While everyone likes to go on about DIY culture, few actually step ahead and do it. Vrasubatlat and pretty much every single project they released is an example thereof, showing once again that black metal can be as fertile ground for that ethos as any other genre. I’d annoy the fuck out of you with a long ass argument about why that should be as obvious as with punk but this ain’t the time or the place for that discussion. I’m actually here to praise Vrasubatlat, essentially the label created this year by M and R, two guys whom I used to know as “the bass player and drummer of Ash Borer”. Already a pretty solid reference in my book.
Describing themselves in their website as a “shared consciousness of anxiety, depravity, melancholy, and violence through arcane offerings”, continuing with “astral violence from the sonic spectrum – ancient visions of primal irreverence – aural hell and devastation”. By now you get the gist of it and in fact their next line summarises the whole endeavour rather nicely and succinctly “Black || Death || Noise”. So far, they’ve released five records, all of which are pretty good to great if you don’t mind your music to come from the depths of some pitch black cave. The physical copies have been sold out for a while, but thankfully there’s this great thing called Bandcamp where you can at least get a digital copy and support the artists and maybe contribute towards a future repress. I’ve ranted and raved about how good the first four records are in the last item of this text (the fifth one came out later but is definitely worth your time as well) so I’ll just leave them below for your listening (dis)pleasure. I’d recommend paying special attention to the third one, a split combining the nasty industrial of Mróz with the raw, punkish black metal of Utzalu and as far as I’m concerned one of the best releases of the year.
“A black metal manifestation of one’s fears, disgust, and shame in the form of affirmation and surrender”
“Serum Dreg‘s debut offering showcases the worship of hedonism and self-destruction through a primitive death metal vehicle.”
“Utzalu joins forces with the death industrial act Mróz to drag you down into the depths of disgust.”
“Mortifying the Flesh showcases Uškumgallu‘s departure from a purely raw vessel of disorder and desperation into a leviathan of cerebral dismantlement and disarray.”
“As an entity of spiralling spiritual violence, Triumvir Foul abides by the principles of disgust, hatred, and anxiety as strict tenets of the Vrasubatlat philosophy.”