(Experimental / Avant-Garde Black Metal) Blutmond - Thirteen Urban Ways 4 Groovy Bohemian Days - 2010, FLAC (image+.cue+scans) lossless

REM DATE 2010
REM DISCID A20F000D
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb5"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
TITLE "Thirteen Urban Ways 4 Groovy Bohemian Days"
FILE "Blutmond - Thirteen Urban Ways 4 Groovy Bohemian Days.flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Mind Da Gap"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "You vs. The Modern Lifestyle Obsession"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 01:45:43
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Working Poor, Yuppie Yeah (A/A 3000)"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 08:20:13
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Rebellion"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 12:15:12
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Friday - Trapped In Mental Disorder"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 14:40:16
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Blind Date Broadway"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 22:19:67
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Cry.sys"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 27:29:20
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "Good Morning World"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 33:14:46
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "Martini Midnight Madness"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 35:50:24
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Metro Aesthetix"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 42:50:16
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Suburbs - A Lamentation Or A Social Frustration!?"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 46:48:33
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "The Party Is Over..."
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 53:23:48
TRACK 13 AUDIO
TITLE "Dance N' Society"
PERFORMER "Blutmond"
INDEX 01 57:41:55

"Surprise Of The Month"
Humour and black metal sit uneasily together. Or, to clarify, they sit together uneasily for black metal fans. If you don’t like black metal, they sit together very well indeed. Those benighted ones excluded, though, I can almost feel the snorts of derision emanating from Metal Reviews visitors worldwide breezing angrily across the oceans. That title… Aren’t there enough unselfconscious goofballs in black metal already that we need self-conscious ones? Scanning the song names: Mind Da Gap, Working Poor, Yuppie Yeah!, Dance N’ Society? Why spoof a genre that has so comprehensively self-spoofed on more than one unfortunate occasion?
What, then, to make of this? Sprouting from the remains of the (by all accounts) very black metal Totenstille, the band’s mission statement seems to be to restore a “playful sense and being” to our world of “depressed grey shapes”, and lay down a manifesto for a transcendent “urban mysticism”. No, I don’t know what this means either. Perhaps we can interpret that they are serious about being silly? That would certainly fit with moments here, though I’m not sure about the whole. Evoking experimental black metal luminaries like Ephel Duath or DHG, this can be an eclectic and often tongue-in-cheek album that gleefully vandalises a riotous blackened blast template with trance synths, muted trumpets and abrupt blues breakdowns, among other things. But that blackened blast itself is capable of unflinching power.
On occasion this can be jarring. Working Poor… swoops into action with a gloriously intense black metal battle-riff, before being interrupted abruptly (that is an understatement- it’s like an unexpected birthday decapitation) by an awkward jazz swing replete with parping synth horns. The jolting effect is undoubtedly intentional, but I wonder about the extent to which this is indulgent surprise tactics over real expression. That said, the disparate elements are often worked superbly, particularly the black metal ones. More single-minded tracks like Blind Date Broadway could fit without any problems onto a great melodic black album, expertly balancing tunefulness and ferocity.
This isn’t necessarily to say that the more eclectic numbers are always the weak points; Trapped in Mental Disorder is probably the most impressive tune here. Throughout its seven minutes it builds subtly from ominous, fidgety grooves underpinning a muted trumpet solo to growling black metal without ever losing coherence. I think the aura of the album leads you to expect something more self-consciously wacky and thrown-together than you get. Parts of Suburbs- A Lamentation or a Social Frustration?!?, for example, may sound like the jazzier moments of Ephel Duath’s The Painter’s Palette, but these are more like garnishes than the meat itself.
So, a bit of a confusing record, all said. It comes on like a spoof, and delights in musical curveballs, but seems deadly serious about straight-up black metal at the same time. Does it work as a piece of avant-fusion? Perhaps, though it has to be said that other bands mentioned here have probably worked harder to integrate other elements more deeply into their sound. Ultimately, this is simply an engaging and quirky album which doesn’t quite take its experimental vision to truly unknown realms. If you are an experimental black metal fan, this is a band to note.
[v2.metalreviews.com]

BLUTMOND are the bleak side of the conventional attitude towards the bohemian lifestyle and the urban madness. Where others stumble every day, we look closely and question things, which already became daily nonsense. Let it be the depressed grey shapes wandering through the commuter traffic in the smoggy dawn, the alcohol-fueled nocturnal intermezzo in the underground between the bedraggled stops after a friday night out in an overcrowded and excessive loud pub amid a cloud of smoke or the sense or absurdity of the modern meritocracy with all of its perversion…
Where the mass flows the fastest, we stand still more than ever! When the crisis comes closer, we invest in champagne. Each one who abominates this, is already part of what a profitable anti-crisis-drug named swine flu inoculating is to us. We all live in a world, that stopped to exist long ago and now only spins around ourselves. Instead of playful sense and being, theres dam'n TV with silly casting shows, drug problems, youporn, overpaid team sport, fucked up Lady Gaga and the prostitution sponsored by materialism. Our opinion is that all included this composes a brand-new chapter of the history of mankind: the first chapter whose "urban mysticism" as such is already in existance in the present. Because we're blinded by the lights, the noise, the supersonic speed rush, and the all-embracing superficiality.
When the asphalt begins to glow, lightened by thousand threecoloured suns, the far traffic - like pulsating echoes from the past - combines with the clear scent of the full moon, and yonder rises above the skyline; everything lingers in the void at so late an hour and the purifying fire ignites in our blood and in the blood of the less resistant, like valium with speed, then, that's for sure, WE are the ones that judge others, that decide on the end of a day and not at least:
How to find ourselves again!
So listen to our urban tunes and go ahead...
NEXT ONE PLEEZE!