Storm of the Light's Bane

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Storm of the Light's Bane
Dissection studio album

Publication
(s)

November 17, 1995

admission

17.-30. March 1995

Label (s) Nuclear Blast

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

Black metal , death metal

Title (number)

8th

running time

43 min 16 s

occupation

production

Dissection

Studio (s)

Unisound Studio

chronology
The Somberlain
(1993) 		Storm of the Light's Bane Reinkaos
(2006)

Storm of the Light's Bane is the second studio album by the Swedish black / death metal band Dissection . It was recorded in March 1995 at Unisound Studio and was released on November 17, 1995 on the German independent label Nuclear Blast . In reviews and the literature, the album is received mainly in connection with Black Metal. A clear assignment is not possible, because the music combines stylistic elements of both Black and Death Metal. The alternation between fast-played blastbeat passages and melodic guitar harmonies is characteristic of the album .

Emergence

prehistory

With the previous album The Somberlain , released by the Swedish label No Fashion Records, Dissection had already achieved considerable commercial success in 1993. The album reached five-digit sales. The band did not feel sufficiently supported by the label and the contract was only for a studio album. For this reason Dissection was initially without a record deal in 1994 and after the back catalog of No Fashion Records was taken over by their distributor House of Kicks, the band took care of the management and distribution of the album itself. Furthermore, the musicians began to write pieces for the second album.

In April 1994 rhythm guitarist John Zwetsloot left the band. Of the pieces later featured on the album, he had previously worked on the composition of Night's Blood and Retribution - Storm of the Light's Bane . On the same day Johan Norman was contacted, who had worked with Jon Nödtveidt on the black / death metal project Satanized. This appeared the following day and was accepted as an adequate replacement for Zwetsloot. Due to the success of The Somberlain , Dissection received an offer from the German independent label Nuclear Blast and was signed in November.

Recordings

Unisound studio logo

From March 17, 1995 the recording of the studio recordings took place in the Unisound Studio of Dan Swanö , which is referred to in the later liner notes to Storm of the Light's Bane with the alternative name Hellspawn Studio . Jon Nödtveidt produced the album on his own for the first time in order to be able to implement his musical ideas better, Swanö only acted as a sound engineer. The recordings were completed within two weeks by March 30th, which was mainly due to the good preparation of the band members. Musician friends were often guests during the recordings, some of whom can be heard on Storm of the Light's Bane : Erik “Legion” Hagstedt from Marduk contributed the backing vocals to Thorns of Crimson Death , Tony “IT” Särkkä from Abruptum contributed to the Unhallowed . The last track on the album No Dreams Breed in Breathless Sleep is a one and a half minute piano instrumental composed by Alexandra Balogh, which she contributed at Dissection's request.

Mixing the drums turned out to be a technical challenge during production, the sound of which was to be based on the Iron Maiden albums released in the first half of the 1980s , and Swanö required a new direction in recording technology. After completing the recordings, however, the band changed their preferences regarding the drum sounds again, this time to that of their friends, At the Gates , with whom Dissection shared the rehearsal room. This resulted in extensive post-processing for Swanö in order to achieve the drum sound that is characteristic of the album.

After completion, Dissection went on a three-day tour in Great Britain with Cradle of Filth and gave a few concerts in Sweden. In the summer of 1995, Jon Nödtveidt and Johan Norman joined the Misanthropic Luciferian Order (MLO) , which had recently been founded . As a result, Nödtveidt went through a rapid radicalization process. In September 1995 drummer Ole Öhman left the band. He has been replaced by Tobias Kellgren from Satanized.

publication

Nuclear Blast released Storm of the Light's Bane on November 17, 1995. The album was released on CD with a first edition of 15,000 copies and as a record with a first edition of 1000 copies in black and 500 in blue vinyl. In addition, a picture disc with a circulation of 1000 was released. Furthermore, Nuclear Blast released the mini-CD Where Dead Angels Lie in 1996 , which included the album version of the title track, its demo version and tracks that were previously only released in Japan as bonus tracks. The mini-CD was also released as a shape CD with an edition of 3000 copies. The album was advertised as belonging to the genre of death metal, but in contemporary reviews Storm of the Light's Bane was mostly referred to as a black metal album.

In 2002, Nuclear Blast released a new edition of the album as a digipak , as additional material the pieces from the mini-CD Where Dead Angels Lie were included. Nödtveidt said in Fanzine Slayer that the revised design of the first pressing of 5000 copies had not been approved by the band and that Nuclear Blast then took the copies off the market and provided them with an artwork approved by Dissection . The American label The End Records released Storm of the Light's Bane as a double CD in 2006 , the second CD contained an alternative mix of the album, demo versions of Night's Blood and Retribution - Storm of the Light's Bane and the pieces from the mini-CD Where Dead Angels Lie . In the 2010s, The End Records also released limited-edition records in various vinyl colors.

After its release, Dissection went on an album tour in December 1995 under the name World Tour of the Light's Bane through Europe and America.

Music and lyrics

Although Dissection never wanted their music to be qualified as pure Black Metal, Storm of the Light's Bane has significantly more musical elements of this style than the previous album The Somberlain . Nödtveidt emphasized the roots of Dissection in Death Metal, the band played "dark and evil Death and Black Metal" not according to the ideas of others, but according to their own ideas. The music is characterized by bombastic drumming and minor chords, as used by Norwegian black metal bands. Songs like Where Dead Angels Lie or Night's Blood also show the musical independence of Dissection and the still existing closeness to Death Metal . The guitar playing is a balanced alternation of guitar riffs accompanied by blast beats and quickly played guitar riffs and harmonic melodies, which are typical of Swedish Death Metal and audibly influenced by Iron Maiden . The pieces feature frequent changes in rhythm and tempo.

The texts, which are written in English, leave the listener room for interpretation. Nödtveidt said: “I don't want to explain them […], everyone should make their own thoughts about them. I think our music and the lyrics speak for themselves. ”According to Nödtveidt, the basic theme of all the lyrics is the darkness in the person they want to express. In an interview with the German fanzine Horror Infernal at the beginning of 1996, he explained the text concept of selected pieces. So be Where Dead Angels Lie a story about an angel who is being waged by evil powers into temptation, while the title track from the end of the world is acting as the end of the light. In a contemporary interview with Rock Hard , Nödtveidt stated that he did not associate a specific message with his lyrics, he let his own feelings and visions as well as his interest in occultism flow into his texts .

In 2002 Nödtveidt named Where Dead Angels Lie as the track on the album that he was most satisfied with. The lyrics later revealed things to him that he was not aware of when he wrote the song. In the 2003 Live Legacy booklet there are notes on the lyrics of the songs it contains. According to this, Retribution - Storm of the Light's Bane is supposed to promise "the final victory of the angry chaos and the anti-cosmic impulse over the stagnant, present cosmic state of order and its creator, the demiurge " and deal with how the creation will be dissolved and burned from within. Unhallowed is "a hymn to the mighty who knowingly venture out onto the burning path ". Thorns of Crimson Death is about the spiritual imprisonment in the cosmos as a result of the act of creation and the awakening from the illusion created by creation.

layout

Cover drawing for Storm of the Light's Bane
Kristian Wåhlin , 1995

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The cover was drawn by Kristian “Necrolord” Wåhlin . Wåhlin had played with members of At the Gates at Grotesque and had already done the cover for The Somberlain for Dissection . The drawing, kept in dark blue and black tones, shows death on horseback in a winter landscape. On the back there are portrait photos of the four band members, taken by the Gothenburg photographer Oscar Matsson.

reception

The contemporary reviews were mostly positive. Kai Wendel from the German music magazine Rock Hard noticed the lower proportion of Death Metal elements compared to the previous album and described Storm of the Light's Bane as "both musically and lyrically flawless Black Metal", as it contains all genre-typical elements such as fast-played parts and hymn melodies. According to Robert Müller of the German music magazine Metal Hammer , Dissection behaves towards the Norwegian black metal band Emperor “like a chamber orchestra to a great symphony with thundering kettledrums and burning churches. By no means quieter, but less pathetic, more committed to the small, technically appealing twists and turns in music. ”In 2007, the music journalist and author Martin Popoff criticized in his work The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 3: The Nineties for being too smooth, oriented towards Death Metal Production and sees the album as the blueprint for later releases by bands like Emperor , Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth . In his book Black Metal. Evolution of the Cult writes Dayal Patterson that with Storm of the Light's Bane Dissection has proven that both the songwriting and musical skills of the musicians have matured significantly, and he highlights the better and more straightforward sound of the album.

The album is listed in various leaderboards. In 2007 Rock Hard magazine ranked it 194 on its "list of the 500 strongest records of all time", and in 2009 Storm of the Light's magazine included Bane in the list of the most important pioneers of Black Metal. Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann described the album in a special by Rock Hard on the second wave of Black Metal as “the most important work in terms of melodic Swedish Black / Death Metal”, the band was “a pioneer as an actual part of the scene , but indispensable ”. However, Storm of the Light's Bane was not included in the list of the 25 most important Black Metal albums because, according to the editors, “ Morbid Angel , Deicide , Dissection, At The Gates, Grotesque and Co. […] are important pioneers / companions were, but are commonly counted as Death Metal ". The Encyclopaedia of Heavy Metal Music describes the album as a "brutal and monstrously evil Black Metal album". In Metal Hammer was Storm of the Light's Bane counted 2,011 of the essential albums of the years 1995 to 1998 and as "long overdue [r] hybrid of death and black metal: melodic, dark, fascinating" means.

Track list

Title list of the first publication
  1. At the Fathomless Depths ( Nödtveidt ) - 1:56
  2. Night's Blood (Nödtveidt / Zwetsloot ) - 6:41
  3. Unhallowed (Nödtveidt / Norman / Särkkä ) - 7:28
  4. Where Dead Angels Lie (Nödtveidt) - 5:53
  5. Retribution - Storm of the Light's Bane (Nödtveidt / Zwetsloot) - 4:51
  6. Thorns of Crimson Death (Nödtveidt / Norman) - 8:06
  7. Soulreaper (Nödtveidt / Norman) - 6:56
  8. No Dreams Breed in Breathless Sleep ( Alexandra Balogh ) - 1:26
Republication bonus pieces
  1. Where Dead Angels Lie (demo version) - 6:09
  2. Elisabeth Bathori (cover version of Tormentor ) - 5:04
  3. Anti Christ (cover version of Slayer ) - 2:45
  4. Feathers Fell (from the Japanese version of the album The Somberlain ) - 0:52
  5. Son of the Mourning (from the Japanese version of the album The Somberlain ) - 3:14

literature

  • Wolfgang Liu Kuhn: Dissection: Storm. Light. Curse . In: Rock Hard . No. 340 , September 2015, p. 36-38 .

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b Wolfgang Liu Kuhn: Dissection: Sturm. Light. Curse. P. 37.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Kai Wendel: No flowers, no pianos . In: Rock Hard . No. 104 , January 1996, p. 124 f .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Andrea Biagi: Biography Part One. The First Era. dissection.nu, archived from the original on October 5, 2003 ; accessed on September 9, 2015 .
  4. ↑ The Guestbooks. unisound.se, accessed on September 14, 2015 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Wolfgang Liu Kuhn: Dissection: Sturm. Light. Curse. P. 38.
  6. ↑ a b Janne Stark: The Heaviest Encyclopedia of Swedish Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Ever! Premium Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-91-89136-56-4 , pp. 231 .
  7. ^ A b Jon Kristiansen: Metalion. The Slayer Mag Diaries . Bazillion Points Books, Brooklyn NY 2011, ISBN 978-0-9796163-4-1 , pp. 570 .
  8. ^ A b c Daniel Ekeroth: Swedish Death Metal . Bazillion Points Books, Brooklyn, NY 2009, ISBN 978-0-9796163-1-0 , pp. 252 .
  9. ↑ Interview with Jon Nödveidt . In: Scream Magazine . No. # 27 , December 1995 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Interview with Jon Nödtveidt . In: Descent Vol. III . 1996 ( online ).
  11. ^ A b Dayal Patterson: Black Metal. Evolution of the Cult . Feral House, Port Townsend, WA 2013, ISBN 978-1-936239-75-7 , pp. 344 .
  12. ^ A b Hansi Daberger: DISSECTION: Storm Of The Light's Bane . In: Rock Hard (Ed.): Best of Rock and Metal . Heel-Verlag, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 978-3-89880-517-9 , pp. 142 .
  13. ^ A b Matthias Herr: The Black Metal Bible . Verlag Matthias Herr, Berlin 1998, p. 203 .
  14. ↑ Liner Notes on Dissection: Live Legacy. Live album, Nuclear Blast 2003.
  15. ^ Daniel Ekeroth: Swedish Death Metal. P. 222.
  16. ↑ Kai Wendel: Dissection . Storm of the Light's Bane. In: Rock Hard . No. 102 , 1995 ( rockhard.de [accessed September 2, 2015]).
  17. ^ Robert Müller: Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane . In: Metal Hammer . November 1995, p. 62 .
  18. ↑ Martin Popoff: The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 3: The Nineties . Collectors Guide Ltd, Burlington, Ontario 2007, ISBN 978-1-894959-62-9 , pp. 123 .
  19. ↑ The most important pioneers of Black Metal . In: Rock Hard . No. 269 , October 2009, p. 71 .
  20. ↑ Wolf-Rüdiger Mühlmann: Under the Sign of the Black Mark . The second generation of black metal. In: Rock Hard . No. 269 , October 2009, p. 82 .
  21. ↑ The 25 Most Important Black Metal Albums Of All Time . The view through black metal glasses. In: Rock Hard . No. 269 , October 2009, p. 94 .
  22. ^ William Phillips, Brian Cogan: Encyclopaedia of Heavy Metal Music . Greenwood Press, Westport, CT 2009, ISBN 978-0-313-34800-6 , pp. 75 .
  23. ^ Robert Müller, Matthias Weckmann: One speaks German . In: Metal Hammer . June 2011, p. 57 .
  24. ^ Robert Müller, Matthias Weckmann: One speaks German . In: Metal Hammer . June 2011, p. 56 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 26, 2016 .