666 INTERNATIONAL

666 International is the third studio album from norwegian experimental extreme metal band Dødheimsgard. Their first two albums were pretty raw and simple black metal with eighties thrash tendencies but it was with their Satanic Art EP from 1998 that the experimentation began ( I can recommend that one). On 666 International the transformation from primitive black metal to intelligent experimental extreme metal is finished. This will probably be their crowning achivement as the standard they set with this album will be very hard to beat. I have listened a lot to their latest album Supervillain Outcast which is a masterpiece just like 666 International, but I think 666 International is just a notch better.

The music is very experimental. There are elements from black metal, industrial noises, eighties thrash metal ( the most evident influence is Voivod) and psychadelia. A really exciting mix. The songs generally have lots of sections and moods which means that this music is very challenging. It´s also very inaccessible and demands your full attention for the first many listens. It´s taken me 8 years to learn to appreciate, so be patient if you dislike it on the initial listen, you might like it after 50 listens. All I can say is that my patience was fully rewarded and 666 International is one of my favorite albums today.

Shiva Interfere starts the album with some horror movie piano that soon gives way to some intense blasting. This intro is over in about 20 seconds and then starts the real song. Aldrahn sings with his tortured vocals over some spacy acoustic guitar and electronic/ industrial sounds. The song changes multible times through the 9+ minutes of playing time.

Ion Storm is a really extreme song in every way possible. The drumming is extremely fast. Hyper blast beats played at the speed of light. It´s so intense I almost lose my breath. The song has a symphonic feel to it even though it´s so extreme. Again Aldrahn delivers some really diverse tortured vocals.

Carpet Bombing is a short horror movie piano piece which comes just at the right time to soothe my ears after the almost unbearably fast and brutal Ion Storm ( In my world this is a positive thing).

Regno Potiri is the longest song on 666 International with it´s 10:19 minutes. The song is very diverse and you have everything from industrial sounding parts to primitive punk like black metal parts to piano parts. Everything controlled by Aldrahn´s sublime vocal delivery.

Final Conquest is a very heavy song with some very distinct percussion drums. There are some very symphonic keyboards in some of the sections while there are also lots of shrieking industrial noises towards the end of the song. A classical inspired piano section is also present in the middle of the song. Allthough this is not my favorite here, it´s still a masterpiece of experimental extreme metal.

Logic is like Carpet Bombing a short classical horror movie piano piece that is a breather in between the mayhem that is Dødheimsgard´s music.

Sonar Bliss starts rather fast paced with blast beats but the song has many moods and sections including a pretty psychadelic guitar piece. There are some pretty exciting programmed sounds in Sonar Bliss that I enjoy very much. Sonar Bliss is a perfect examble of how diverse and powerful Dødheimsgard´s music is. But at the same time it´s also a reminder of how difficult, challenging and inaccessible their music can seem to outsiders.

Magic is another B-horror movie theme played by the piano and it is equally as pleasant or creepy ( whatever suits you) as Carpet Bombing and Logic.

Completion is the last real song on 666 International. It´s a very electronic song. It starts with extremely noisy blastbeating but soon seques into more industrial noisy parts. This might be the most experimental song on the album and the most noisy one too. It shows once again that Dødheimsgard is willing to experiment with genres and sounds.

666 International actually consists of 66 tracks and while the first nine is credited on the sleeve there are 56, 1 to 2 second silent tracks. Track number 66 is an 11 minute track which is actually pretty good. There is only music for the first minute and a half though. I must say that this part of the album is the only flaw on 666 International. I hate these endings where you have to wait for the last song. I guess I should take the last song as a kind of bonus.

The musicianship is outstanding and pretty unusual. Aldrahn, Vicotnik, Apollyon and Czral has this time around enlisted Mr. Magic Logic (Svein Egil Hatlevik) on keyboards and piano. It´s a great addition to Dødheimsgard and Mr. Magic Logic gives the music much of it´s eerie mood. The man has lots of unpleasant carts up his sleeve. He did appear for the first time on the Satanic Art EP from 1998 where his presence was also heavily felt.

The production is masterfully done. It has the thin black metal guitar sound but the layers of drums, industrial keyboard noises and tortured vocals in the music is extremely well emphasised in the mix and brings out the most dark and unpleasant atmosphere you´ll ever hear on any album.

666 International can best be described as the soundtrack to Hell or at least a journey into the twisted mind of obscurity, depression, despair and extreme anger. I understand that it is not all people who would want to expose themselves to this kind of torture ( but what beautiful torture it is) like it´s not everyone who turns on to sadomasocistic sex or other extreme things in life. But the ones who do like some extreme niche in life will know what I ´m talking about. Sometimes it´s just the most ugly beast that turns out beautiful. 666 International is one of the most revolutionizing experimental metal albums in the last 10 years and I love every twisted minute of it. This is a sure 5 star album. Highly recommended to people into experimental extreme metal ( not tech metal). This is THE essential album in that genre.

'666 International' - Dodheimsgard (7/10)

With their third album, the Norwegian black metal outfit Dodheimsgard vastly changed up their sound. Dabbling with experimentation on the 'Satanic Art' EP, the stage was set for the band to achieve a very distinct sound; one that would merge industrial music and orthodox black metal in a style that had never been heard before. In this case, '666 International' is certainly a historically relevant album in the development of black metal, but as a musical listening experience, it can be a bit of a bumpy ride. Now over a decade old, Dodheimsgard's work here still sounds as bizarre as it ever has, but as befalls most pioneers, their experimentation isn't a complete success all the way through. No matter though, because for what its worth, what does work for the band is absolutely incredible.

'Ion Storm' is a fine example of what '666 International' is about; entering with a shout, an industrial beat, and about as generic of a black metal riff as they come. Hearing black metal paired with other, seemingly alien sounds is a bit jarring at first, but by the end of the first track, there is a feeling that it is certainly more than a gimmick, although multiple listens are required for it to really sink in. This grand experiment between the harsh percussion of industrial music and black metal is broken up by a couple of jazzy piano pieces, which ironically turn out to be the best composed pieces of work on the whole album. While I am no stranger or detractor to metal or experimental metal, Dodheimsgard's piano pieces are so well done and beautifully arranged, that they are more enjoyable to listen to than the somewhat mixed impression that the avant-garde aspect gives. 'Carpet Bombing' is about as beautiful as jazz piano gets, and I would love to hear an entire album that sounds just like that.

Dodheimsgard's heavy aspects isn't as simple as merely pairing industrial and black metal; there are nuances here that really help the somewhat lacking flow. The band works some magic by throwing in Opeth-esque mellow breakdowns and sometimes even danceable electronica right next to crushing black metal riffs. The contrast is- once again- rather disconcerting for a first timer, but it is indeed excellent. The avant-garde parts sometimes use some electronic aspects that feel a little out of place (even taking to heart the experimental nature) but the only real weakness here are the vocals, which are often layered with strange phaser effects and mixed far too highly in the record. This can lead to the flimsy sprechzegang performance becoming irritating, especially due to the fact that it is almost working against the really interesting instrumental aspect of the album.

'666 International' must still be lauded for its great ambition, although it cannot be said that all of the aspects that Dodheimsgard works with here work entirely well. All the same, a very refreshing album, especially when put into its context.

At first listen I wasn't too impressed with Dødheimsgard's 666 International. The opening seemed to me to combine not particularly compelling industrial metal with not particularly compelling black metal, with poor vocals over the top of it. But over the course of listening to the album, these disparate elements got drawn together closer and closer, until a proper fusion was achieved by the time the magnificent Sonar Bliss and Completion were reached. On the whole, I respect Dødheimsgard's achievement here and think overall this is a very good album, though I do still kind of feel that the opening track is a little weak and off-putting.

For my 666th review! Sorry Aphrodite's Child :)

This is where things really got weird for DØDHEIMSGARD. After two second wave black metal by the numbers albums they shifted gears and released their transitional EP "Satanic Art" which still found the band firmly in black metal territory but also added the additional elements of industrial metal which signaled an abrupt change in their sound within the ever growing newbies in the second wave black metal cult. The risk paid off and it proved to be a sound that not only set them apart from the pack but packed a punch of industrial black metal fury. On 666 INTERNATIONAL the band continued this newly discovered niche and developed it even further. Other black metal bands had sampled with industrial and electronica such as Ulver who would go this route as well but abandoned the black metal aspects altogether in favor of the sonic possibilities of synthesized sounds. Also on board was fellow Norwegians Arcturus who developed their own style of space metal but it was DØDHEIMSGARD that kept the adrenaline, punk attitude and ferocity of the second wave of black metal in tact.

The album begins innocently enough with a piano tinkling away but after a mere second becomes accompanied by blastbeats and guitar riff fury for a few measures and then totally changes into a Nine Inch Nails industrial rock sound soon to be joined by Aldrahn's clean Skinny Puppy type vocals. The electro rock style plays on for a while and it becomes easy to forget that this is a metal album at all until about seven minutes in when the black metal kicks back in only instead of blastbeats we get some simple industrial drumbeats and background vocal "hoys" that remind me of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." Such is the sound of the new DØDHEIMSGARD, a veritable smorgasbord of electro rock, industrial metal and still enough black metal on board to please any of the skeptics. As the album giddily trots in the avant-garde pastures there are many other styles that make their way into the mix. While the main percussive gist falls into the industrial metal realm with black metal blastbeats interpolating themselves sporadically and intermittently, it is the black metal that dominates the guitars and bass but they often drop out all together and are replaced by softer dreamier jangled passages as well seemingly in battle with industrial electronica and

The album is generally very frantic but there are also totally out of place instrumentals that add contrasting styles to the mix. "Carpet Bombing" is simply a jazz piano piece that instils a spooky vibe with slightly dissonant notes slowly lulling the listener into a sudden serene state before "Regno Potiti" jumps back into black industrial franticness once again followed by the similar "Final Conquest." Next up another piano ballad with "Logic." Not jazzy but more classical lasting a mere minute before "Sonar Bliss" ferociously bombards the senses with full jangly dissonant black metal riffs and speed-of-light blastbeat percussion. After dominance is well established it seems to have a break down of style and become some oddly timed progressive industrial workout with jangly arpeggios churning out strange time signatures, angular rhythms and tempo freak outs. There are periodic passages where the keyboard dominates with wild and innovative timbres that add a whole new layer to the avant-garde feel of 666 INTERNATIONAL.

While the theme is purported to be of science fiction, i can't really find any rhyme or reason to the whole thing. This is a true trip down the avant-garde rabbit hole which could possibly be the soundtrack for a Salvador Dalí painting as random sounds callathump rhythmically ahead taking turns bleating out their unexpected matchings of percussion, distortions and vocal styles. I would probably characterize 666 INTERNATIONAL more in the industrial metal field than black at this point. There is a lot of attention paid to an industrial feel even when black metal bursts on to the scene. Aldrahn's vocals remind me most of Nivek Ogre from Skinny Puppy whose tortured painful screams of anguish punctuate the cacophonous din and electronically imbued atmosphere. Overall, this is one weird album but a kind of weird that i love! Personally i prefer the following "Supervillain Outcast" because of the better bringing to order of all of the elements but 666 INTERNATIONAL is still one sick wild ride! I dig the entire scene with the exception of the lame use of silent tracks at the end. Tracks 10 through 65 are pure silence averaging about ten seconds each and then at track 66 we get a rather unnecessary and uninteresting bonus track followed by a psytrance beat with blackened Skinny Puppy type vocals. End the album at track 9 and all is good.