BLUT AUS NORD’S 777 – SECT(S): NOT QUITE A REVIEW

Technically, summer isn’t over until September 23. But to hell with that! Days are gonna get shorter, the weather’s gonna get cooler, and everyone will soon celebrate the birth of the one true me. So there’s really no point in hanging on to the last vestiges of summer. Good-bye and good riddance. What better way to hail the moodiest season of them all than with some Blut Aus Nord?

The French “avante-garde” black metal band are, admittedly, a little full of themselves. Refusing to be lumped with other, more popular black metal acts, who they refer to as — and this is the best line ever — “childish Satanic clowns.” Wait, does this make them the original black metal hipsters, then? Oh well. Despite that, I still like them. I didn’t get to listen to 777 – Sect(s) until quite recently, and if I’d heard it sooner, I would’ve considered putting it on my year’s best so far list.  It has everything I’d expect in a Blut Aus Nord record; lots of reverb and that glorious industrial influence that I always appreciate in music, whatever the genre.

And yet, 777 – Sect(s) is a little lackluster, especially compared to some of their earlier stuff.

Considering I first heard about Blut Aus Nord was when I was a dumb college student, I guess it makes sense that I’m no longer frothing at the mouth to rave about their dissonant melodies, and how they’re miles ahead of all their contemporaries, etc. I’m a lot wiser and, thankfully, a lot less pretentious (I thought that “Devilish Essence” was the creepiest thing I’d ever heard, and went on to use it in every film project I did in school). However, this is the first album in a trilogy, with the second, 777 – The Desanctification, coming out in November, and the third, 777 – Cosmosophy, probably shortly after. Perhaps it’ll be a bigger kick altogether?

Holding off on rating right now.

-LF