Band's List Avantgardiste Black Ved Buens Ende Those Who Caress the Pale

What an awesome release. A lesser known avant-garde metal album. One of the original Nordic avant-garde metal scene bands along with Fleurety and Arcturus. But unlike most black metal bands of the early- mid nineties, it's not full on 'evil' and fast. It's got a great variety of pace.

Unlike Arcturus though who relied on bombastic keyboards and guitar effects to achieve the avant-garde sound, the avant-garde sounds in VBE comes from unusual rhythms, changes in pace and strange atmospheres creating a weird twisted sorrowful darkness. And that’s what makes this so unique. They've made their own distinctive sound. A ground breaking album purely using technique with the drumming, vocals and bass.

The vocals are an awesome mix of disharmonic clear singing, which switch to throaty despairing screams. The bass can actually be heard and is very rhythmic, almost groovy for a black metal release. It drives the music along with the drumming which is played with technicality, especially with the cymbal work which is amazing, and alternates between mid paced technical rhythms and blast beats.
There’s very minimal use of keyboards, and the guitar playing is very mid 90's black metal, but very professional.


One of the reasons why this works is because the sound is very organic, if a little thin. But what the hell, it works. The whole album is topped off with a strange outro track called insects, which is just a sound effect track of insects, and flies. Essential if you want history of the avant-garde metal scene, and love collecting rare gems. The only thing I would say against this album is it's too short and could have replaced 'insects' with another metal track.