ANUBI

The Scandinavian nations clearly dominated the 90s black metal scene when it seemed like even every small village in Lapland had its own church burning miscreants sonically torturing souls with their bombastic distortionfests, however they weren't the only game in town. While different strains of black metal began to splinter with acts like Summoning from Austria excelling in symphonic atmospheric varieties and Greece's Rotting Christ mustering up a more rawer evil form, the Eastern European block had its share of interesting bands that still remain obscure even today. While the tiny former Soviet nation of Lithuania hardly comes to mind in any contemporary music scene, it too had a few nuggets to share with the world however with the glut of music pouring from every nook and cranny of the world by the turn of the millennium, it's no wonder this little nation got drowned out.

One of the more interesting extreme metal acts to emerge from this tiny nation on the Baltic was the Kaunas based ANUBI. The band was formed as far back as 1992 by guitarist Slrp and his drummer / brother Renofer who were initially more interested in psychedelic music than metal but that all changed when the eccentric vocalist Lord Ominous a.k.a. Ptah (Martynas Meskauskas) joined the band. With a penchant for the more extreme and noisy varieties of music the band was attracted to the darkness and vitality of the burgeoning black metal scene across Europe. After a few demos where they developed their strange mix of black metal mixed with various musical genres such as progressive rock, dark ambient, jazz and homegrown Lithuanian folk music, the band crafted their one and only album KAI PILNATIES AKIS U?MERKS MIRTIS "When Death Will Close The Eyes To The Full Moon."

In many ways ANUBI were the black metal answer to Slovenia's Devil Doll. With a dramatic flair for musical variety augmented with the charismatic singer Lord Ominous, ANUBI still remains a rather unique stylistic approach in a sector of the metal universe that has seemingly splintered into every conceivable direction. With black metal as its musical template KAI PILNATIES AKIS U?MERKS MIRTIS is a hard beast to nail down otherwise as it is the exemplary example of experimentation and creativity so absent from much of what was called black metal in the 90s. With raspy vocals, heavy distorted guitar riffs and an overall darkened vibe, it's tempting to file ANUBI in the black metal camp, but it seems that there are more non-metal elements than the metal itself. Some tracks eschew the metal altogether in favor of a psychedelically tinged version of local folk music.

In its near one hour wake KAI PILNATIES AKIS U?MERKS MIRTIS finds the most unlikely elements blended into the metal madness. The guitar riffs find themselves accompanied by trippy slide guitars, a psychotic ukulele, a demon possessed saxophone and even an angry accordion not to mention a plethora of field recordings and a vibrant violin. Unlike the blastbeat fueled anti-Christian fury of bands like Darkthrone, ANUBI drift along in a mid-tempo march through atmospheric sound factories that create a more contemplative and dreamy (albeit hellish at times) stroll through the darkened woods. Reminding me of more contemporary bands like France's Penseé Nocturnes," ANUBI could possibly be the first black metal band to implement a darkened cabaret aesthetic with the drunken piano rolls that find their way into tracks such as "Kai Pilnaties Akis U?merks Mirtis."

The album is all the more mysterious since the tracks and the lyrics are in the Lithuanian language which along with neighboring Latvian exist in their own language family and remain defiantly distant from their closest Indo-European cousins. If i were to tag this myself, i'd call this psychedelic black metal because it's one of the trippiest black metal releases i've ever heard. The atmospheric touches are thick and sinister, the guitars while heavily distorted are rather nonchalant in their delivery and basically provide a black metal canvass to paint the myriad sonic elements upon. While the occasional organs and chanting can give a liturgical feel to the overall sound, this is never more true on the closing "Tarp Akmens Ir Veidrod?io" which creeps over the 15 minute mark making it the progressive highlight of the album and where the most obvious comparisons with Devil Doll take place.

For black metal purists, this must've have been unholy blasphemy as ANUBI adhered to no orthodoxies of the day but merely took elements from across the musical spectrum and copy and pasted where it was seen fit. It would certainly be more appropriate to label KAI PILNATIES AKIS U?MERKS MIRTIS as a dark psychedelic album with black metal as one of its ingredients as it drifted too far away to satisfy the tunnel vision antics of the status quo and while i'll readily admit that i wish the album was significantly heavier at times to create some sort of extreme contrast, i cannot deny that ANUBI crafted one of the most unique metal albums of the entire 90s that comes off as some sort of demonic opera or a gothic graveyard anthem. While the balance between atmospherics and metal may lean more towards the former, it does work quite well. Unfortunately the band would come to an end with the tragic death of the irreplaceable Lord Ominous who drowned while fishing on Lake Michigan in the USA in 2002. While the band never would release another album, this one little artifact is a must for lover's of the avant-garde with metal touches.

Who would have expected a record like this in 1997 from a tiny country as Lithuania? This might be one of the very first avant-garde/progressive metal records ever... I'm not yet really into the genre (right now, I only listen to Negură Bunget and Thy Catafalque, apart from Anubi), but I'm quite sure that not many bands have been able to push forward so many boundaries. Still, the lone full length record of this Lithuanian duo (once again I'm reminded of Thy Catafalque because of the duo formula) is a criminally underrated one (and I mean criminally).

The music is incredibly eclectic, not only featuring the classic, popular mixture of black (and doom?) metal and dark ambient, but also showcasing then-unknown-to-the-genre melodies: spacious, eastern-tinged, even folksy ones, along with unexpected riffs, flashes, interludes, covering a wide range of genres and influences; also, instruments never heard before on a black metal album (namely, saxophone and accordion) are employed. What comes to my mind while listening to the record is a painted-face, long haired North European druid/alchemist wearing a mad scientist-like white coat, cutting and stitching random fragments of every kind of music. You have even short pieces of about 3 minutes in length with so many changes in mood, style, tempo, etc. that it would take an entire review to describe them! You also have some more atmospheric pieces, such as "Ir Saulë Neteko Savo Pusës Veido", which would be an excellent part of a soundtrack for a dark fantasy movie.

The charisma of vocalist/leader Lord Omnious (R.I.P.) dominates the whole record: we hear occult ritual-like chanting (sometimes, as in the opening track "Savo Kelyje", I'm reminded even of Magma - Lithuanian language is a very ancient one, as it has plenty of words coming from ancient Greek and Sanskrit... as weird as Kobaian? Maybe...), alongside black metal vocals, which sometimes, as in "Á Naujà Galybæ", happen to be almost melodic... how strange!

Multi-instrumentalist Sadlave's guitar, bass and programming are the real body of the record. I really love the guitar riffs and arpeggios here, as well as how the bass interacts with them: forget about a bass being buried under hundreds of guitar layers, it's quite often almost louder than the guitar and it doesn't merely follow the riffs or the insane programmed drums (I would have never thought they were programmed percussions if I hadn't read it), but it comes to the forefront, doing also some nice slapping in tracks such as "Kai Pilnaties Akis Uþmerks Mirtis"... how could just one man come up with 3 totally different conceptions for 3 different instruments, making them sound as they are played by 3 different musicians? This man is simply a genius, haven't got any other answers.

Keyboardist Lady Sleep is far from symphonic/atmospheric black metal stereotypes: you hear a wide array of keyboards and styles ranging from funeral and dissonant organ to Keith Tippet-like piano [sic], dark, moody, atmospheric drones (check out the 15-minutes "droney" epic "Tarp Akmens Ir Veidrodþio"), almost-sci-fi key sounds, lush strings, random weird key sounds and more.

Some sax and accordion flourish here and there, as additional sparks of madness along the whole record.

Sound-wise, the production is quite raw, but since you can literally hear everything, and nobody would expect a first-rate production from an avant-garde black metal album, I don't give a damn!

My final rate is five stars, considering how this record was really ahead of its times and how it still sounds fresh and full of ideas.