More angry cyber-metal-jazz-monster than record
I recently came into possession of the new album by Norwegian band Shining’s new album Black Jazz, and it completely blew my mind. As the title suggests, it’s a fusion of those two crowd-pleasing genres experimental jazz and Scandinavian black metal, which coincidentally happen to be my and Jake’s favourite genres, respectively.
I know and like their previous album, Grindstone, which perversely features the title track of the album before that (In The Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster – which doesn’t) – and I know two of the members as members of Jaga Jazzist.
But this, I was not expecting. And nor, it seems, was anyone else.
A metal band playing jazz?
One of the most hilarious things about Shining is the confusion they seem to cause amongst the heavy metal press. Reviews are mixed, but most seem to address the album as either a very experimental metal album, or as a failed metal album.
I’d go so far as to say that it’s not a metal album at all. Black, but not metal.
At least one blog managed to get it so far wrong that they initially attributed the album to a completely different band called Shining (who actually ARE a black metal band) – and gave it a 2 out of 10, calling it gratuitous, obnoxious and unmusical.
For the record, the Swedish Shining are an almost comically archetypal ‘look at us being scary and evil’ black metal band. Wrist-cutting on stage, goats’ heads, scary makeup, moral panic, etc.
The Norwegian Shining are phenomenal jazz musicians playing some very, very heavy music and coming across on stage like Spinal Tap with a sax. I saw them in Oslo once before I’d heard of them. It took me five songs to figure out whether I loved or hated them. I opted for the former.
A jazz band playing metal?
Anyway, Maelstrom realised their mistake, and wrote this revised review, which gave the album an overall score of Ridiculous/10 – so as not to dignify it with a number.
But failing to be ‘proper’ black metal is just one of the brilliant things about this record. ‘Proper’ jazz fans will hate it too.
Because actually, it’s neither. Fans of noise music, hard industrial stuff, extreme prog (if such a thing exists) or pretty much anything experimental and loud will probably get it. And it’s off-the-charts (and off the Richter scale) brilliant.
And wait – are those synthesisers?
Perhaps most tellingly, there’s a cover of King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man on the album. There’s your reference point. Now just imagine it played by really angry jazz robots from the future.
Want to hear what it sounds like? There are a few tracks on their MySpace page, which I’ve embedded below. I’ve got the album itself, and am currently working on making my neighbours hate me.