You see, this is the trouble with black metal. You get a tape from the used section because it looks like it might be cool - it's a band from Belarus and a band from the Bay Area and it looks cool so it's worth a gamble....right? And then the Belarusian band starts with a song called "Blue-Eyed Land's Horizon Will Flare With Fiery Crimson" and I'm all like shit I got me some weird NSBM nonsense here? but I can't really tell. So do I chunk it? Or do I listen and acknowledge that these are sounds that have no relationship to or affect on my life in any actual sense, and perhaps I can listen to them with objective ears? I honestly don't know, because these things are important and intent trumps sound any fukkn day in my book....but I'm unclear here. GNEIU are outsider black metal, a chaotic onslaught of aural misanthropy - the meandering shoegazing of "Disobedient Spirit Of Wind" followed by the nonstop whirr "Breathtaking Taste of Enemy Blood" with no apparent direction other than total destruction. The shit is intense and introverted, but explosive and dangerous. LASCOWIEC are at least more understandable, if not digestible. Buried blasts of treble ridden agony, a call to harsh winters never known (c'mon man, these dudes are from the Bay Area), this is relentless, pained black metal in the most base and classic sense. It's also really weird sounding, so digest that info however you like. I don't know what either of these bands are like, what either of these bands believe, or what either of these bands are into, but I know that "Before The Birth Of Storm" is a super heavy track....so there's that. Metal is hard.
