THE DUKE ON
CARPATHIAN FOREST
LIVE PERVERSIONS
CARPATHIAN FOREST
LIVE PERVERSIONS
Black Metal clowns Carpathian Forest could teach, say, The Rolling
Stones a thing or two about Stage Craft, is what The Duke has
decided. This live DVD, although cursed with ridiculous title, is
as much fun as anyone could rightly expect to gleam from an
artform awash with ditties like Morbid Fascination Of Death or
Nuclear Fucking Death Machine.
I think that latter one might be a Hank Marvin cover, although I
can’t be too sure.
This form of the old extreme guitar-molesting is certainly far
from the most pleasant of sounds. It’s often incredibly complex,
symphonic even, (albeit suffering from a peculiarly distasteful
pretension), but still, it probably wouldn’t get you very far on,
say, Popular Idol or whatever, the show about some folks sing and
then Simon Cowell says about how he’d rather rape his own eyes
than listen to it again.
Those catchphrases, man. How does he come up with them all?
This obstacle, however, is overcome considerably when a fella is
blessed with a visual accompaniment to the gloomy tapestries
seeping like noxious toss from the speakers.
To this end, The Duke, hardly a connoisseur of the Norwegian Black
Metal (the geography doesn’t seem too important to me, but front-
man Nattefrost thinks it’s of utmost relevance, asking about “Are
you ready for some Norwegian Black Metal?” and then even adding
stuff about “Fucking Norwegian Black Metal” into a couple of the
songs), still found himself thoroughly entertained by the sheer
theatricality of the affair.
Recorded in Krakow in 2004, the concert which serves as the main
feature on this extras-packed disc is nothing less than
captivating, often on account of how bizarre the whole thing
appears. In an era of super-slim, lipo-sucked, preening Pop Divas,
it’s indescribably refreshing to see the two dancers, Dzidzianna
and Lala, prancing around the stage throughout, two black haired
ladies who appear to be no strangers to a fish supper or twelve,
bounding from one end of the stage to the other, naked but for a
pair of dirty y-fronts, looking and sounding for all the world
like a couple perverted Telletubbies.
Bassist Vrangsinn, too, offers much hilarity, a behemoth the size
of thirty men with his arse hanging out of a bone-tight leather g-
string. Added to this are a whole heap of pyrotechnic firework
carry-on’s, although really, Carpathian Forest are hardly the
kinda motherfuckers who need a sparkler or two to hold the
audiences attention.
Nattefrost is also one damn fine frontman, regardless of one’s
opinion regarding his chosen genre. Watching him command the
proceedings, arms aloft, sometimes holding two inverted crucifixes
on account of the “evil” and so on, face caked in the usual white-
and-black corpse-paint get-up, modelling the fetching pointy-stuff
black armbands and so on, it’s all terribly entertaining.
From what I can tell, the musical content of the live show is
fairly superior to the studio equivalents. Judging from the tracks
littered around the DVD’s bonus audio section, the live-renditions
have an urgency, a power that seems lacking from the occasionally
weedy aural-only alternatives.
Of course, you have to respect a band who have not one, nor two,
but three intros during their live show, not to mention the outro
which, fitting enough, heralds the close of the performance. These
brooding, orchestral diversions add to the near-operatic nature of
the whole shebang, although in this case the fat ladies don’t
sing, but instead run around performing a kind of morris-dance,
naked and covered in fairly poor make-up.
So packed with added treats is this DVD that it’d be possible for
a fella to get confused as to where the main-feature actually
begins or ends. In addition to 20-odd audio tracks, we get some
bootleg video and another live show from the Wacken Open Air
festival. There’s also a fairly amusing in-studio featurette
concerning the recording of Defending The Throne Of Evil.
In addition, then, to the lessons these fellas could teach the
likes of The Manic Street Preachers regarding the live-show, they
could also give a fair old lecture concerning value-for-money when
it comes to DVD releases.
Those lectures, incidentally, would be nigh-on unmissable, I’m
guessing, filled with dancing naked fat people and hairy bassists
with their arses hanging out and loads of shouting about
“Norwegian Fucking Black Metal!” and so on.
It’s all a whole barrel of the theatre, from the banners hanging
from each side of the stage which read “Fuck You All”, to the
guttural ranting throughout such amusing numbers as Pierced
Genitalia and Humiliation Chant Part I.
It’s preposterously pompous, for sure, but it’s hard not to bop
along, or stare moodily from up past your eyebrows, in
appreciation of the stage-craft on display. Certainly The Duke
hasn’t enjoyed a live show so much since back when GG Allin – Raw,
Brutal, Rough And Bloody graced the old DVD player, or maybe that
VH-1 special where I believe Madonna closed the show by singing
Papa Don’t Preach and then hitting Guy Richie, like, seven or nine
times in the face with a hatchet.
That Madonna knows how to give an audience what it wants, is the
truth of the matter of fact.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
Stones a thing or two about Stage Craft, is what The Duke has
decided. This live DVD, although cursed with ridiculous title, is
as much fun as anyone could rightly expect to gleam from an
artform awash with ditties like Morbid Fascination Of Death or
Nuclear Fucking Death Machine.
I think that latter one might be a Hank Marvin cover, although I
can’t be too sure.
This form of the old extreme guitar-molesting is certainly far
from the most pleasant of sounds. It’s often incredibly complex,
symphonic even, (albeit suffering from a peculiarly distasteful
pretension), but still, it probably wouldn’t get you very far on,
say, Popular Idol or whatever, the show about some folks sing and
then Simon Cowell says about how he’d rather rape his own eyes
than listen to it again.
Those catchphrases, man. How does he come up with them all?
This obstacle, however, is overcome considerably when a fella is
blessed with a visual accompaniment to the gloomy tapestries
seeping like noxious toss from the speakers.
To this end, The Duke, hardly a connoisseur of the Norwegian Black
Metal (the geography doesn’t seem too important to me, but front-
man Nattefrost thinks it’s of utmost relevance, asking about “Are
you ready for some Norwegian Black Metal?” and then even adding
stuff about “Fucking Norwegian Black Metal” into a couple of the
songs), still found himself thoroughly entertained by the sheer
theatricality of the affair.
Recorded in Krakow in 2004, the concert which serves as the main
feature on this extras-packed disc is nothing less than
captivating, often on account of how bizarre the whole thing
appears. In an era of super-slim, lipo-sucked, preening Pop Divas,
it’s indescribably refreshing to see the two dancers, Dzidzianna
and Lala, prancing around the stage throughout, two black haired
ladies who appear to be no strangers to a fish supper or twelve,
bounding from one end of the stage to the other, naked but for a
pair of dirty y-fronts, looking and sounding for all the world
like a couple perverted Telletubbies.
Bassist Vrangsinn, too, offers much hilarity, a behemoth the size
of thirty men with his arse hanging out of a bone-tight leather g-
string. Added to this are a whole heap of pyrotechnic firework
carry-on’s, although really, Carpathian Forest are hardly the
kinda motherfuckers who need a sparkler or two to hold the
audiences attention.
Nattefrost is also one damn fine frontman, regardless of one’s
opinion regarding his chosen genre. Watching him command the
proceedings, arms aloft, sometimes holding two inverted crucifixes
on account of the “evil” and so on, face caked in the usual white-
and-black corpse-paint get-up, modelling the fetching pointy-stuff
black armbands and so on, it’s all terribly entertaining.
From what I can tell, the musical content of the live show is
fairly superior to the studio equivalents. Judging from the tracks
littered around the DVD’s bonus audio section, the live-renditions
have an urgency, a power that seems lacking from the occasionally
weedy aural-only alternatives.
Of course, you have to respect a band who have not one, nor two,
but three intros during their live show, not to mention the outro
which, fitting enough, heralds the close of the performance. These
brooding, orchestral diversions add to the near-operatic nature of
the whole shebang, although in this case the fat ladies don’t
sing, but instead run around performing a kind of morris-dance,
naked and covered in fairly poor make-up.
So packed with added treats is this DVD that it’d be possible for
a fella to get confused as to where the main-feature actually
begins or ends. In addition to 20-odd audio tracks, we get some
bootleg video and another live show from the Wacken Open Air
festival. There’s also a fairly amusing in-studio featurette
concerning the recording of Defending The Throne Of Evil.
In addition, then, to the lessons these fellas could teach the
likes of The Manic Street Preachers regarding the live-show, they
could also give a fair old lecture concerning value-for-money when
it comes to DVD releases.
Those lectures, incidentally, would be nigh-on unmissable, I’m
guessing, filled with dancing naked fat people and hairy bassists
with their arses hanging out and loads of shouting about
“Norwegian Fucking Black Metal!” and so on.
It’s all a whole barrel of the theatre, from the banners hanging
from each side of the stage which read “Fuck You All”, to the
guttural ranting throughout such amusing numbers as Pierced
Genitalia and Humiliation Chant Part I.
It’s preposterously pompous, for sure, but it’s hard not to bop
along, or stare moodily from up past your eyebrows, in
appreciation of the stage-craft on display. Certainly The Duke
hasn’t enjoyed a live show so much since back when GG Allin – Raw,
Brutal, Rough And Bloody graced the old DVD player, or maybe that
VH-1 special where I believe Madonna closed the show by singing
Papa Don’t Preach and then hitting Guy Richie, like, seven or nine
times in the face with a hatchet.
That Madonna knows how to give an audience what it wants, is the
truth of the matter of fact.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
