1349
‘Winter Mass’
Season Of Mist

After nearly 30 years and eight full-lengths, I suppose it’s about time that 1349 finally got around to issuing a legit live album – don’t think 2009’s bootleggy ‘Maggot Fetus … Teeth Like Thorns’ really counts and 2011’s ‘Hellvetia Fire – The Official 1349 Bootleg’ was a DVD-only proposition. Most of the band’s Norwegian black metal peers and contemporaries have been offering live collections for decades – and some (DIMMU BORGIR, MAYHEM, EMPEROR, etc.) have built entire catalogs that include performances with orchestras, full-album run-throughs and such.

But 1349 has been a stickler for “purity” since the get-go. And while that term gets bandied about a lot in black metal circles – often as justification for uber-crude “true” black metalprojects – 1349 has largely stuck to the basics over the years, albeit with a cast of unquestionablyproficient musicians. The one tangent was 2009’s experimental ‘Revelations of the Black Flame,’ PINK FLOYD covers and all, from which the band soon course corrected.

‘Winter Mass’ presents 1349 in its, well, purest, form:live, unbridled and uncompromising.Recorded on the band’s home turf in Oslo, at the historic Parkteatret, the album offers an hour-plus of 1349in its feral element and largely unadorned. There are no orchestras or choirs or female guest vocalists here – though session guitarist Destructhor (MYRKSKOG/ODIUM, ex-MORBID ANGEL) joins the quartet to add backbone to the live sound, especially during the sporadic hooky segments or Archaon’s surprisingly lithe lead breaks.

Instead, fueled by the blast-powered clatter ofFrost’s impeccable, superhuman drumming and frontman Ravn’s acerbic snarl, ‘Winter Mass’ is all about raw black metal fury. “Enter Inferno” provides an aptly titled intro to the proceedings – which at certain venues might include Frost and/or Archaon actually breathing fire – as the band then unleashes its self-described “aural hellfire” with “Sculptor of Flesh” and rarely relents, even though the set comprises a rather epic track list.

After the short, sharp shots of “Slaves” and “Through Eyes Of Stone,” the songs grow more expansive, highlighted by the seven-minute“Chasing Dragons”and finale “Abyssos Antithesis” and the 8:17 sprawl of “Atomic Chapel,” which iscontrasted by the 1:38 blitzkrieg of “Golem” that precedes it. Yet even as the songs stretch out, the intensity level remains as 1349 forgoes atmospherics, save for a few short intros, for forward motion.

“Cauldron,” “Striding the Chasm” and “I Am Abomination”are utterly relentless, while “Dodskamp” pushes, pulls and leaps like a mad dog on a leash. And though “Serpentine Sibilance” does offer most of the album’s sustained deliberate moments, it is punctuated by Frost’s roiling battery and eventually sheds its martial stride in favor of an all-out sprint to the finish.

In a live environment, 1349 provides enough atmosphere by its sheer presenceanyway: the lanky Ravn with his bat-like corpse paint, stalking the stage adorned inspiked arm bands and trademark Hell Hammer T-shirt, brooding bassist Seidemann in his monk’s cloak, Archaonwith his windmill of blond hairand the tornado of percussion from Frost or whomever might be sitting in for him if he is otherwise indisposed with SATYRICON – and, if you’re lucky enough, the aforementioned fire-breathing. And while the spectacle may be lost in the audio-only limitations of alive album, that presence is certainly felt in the unceasing menace of the music and sheer vehemence of 1349’s delivery.

3.5 Out Of 5.0