Descent into Ukranian Black Metal

A couple months ago I bought a record by a band called Blood of Kingu based on them having a t-shirt with HP Lovecraft on it. Listening to this record and their first album, I got beyond stoked on the relentless, POP snare blastbeats and wall-of-ice-harmonized guitars. They seem to have something to do with the shoegaze BM crossover that's been going on the last decade - but keep things cold and mournful instead of exulting in eye-closing ecstasy ala Alcest. Quickly I discovered the guitarist and bandleader's other band, Drudkh, who are apparently important right now. From Drudkh I branched into other Ukranian bands like Hate Forest and Astrofaes.

Then, as always happens when one gets too deeply into a subscene of BM, I hit a moral snag. Seems most of the bands in the Karkhiv guitar-wall blast scene are involved with some pretty ideologically sketchy labels and individuals. I don't want to list bands and labels and their "crimes," since the NSBM witch hunt is pretty out of control on the internet right now (figure out who sucks on your own. It's not that hard if you have a brain and are not totally morally bankrupt). I seem to have hit on a pretty accurate formula for determining whether an Eastern European band is far-right, though:

1. Relentlessly cold BM sound
2. One-word band name that is either an outmoded deity, terrain feature or celestial body*
3. Pagan or heathen lyrics

* words like HATE, REICH and NACHT can be spliced on to violate the one-word rule.

For example, a band called FORESTREICH from Poland that sounds like sped up Bathory and recorded in a bathroom is probably going to say dumb stuff about other races. I just made that up, but it is probably a real band.

Or, a split tape between one-man projects named TREE and WOTAN put out by MOONHATE PRODUCTIONS is probably not money well-spent.

I seem to have dug Hate Forest and Drudkh into a hole here (Drudkh means "Wood"). I'm pretty confident that those bands are just really into the Ukraine and are not anti-Semitic. Hate Forest has that Nietzschean/totalitarian touch that one would expect from their name, but it's not NSBM. They get co-opted by jackboot-idiots due to their regal nature and ancestor praise.

Anyway, Hate Forest is totally relentless, and the main dude is sort of a black metal genius. HF morphed into Blood of Kingu. They ditched European politics and focus now on mythology and horror fiction. It's the same concepts of majesty and ouroboros, but more abstract and universal...sweet. The vocals are not ideal for me, but are very well done and sparingly used.

Astrofaes, Drudkh's other guitarist, is a little less no-frills than HF, using some very blatant pagan-pride imagery and sounds. They aim towards epicness, which is something I enjoy less than strait-up metal terror. I think their vocalist is the guy screaming in Drudkh. I don't like the scream/growl overdub thing they do on the tape I have ("those whose past is immortal"..*sigh*). The raw screams of earlier stuff is where it's at, though I avoid the first tape due to the participation of a pretty sketchy keyboardist.
Other than those things I mentioned, I love everything about this band. Super-fast, long-sustained blasting with icey riffs that get pretty every now and then. I've got 2 more tapes coming: Eyes of the Beast, and Ancestor's Shadow. These tapes + HF, Drudkh and BoK should be enough harmonica blast-fests to send me on countless voyages through the trees and stars, for a couple weeks at least.
 
Always tread lightly through the woods of regional metal.