HYLI Vol XXIII: Bathory and Mount Eerie
Andy is stuck in a black metal hole and Patrick is still punishing Andy in a prison of folk albums
Hello. It is Andy. I’m doing the intro this week. Do you like intros? What are you looking for in an intro? Do people even read the intros? Should I actually intro the newsletter like “This week we have two interesting records because blah blah blah” or do you prefer when we talk about normal stuff because it makes us seem like humans? “I bought a ticket to my brother’s wedding in Canada and it cost me one thousand god damn dollars?” Anyway, Go Bolts!
Bathory - Under The Sign Of The Black Mark
Andy: Okay. I’m going to do my absolute best to take a break from Black Metal after this week (Patrick: I’ll believe it when I see it)(Andy: honestly me also). I can’t promise anything since I’ve been in a personal black hole of black metal for a few months but I will do my best. We’ve covered most of the bands in the early Norwegian black metal scene so I thought it was appropriate to close with a band that inspired them.
Bathory’s first few records (Along with Venom and Celtic Frost) were the blueprint for the Norwegian black metal scene. Fenriz of Darkthrone calls it "the quintessential black metal album" and he is considered sort of a black metal historian so you have to trust him. Vocalist, Quorthon, is typically attributed as the first to really push the high screams that are a staple in the genre now. Listening to this you should really be able to see where Mayhem, Darkthrone, and other pioneers found their influence.
I prefer Under The Sign Of The Black Mark but you’d really be fine with any of Bathory’s first four albums. Has a good mix of fast and slow songs. I’m partial to “Enter the Eternal Fire” for some reason. Hope You Like It!
Patrick: I feel like I’ve been pretty amenable here the last few weeks. Emperor? Fucking rocks. Darkthrone? Slaps. Ulver? Decent. Burzum? [REDACTED]. Well, guess what, reader? Today, that ends. This is Music Criticism and I’m here to be Critical of Some Music.
Yeah, I don’t like Bathory. I get that it’s influential and many of the black metal OGs love it and blah blah blah. The music isn’t a fraction as interesting as Emperor or Darkthrone and, vocally, I wouldn’t say this was too terribly different from those albums, but those albums left a “hell yeah dude shout about that shit” impression on me while this was more “Hmm. Okay. I guess so.”
It wasn’t all bad. “Woman of Dark Desires” and “Call from the Grave” were instrumentally interesting enough to keep me intrigued but, overall, I feel like the vocals were more of a hindrance than a feature. Again, I respect the “legacy” or whatever here, but I’d rather listen to the bands Bathory influenced that, imo, perfected the form a bit than I would run this one back.
Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me
Patrick: This is a weird one. I discussed with The Antlers how their album, Hospice, essentially became unlistenable for me after my mom got diagnosed with brain cancer in 2013. She passed away in November of 2016. Mount Eerie, or Phil Elverum, lost his wife to pancreatic cancer in 2015 and released A Crow Looked at Me in March of 2017. While not to be too “wow your loss really spoke to me, bro,” his uhh loss really spoke to me.
A lot of this album is about Phil raising his daughter as a single parent under circumstances where the single part of that equation wasn’t necessarily planned. While listening to this, I think a lot about my dad, who is now raising my niece as a single parent after three years of raising her with my mom. Songs like “Real Death,” where Phil sings about having to pick out school supplies and a backpack for their daughter alone always makes me think of my dad and niece, who my mom loved a lot and who is now 10, but was too young at the time of my mom passing away to have any lasting memories of her, I’d imagine.
I also think about myself, because I’m a selfish dude sometimes. While Hospice, is a bit too close to home for me to go back to, I find A Crow Looked at Me to be a pretty cathartic record that I throw on when I need some release. Maybe the music is just better so I have more positive feelings about it because I like it more. I think it probably has to do more with the time it was released. Upon my mom’s passing, the strangest feeling that I kept having was that I felt relieved that she was gone and that she was no longer losing her hair or having to have me pick her up when she would fall in the bathroom because she couldn’t physically lift herself off the ground. While no one’s experience is really the same, I think hearing this album after experiencing all that made me relate to and appreciate it more than hearing an album about similar themes before any of that stuff happened, if that makes sense? I’m three paragraphs deep and I realize I have not written anything about the music yet. Not all of his stuff is about such heavy themes (he actually has written a bunch of songs about just loving black metal like a dork)(Andy: is….is this true? Edit: holy shit it is. He is a big Xasthur guy). I wouldn’t even say this is my personal favorite of his, as I tend to like the albums where he mixes some distorted guitars, like 2015’s Sauna, quite a bit more. However, this is easily the one of his that has resonated the most with me. The feeling of a dude basically just talking to you about some grim shit while finger-picking a guitar is why folk, imo, rocks. Nothing else is stripped down enough to let the lyrics wallop you like this. I love A Crow Looked at Me, I love Mount Eerie, I love my mom, and I love all you readers. Hope You Like It.
Andy: Did you intentionally save this for the end of my folk month (Patrick: Yes, actually)? This shit is the heaviest album I think we’ve had on this newsletter. I don’t even know if I can make jokes here? I’d say you’ve succeeded in finding a folk album I truly enjoy (Patrick: bang).
There is definitely a reason I prefer lyrics that are abstract or like…unintelligible because stuff like this can wreck you. It is too real. It is so emotionally heavy. Like… I never want to listen to “Toothbrush / Trash” again despite it being a great song. The entire thing feels way too personal for me to even be listening to it. Does he play these songs live (Patrick: he does and, while I’ve never seen him live, it seems incredibly intense)?
Musically, I think it is also the folk record I’ve enjoyed the most. Minimalistic but still “heavy.” It has an edge. The overall sadness is definitely a bonus for me (what a weird thing to say but 🤷♂️). I cannot say how often I will be returning to this because of its subject matter but I can absolutely say that I Liked It Very Much (Patrick: hell yes).