Nightwish is back!

I'm taking a break from linking to my theater reviews to breathlessly gush about the new Nightwish song. Yes, Nightwish, ie the most grandiose band on Earth, is back at long last. New single "Storytime" was worth the wait: It's basically steroidal neo-romantic metal Abba! Clearly this song was written just for me.

Also, the video has evil clowns.

Mayhem in New York

Yesterday Mr. Night After Night and I attended Blackenedfest at Irving Plaza. Let's start with the disappointments. The minor one is that I missed Lair of the Minotaur because they played from 7:30pm to 7:50 and I arrived at something like 7:51. The major one is that Marduk cancelled at the last minute "due to unforeseen circumstances." And I had spent part of the day rehearsing my growlalong to "Panzer Division Marduk"! Seriously, I'd been really looking forward to finally catching the kvlt Swedes live and I was foiled again.

But Mayhem more than made up for it. I admit going mostly out of curiosity because I may have seen Emperor and Immortal, but it's Mayhem that's the alpha and omega of first-wave Norwegian black metal. The book Lords of Chaos? It's about them.

As it turns out, Mayhem was much more than a curio. The main asset was Attila Csihar, who replaced Maniac in 2004 and is a completely magnetic frontman. Clad in black monk-like robes, he emitted a volley of terrifying, barely human sounds that ranged from pig-like grunts to hellish shrieks. He also moved in an odd, stylized manner halfway between Martha Graham and kabuki. Couldn't be a more different vibe from Maniac's, and an improvement it was. Csihar was avant-garde from Hades.

Musically I felt as if I had stuck my head in an oil drum on which people repeatedly stomped. Drummer Hellhammer and bassist Necrobutcher, two original members, got huge applause from the crowd, while it took two tour guitarists, Morfeus and Silmaeth, to replace Blasphemer, who left the band last year. The whole thing was one massive gurgle, part buzzy and part grumbling. It was awesome.

Also awesome: the banners, the shrunken heads on spears, the fog, the strobes. In a word: the show!

Here's a short excerpt from our vantage point at the balcony. (Tip of the hat to Brooklyn Vegan's Paul Birman for the pic of Attila Csihar.)

Out of South Africa

Ian Bruce's Groundswell at the Acorn/Theatre Row, New York Post, May 19, 2009. (Tip of the hat once again to the Post's headline writers. These guys have earned their rep, believe me.)

Let's put Bruce's South Africa-set drama behind us, shall we? The important news is that there's only two days to go before Blackenedfest featuring Mayhem and Marduk! I'm still pondering my corpsepaint design. Suggestions?

Devil's horns time!

My guide to Bathory is up at eMusic. Oh what fun it was to do! I had to listen to something like 13 or 14 albums—it's all a metal-induced blur now—and I really can't say that I hated any of them, which is quite an achievement in itself. All right, so Quorthon's solo Album is pretty horrific but other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by how much Bathory's output holds up.

You may not know the hot cauldron of insanity that is Bathory if you're among those who read this blog either for the high-artsy stuff or for the textual analysis of Alphabeat lyrics. In brief, it was a Swedish one-man band (the one man being the aforementioned Quorthon) that was quite influential in the black and Viking subgenres of metal in the 1980s and 1990s. I dare hope that extreme-metal novices will enjoy my little guided tour and will feel inclined to sample some Scandi-style extremism.

Besides, how can you not love a man inspired by both Erica Jong and the Necronomicon?

Gaahl is out

Okay, we've just lost a lesbian character on TV, but we've also gained a badass, antisocial gay man! Gorgoroth's frontman Gaahl has come out in a German mag. Gorgoroth is one of my favorite classic-sounding Norwegian black-metal bands, so I find this news particularly exciting.

Gorgoroth—which has already been dubbed Gayrgoroth by hatas—is one of the most extreme bands in the BM scene. These guys don't go for fancy or proggy or folky: Just the old-school hate, m'am! Alas we'll probably never see them in the US because Gaahl has a police record and is unlikely to ever get a visa. Unless Obama's administration relaxes immigration restrictions for artists who have spent quality time in the clink.

Based on the interview, Gaahl's now happy—he had his first relationship last year at age 32, which may explain why he had been so crabby for the past, oh, 20 years—and has started designing clothes in addition to his musical career. I'm really curious to see what the next album is going to be like ’cause I'm just not sure Gaahl can sustain his previous levels of near-psychopathic intensity now that he's getting laid.

Kate Atkinson in the house

My review of Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? is in the new Time Out New York, as well as a preview of a metal extravangaza featuring Keep of Kalessin and Eluveitie, among others.

Eluveitie was the highlight of PaganFest a few months ago and a must-see live. It's pretty exciting that after over two decades and hundreds of gigs, a band can still come out of nowhere and make my jaw drop. I distinctly remember watching Eluveitie at BB King's and thinking "And I thought I'd seen it all…" Clearly not.

Atkinson's latest is one of my favorite books of the past few years. Too often I finish genre novels because something about the plot compels me to see how they end. It's a purely mechanical reflex and not much pleasure is derided from it. But Atkinson writes well, which has become so rare that it's almost miraculous.

Thank god for metal and books, which are distracting me from the American presidential campaign. Every time I think it can't get any crazier, it just does. Crazier, and more offensive, too: Just how fricking stupid does McCain think Americans are? The answer, my friends, is that he's absolutely right to bank on this country's stupidity. That there's still a large number of undecided people at this stage is just one more sad joke among others.

Which reminds me… A few days ago I got embroiled in a particularly insane conversation with a rep from my health insurance. We got stuck in a circular argument and there was no getting out of it because her logic made no sense. At a loss, I said, "But this is completely Kafkaesque!" She didn't know what it meant. Yet if there's one word American health-insurance reps need to know, it's Kafkaesque.

Live death

On Saturday night I saw enough death metal (at the Carcass-headlined show) to keep me sated for quite a while. Death is one of my least favorite metal subgenres because the songs get too samey for my taste (that's where you can tell I'm an amateur), and the so-called "technical" subsubgenre is beyond boring. That said, I actually spent a pretty good evening at Nokia, especially since I was able to snag a chair at the balcony and calmly read between sets (Richard Hughes' In Hazard, a wonderful 1939 novel about a steamship stuck in a mammoth hurricane).

First of all, I was wrong when I wrote that it would be a five-band bill: There were actually six—Rotten Sound, Aborted, 1349, Necrophagist, Suffocation and Carcass. But true to metal form everything was running super-smoothly and the show was on schedule from beginning to end: I left after an hour of Carcass and it was only 12:30am.

Of Rotten Sound and Aborted there is little to say: by-the-numbers death, and the most interesting thing was that Rotten Sound's singer had a weird quasi-Scottish burr even though he's Finnish.

I had loved 1349 when I saw them at BB's two years ago but last night's set was completely lackluster—it was like a different band altogether. The lone black-metal band on the bill, 1349 stuck out when they showed up in spikes and corpsepaint, which made for a refreshing change from the others' nondescript outfits. Alas, the guitar was weirdly low in the mix and the energy level was decidedly flagging. Not a kvlt night for the Norwegians.

Necrophagist is a very techy death band that looks and sounds like a side project from members of a science club. They all wore cargo pants (the 2008 geek's version of the pocket protector) and played guitars that had, like, 25 strings. Lots of crazy fretboard action—even the bassist did a little tapping interlude. Ugh. The highlight of Necrophagist's set: a ten-second quote from Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights" at the end of a song. It was completely random and pretty great.

Suffocation, on the other hand, showed you can be death and alive: These guys put on a hell of an old-school spectacle. It helps considerably that they have a real showman in singer Frank Mullen, who's often credited as one of the pioneers of the death growl but does a lot more onstage, whipping up the crowd between songs with earthy Long Island humor. (Suffocation also has two African-American members, drummer Mike Smith and guitarist Terrance Hobbs, which means the band has something like half of all the black musicians in death metal.)

My favorite thing about Carcass (other than they looked like they had stepped out of a vintage Sabbath video, with their flared jeans) was Bill Steer's guitar. He was playing a white Les Paul, an instrument you almost never see in extreme metal, which is all about axes that could poke your eye out if you just look at them the wrong way. In addition to a tone warmer than the brittle one more common in death, Steer and Mike Amott offered a unique combo of technical speed and catchy riffing. The latter is crucial because a lot of the death bands that followed in Carcass' wake just focused on the extreme technicity and forgot about the riff side, producing uncommonly sterile music. (An exception to my mind would be Nile, a super-techy band that's still entertaining because of its nutty obsession with Egyptian lore.)

None blacker

My profile of Ian Christe's new imprint, Bazillion Points, is in this week's TONY. You may know Christe as the author of the excellent history of metal Sound of the Beast, and it's great that he's now started publishing quality books about that still-derided genre.

Speaking of metal, the show not to miss this week (month? year?) is that of Carcass, whose reunion tour stops at Nokia tomorrow evening. My colleague Steve Smith previewed the gig in TONY, and I have little to add other than the headbanging catharsis will be greatly welcome. Also on the lengthy bill is black-metal outfit 1349, which I had quite enjoyed two years ago when it opened for Celtic Frost.

If it was any other kind of music I'd dread a five-band bill, but in my experience metal shows tend to be very well run: Bands stick to their alloted time and the changeovers don't take forever, as they do at indie gigs. There's a lesson there about something or other.

Folk on!

My preview of tonight's Paganfest at BB King's is out in Time Out New York. (Make sure to scroll down the piece to listen to streaming songs.) Seriously, this show cannot come fast enough! When the daily grind brings me down, nothing compares to a horde of folk-metal rockers to soothe my spirits. And tonight's selection is choice: Eluveitie, Tyr, Ensiferum and Turisas, all tops in their subgenre. This will be the perfect antidote to the boring little indie-scenesters in skinny jeans and Converses who crowd our stages. I'll be at at my regular BB spot, right behind the soundboard; drop by and say hello.

Also in TONY this week, a preview of a nifty little Aussie punk band named The Time of the Assassins, playing a trio of NYC shows this week and next.

This is hardcore

One of my favorite black-metal bands is Norway's Gorgoroth, fronted by a true-blue psychopath named Gaahl (that guy on the left). Alas, Gorgoroth is unlikely to ever play in the States, and there's two main reasons. One is that Gaahl has a police record, having spent time in the clink for assaulting a man; the other is that Gorgoroth's live show includes rather interesting props. Click on this link and admire photos from a gig in Oslo. Nude crucified people wearing hoods—makes Chris Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary made with elephant dung or Andres Serrano's Piss Christ look like Pat the Bunny, huh?

It's doubtful the band could ever get a visa to play in the US, except maybe…Here's a crazy idea: The Guggenheim or P.S 1 or some such institution should bring them over as an art project. Yes, that's it! Curators, if you're reading this please get on the horn! Otherwise New York fans will have to book a ticket for the Wacken Open Air festival in Germany, where Gorgoroth is scheduled to play this summer. Not a bad option, actually, considering this year's lineup also includes the Carcass and At the Gates reunions.

Gorgoroth "Wound Upon Wound" (from Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, 2007)
Gorgoroth "Untamed Forces" (from Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, 2007)

Phantom of the Nightwish

Yesterday evening, the Dilettante, her friend Tristan and a special representative from Night After Night trekked to Nokia, the serendipitously named—and located: half a block from the theater presenting Phantom of the Opera!—venue hosting Finnish band Nightwish.

The charms of Nightwish had eluded me for years. I just couldn't get into to the mix of power metal and operatic vocals. This all changed when the band unceremoniously kicked out singer Tarja Turunen, replaced her with a Swede with a pop background named Anette Olzon, and released the album Dark Passion Play. One listen and I was hooked. Actually I should specify: One listen to the first track, the 14-minute-long "The Poet and the Pendulum," and I was hooked. So many things I love are crammed into it: Abba and Metallica, Jim Steinman and Lord of the Rings, blastbeats and a ginormous orchestra. Also a singalong chorus, a Celtic gig interlude and a children's choir, because why not? ("Because why not?" is my favorite rationale for art.)

Nightwish "The Poet and the Pendulum" (from Dark Passion Play, 2007)

I'm sure Night After Night will comment on the musical side of the show so I'll just expand a bit on some side aspects. I can't remember, for instance, the last time I saw men sing along so lustily at a gig; I suppose the power riffage and brute drumming allow them to distance themselves from the fact that they're singing along to very pop choruses. Still, it was impressive to watch all those dudes mouthing long stretches of verbose lyrics.

Another surprising thing was the band's amiable stage presence. Mastermind Tuomas Holopainen played the part of tortured artiste to the hilt behind his keyboards, but the rest looked very happy to be there, particularly guitarist Emppu Vuorinen. It was actually a bit jarring at times, considering the lyrical content ("I cannot die, I, a whore for the cold world," etc.). I'll quote Tristan's suggestions for Anette:
- Avoid smiling. We realize that given your genetic and ancestral makeup this may be impossible. In that case, perhaps a black veil could be considered, maybe one decorated with silver spiderwebs.
- Do not wave happily at audience members. Try instead to look malevolent and resigned.
- Please avoid making any gesture whose meaning is “I encourage you to applaud!” Instead, gestures in the category of prayer, anguish or ritual sacrifice could be substituted. We can provide helpful examples for you to emulate. You can also fold your arms Pharaoh-style.

You can tell Tristan regularly goes to the Met.

Letting me down gently

I'm finally getting to dealing with the long-awaited weekend, which has come and gone. Did it measure up to my expectations?

My colleague Steve Smith wrote about last Friday night's Immortal show on his blog, and I agree with pretty much everything, including the pungency of the air in the venue and the observation that "the band got the job done." To me, the show lacked that intengible bit of ooomph that would have made it transcendent. (It didn't help that after a while, Abbath starts sounding like a burping toad.) Let's put it this way: It was good, but it wasn't evil, the way 1349 was a few months ago.

The audience was also red-hot with eager anticipation—but easier on the nose—the following night at City Center. The subtitle of the evening might as well have been: The Best Musical Ever with the Star Who Was Born to Be in It. In other words, we were there to see Patti LuPone play Mama Rose in Gypsy.

My colleague Adam Feldman raves about the show in TONY, and I agree with quite a few of his observations (especially how great Laura Benanti is). But to me the production misses transformative transcendence by a mile. Some of it has to do with the insane level of expectation, something I was as guilty as everybody else. But there's no helping Arthur Laurents' perfunctory staging. It's a textbook illustration of the fact that being close to the material—and Laurents, who wrote Gypsy's book, is as close as can be—may not be a good thing when it comes to translating it to the stage.

Here's what I'd love to see but never will, or at least not while Laurents is alive, and not until New York producers grow some balls: Go dark on Gypsy. And I don't mean call Sam Mendes—no, go real dark and give the show to Ivo van Hove or Thomas Ostermeier. Let them dynamite Gypsy to reveal the negative force that sucks everything into its ashen vortex: Let Rose be a real monster, without sugarcoating her by unearthing flickering embers of warmth or suggesting that deep inside she does mean well.

When Baby June grows up and still does her same old kiddie number, Rose should be the selfish, manipulative creator of a creepy adult JonBenet. When the troupe ends up at the burlesque house, the strippers should be run-down hags shooting heroin, and when Rose pimps out Louise to a stripping career, it should look like a mother selling her daughter into white slavery.

Gypsy should be more than drama, for in that case drama is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down for wimpy theatergoers. No, Gypsy should be staged like the tragedy it really is. And I say, bring it on!

Two great tastes

At last, I've secured a ticket for the event of the summer: Patti LuPone's Gypsy. And the show falls the day after another much-awaited gig, that of Norwegian black-metal legend Immortal. A better one-two punch I could not have dreamed of. (I don't think I need directionals for the photos, though I did choose one of the young Patti.)

For years, fans of both Gypsy and LuPone—and the singer herself, for that matter—have known she was born to play Mama Rose. Let's not get into details of interest mostly to show-tune freaks, and simply say that a long-running feud among some of the personalities involved led us to think the project would never happen. We got an inkling that things may be about to change when LuPone did a concert version at Ravinia last year, but there's still no way to describe the tremors that sent Chelsea seismographs into a seizure when it was announced that not only would LuPone perform Mama Rose at City Center for three weeks in July, but that the production would be directed by the book's author, the notoriously persnickety Arthur Laurents. So that's I'm-so-there show number one.

Show number two is the reunion of Immortal, which embodies classic, corpepainted Norwegian black metal. Never mind that it managed three entries (including a solo shot by guitarist-vocalist Abbath) in the Top Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time: The trio has released one of my favorite BM albums, the surprisingly catchy Sons of Northern Darkness. The band last played New York (at Wetlands!) back in 2002, when that album came out, then split. Fortunately it is now understood by everybody that splits are not permanent, so Immortal is back and playing NYC on July 13 at, of course, BB King's.

Now, my love for show tunes and black metal may seem strange at first, but think about it: Both genres celebrate alternate universes in which heightened emotions rule, and where theatricality is so integrated into the discourse as to become absolutely normal. It's indie rock, that paramount of individual expression (ha!) that turns into a stylistic straitjacket when compared to these two genres, ruled as it is by stultifying normalizing parameters that enforce prevailing social codes instead of undermining them, as common wisdom would have it (rock is supposed to be rebellious, right?).

Men with long, silky hair rule

I was bummed to miss Dimmu Borgir's show at Nokia—and I'm even more bummed now that I've read Steve Smith's account. Steve is dead right about the fact that hipsters tend to laugh at bombastic black metal and prefer BM when it's recorded on hissy 4-track by misanthropic loners with mommy issues. But while I do enjoy the latter subgenre, particularly when oozing out of Burzum, Draugar, Leviathan or Xasthur's nether regions, there's no denying that over-the-top BM is giddily enjoyable, as theatrically satisfying as classic disco and an evening at the Met. I particularly love reading liner notes that include references to recording with the Riga Symphony or whatever former communist orchestra is paying the bills by backing—through gritted teeth—metallers with Wagnerian ambitions.

At least a fair number of great metal bands is due to visit us: Celtic Frost opens for Type O Negative at Irving Plaza next week; a scary-looking bill including Watain and USBMers Nachtmystium hits BB King's on May 14; Immortal is at BB's July 13, followed there ten days later by Mayhem (not crazy about Attila Csihar being back at the mike but that's not reason enough for spurning an opportunity to see Mayhem) and by Taiwan's Chthonic on August 21. You could also add Emperor (June 1) to the list, though I saw them last year and don't feel a pressing need to repeat the experience, good as it was.

And while I'm on the metal tip, the label/distributor Ledo Takas, from Vilnius, now takes PayPal, considerably easing up the purchase of extreme music from the Baltic and Eastern European countries. I have a soft spot for Estonia's Loits and Obtest, a Lithunian outfit that delivers emphatic "war metal" (with, alas, the dubious politics that tend to accompany that genre).

Now wait a minute!

See these guys on the left? They played Roseland Thursday night, except for some reason they were never mentioned in the New York Times' review of the show. The very first sentence announced "a very strong triple bill"—Machine Head, Trivium and headliner Lamb of God. Poor, poor Gojira, who went on first and completed what actually was a very strong quadruple bill.

Reviewer Kelefa Sanneh also described "the most discordant moment of the night" as when the crowd responded to Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe's injunction to "Give it up for Trivium!" with a mix of applause and boos. But an equally discordant moment had happened earlier, when the French Quartet That Wasn't There was greeted with boos, raised middle fingers and shouts of "Fuck you, Frenchmen!"—I know, 'cause some of the eloquent meatheads were standing right next to me.

Gojira proceeded to shut those morons up with a blistering set played at top volume. (And the sound was crystal-clear, in contrast to Machine Head, which played equally loudly but with a muddled balance that made me feel as if the double kick drum was positioned right behind my eyeballs.) There's a reason Gojira was on the cover of Terrorizer a few months ago: Its latest album, From Mars to Sirius, is a massive slab of prog-death metal (with environmentally aware lyrics, natch), and live the band was pulverizingly heavy, like Mastodon without the dumb facial hair. Randy Blythe seemed to think so too: He joined Gojira onstage for half a song.

MP3 Gojira "Backbone" from From Mars to Sirius (2005)

Hate in a cold climate

Let's take a break from the wild cabaret stylings of Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches (which I saw for a third time on Saturday night) in order to focus on a particularly unholy week: The old-school black metallers in Dark Funeral and the fierce proggy Vikings of Enslaved land at BB King's for a Scandi double whammy on Wednesday 10, while Northsix shows that America can throw a mighty punch as well by hosting a seriously scary evening of domestic brutality that includes Southern Lord signees Lair of the Minotaur and cultish BM band Krieg on Saturday, January 13.

To get in the mood, here's a selection of MP3s by some favorite underground extremists, harvested from various European fields. Think of it as Travel + Leisure for the maleficent set.

I find extreme metal makes for invigorating listening, which some may find odd considering it's a genre dedicated to nihilism and eeeevil. But the sheer intensity and ultra-dense texture of these sonic tapestries is unparalleled; the listening experience is very tactile. And I realize I may torpedo whatever cred I have left by writing this, but this stuff also works great at the gym. The crazy-fast BPMs would get anybody going on the treadmill, and the looks from people next to you hearing the primitive shrieks bleeding through the earphones? Priceless.

England's Anaal Nathrakh pretty much laid down the rules for the necro subgenre on its debut, The Codex Necro. The duo plays some of the most stomach-churningly violent music I've ever heard, and its latest, Eschaton, shows no sign of slack. I reviewed it for TONY a few weeks ago, and here's a taste:
MP3 Anaal Nathrakh "The Necrogeddon" from Eschaton (2006)

France, where metal and hard rock had always faltered, has recently emerged as a rather fertile ground for mysterious—even by BM's standards—combos that take black metal in unpredictable, often experimental directions, making the Scandis sound like the nerd squad in a John Hughes comedy. Hailing from the darken lands of Normandy and Burgundy, as well as the hellhole known as Paris, I give you Malcuidant, Arkhon Infaustus and Blut aus Nord.
MP3 Malcuidant "…et la complainte se tut…" from L'Hymne de la Ghilde (2005)
MP3 Arkhon Infaustus "Epsilon: Saturn Motion Theology" from Perdition Insanabilis (2004)
MP3 Blut aus Nord "The Howling of God" from The Work Which Transforms God (2003)

The aforementioned Enslaved is only the top of the Viking metal iceberg (so to speak). Good thing that the field's crowded, too, because frankly you can never have enough albums hatched in forges by burly men claiming to be inspired by valkyries and ice-covered paganism. Speaking of ice, deaths in extreme metal are known to be pretty dramatic: Musicians die of exposure, or they fall from a bridge and break their neck on a frozen river—which at least isn't as bad as allegedly eating your dead bandmate's brain.

Tyr comes from the Feroe Islands and offers a melodic, almost dreamy, folk-inspired version of the Viking genre; the production values are relatively high as well, which seems to be a folk-metal trademark (think of Estonia's Metsatöll or the grandiose Finntroll). On the other hand, take Graveland, hailing from the well-known Viking province of, er Poland, with a big grain of salt. The band aims for the majestic with no small success but it's a really good thing we can't understand what they sing about—in interviews leader Darken espouses the kind of stupefyingly dumb theories sadly common in a certain black-metal fringe, eg Burzum et al., and among such Neofolk and industrial outfits as Death in June and Der Blutharsch. The power of the music is hard to deny; the politics stink to high heaven.
MP3 Tyr "Olavur Riddararos" from Eric the Red (2003)
MP3 Graveland "Prayer for My Ancestors" from Fire Chariot of Destruction (2005)

Similar ethical issues emerge with the Ukraine's Drudkh, though its take on Slavic pride is a lot more literate—the lyrics to The Swan Road are influenced by the work of 19th-century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.
MP3 Drudkh "Eternal Sun" from Lebedynyy Shlyakh: The Swan Road (2005)

Finally, a short trip across the Mediterranean to Israel and Tangorodrim—hey, if Israel can compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, I can include it in a post about European extreme metal. The band's latest is on Southern Lord, ensuring easy access in the US at least.
MP3 Tangorodrim "Bestial Scent" from Unholy and Unlimited (2006)

And speaking of the US, Americans aren't well known for BM (or Viking metal for that matter) but there are exceptions, and they tend to be one-man bands like Xasthur, Leviathan and my favorite of all, rehtaF ruO. Hailing, I believe, from Florida, [edit: as it turns out, San Antonio, TX] rehtaF ruO has made a demo CD and one proper album, Boiled in Goat Blood, a monument of paradigmatic bedroom metal. The entire thing is terrifying, a mess of lo-fi hisses, buzzes and inhuman screams, but this track has got to be the worst of all.
MP3 rehtaF ruO "Child Sacrifice" from Boiled in Goat Blood (2000)

Enjoy!