagan Altar's “Volume 1” in the sense that it feels more like an austere black mass, a procession, than it does a musical product. Despondency and dolorousness does not appear to be high on the agenda here- don't come in expecting an overwrought, brooding affair dwelling on typically ‘'doom'' themes. Instead, the ghastly, yet bewitching pallor of the music can be attributed to the monodies of Robert, whose resolutely monochromatic, catechistic Black Priest chants give ritualistic thrust to the spellbinding, serpentine sermons. Each listen opens new vistas of the imagination, each song navigating you through the mould-infested, graven caverns of The Land Of Mystery. This is arcane evil given palpable form, one of the scariest, and paradoxically, one of the most absorbing listens you'll ever experience in heavy metal, the audio equivalent of, say, an “At The Mountains Of Madness”, a “Worms Of The Earth” or a “Shadow Out Of Time” (the catacombs of the latter story do come to mind when I put this on).

Appended to this outstanding reissue is their three song demo from 1985, a markedly different proposition from their unrelentingly sinister full-length, and a telling portrait of a band that would undergo a profound stylistic metamorphosis a few months later.The shades of Angel Witch, Blitzkrieg, Aragorn and Holocaust are far more prominent here- on the first two tracks the band adopt a far more linear, riff-oriented approach, entirely disparate from the devious, monomaniacally maleficent “Land Of Mystery”, and, all things considered, it is a bit underwhelming and meatheaded compared to such a monolithic achievement, and the sinewy speed metal is convincingly played, though not on par with, say, the faster fare from countrymen Death SS. The live take of “Spectral World”, by contrast, proves a delightful denouement to perhaps THE most crucial reissue of the past few years, Robert's nightmarish, skulking bass weaving a murderous path through the sparse drumming and gaping chasms of Iommi drone-guitar. True, Robert's vocals sound considerably thinner on record, and the recording tape skips throughout, but there is a pronounced, mesmeric spaciousness here that only suggests how spellbinding the Black Hole experience live.

I don't believe I need to devote much more effusive ranting to the magnificence of this album- no superlative-laden rambling can ever be commensurate to the effect this record will have on your life. Buy at all costs.

August 7th, 2007