The Mass demo, 1989. The thanks list includes Štorm’s grandmother (“I know very well that you are still here”) along with “…all the black metal bangers who love our occult massacre.”
In December the same year, the band made their first professional studio recording, heading to a studio in Prague to forge a forty-minute epic entitled The Mass, undoubtedly a more focused, potent, and effective effort than any previous recordings. Designed as a fictitious mass (“not Christian, not black, but totally occult”) the demo did not attempt to represent one coherent ideology but instead drew on various left-hand-path ideologies such as Satanism and witchcraft, as Štorm explains.
“Occult junk was another thing apart from Satanism and other toys [we used]. Imagine a painter with a number of colors on his palette and various sizes of brushes. We took our tools whenever it suited best. It’s the same even now. In the nineties I wrote in one song ‘God is our servant and Satan as well,’ and I earned bad reactions from so-called Satanists. I’m tired of explaining that Satanism is not a goal by any means, it’s just a path. One of tens of thousands of possible paths.”
In terms of sound, The Mass was the group’s most convincing and accomplished effort so far, having done away with some of the quirkier elements of the early days and instead taking on a more epic atmosphere, retaining a Bathory overtone—but this time from their Viking era—thanks to the use of choral voices over the riffs. Another significant lineup shift had taken place prior to the recording, the band losing Fečo, which forced Apron (Karel) to take over the role of drummer. The band also took on two new members at this time—the alarmingly named Necrocock (Tomáš Kohout) on guitar, and Silenthell (Honza Pribyl), who took over the timpani playing from Apron—both of whom would end up being long-term members. While Necrocock had contacted the band seeking to join, Silenthell was simply a regular face at the band’s local pub that was approached purely because of his appearance. Asked if he had ever played timpani before, he answered no, and—in a fine example of Master’s Hammer logic—was immediately inducted into the group.
“Necrocock sent us an application letter signed by his own blood, which impressed us a lot, [though] we were laughing a lot as the letter was full of language mistakes,” Štorm recalls. “Silenthell was chosen for his tall figure, moustache, and hair. We didn’t test them for musical skills, that was always ancillary in this band. Karel used to play drums in the period of The Mass demo, when Franta Fečo didn’t come to rehearsals. Milan and Karel were busy with General Lee—a southern-rock revival band—but we [also] quarreled about record production issues, and the atmosphere was exhausting. Karel left soon with Milan for General Lee and I took a break for a couple of months and Monster appeared suddenly on Necrocock’s choice.”
Monster (born Tomáš Vendl) was not the only new addition to the band following Milan and Karel’s departure, and two new members entered the fray in the shape of drummer Mirek Valenta and keyboard player Vlasta Voral, the first member of the band with any sort of background in music theory. The combination of new members, combined with the departure of Milan, who had co-written most of the material with Štorm, clearly had a big impact on the band’s sound. In late November 1990, they issued another half-hour demo entitled The Fall of Idol, an opus that demonstrated a sound both powerful and way ahead of its time. As Štorm comments, “The Fall was, to me, a step toward a new, very distinctive and original Master’s Hammer face, with almost no audible similarities to any other band.”
The demo was only available for a short time before a debut album entitled Ritual was recorded and released in 1991, the band signing to Monitor, which Štorm explains was the first independent label set up following the country’s Velvet Revolution. Featuring superior rerecordings of the six tracks on The Fall, as well as fairly significant reworkings of four songs from The Mass and one from Finished, Ritual largely pre-empted the Scandinavian second-wave explosion. The same earnest sense of purpose and sinister grandeur surrounds the epic compositions, the demonic vocals combining the sung and the screeched in a similarly otherworldly manner as those later used in Mayhem by fellow Eastern European Attila Csihar.
Ritual undoubtedly had a major impact on the sound of the albums that flowed from the North in the years that followed, and while it’s impossible to say exactly to what degree, there’s no doubt that many respected Norwegian bands such as Gehenna and Enslaved were inspired by the band’s mysterious compositions, and Mayhem’s Euronymous even mentioned in interviews his plans to release the band’s work on his label Deathlike Silence. Equally, many would be introduced to Master’s Hammer in the mid/late nineties as a direct result of first discovering the Norwegian scene. All the same, the Czech pioneers remained somewhat unknown outside of their home country until that time, even if they were well celebrated within it.
“In 1990 there were just a few metal albums on the Czech market, so Monitor reached the sale of several thousand Ritual LPs,” explains Štorm. “Hence you must regard this incredible number groundless on real fans’ acceptance—musically it [only] became popular in the late nineties. I have a deep feeling that our songs must mature by aging, like wine.”
Interestingly, such was the prominence of the band at home that two songs on the Ritual album, namely “Černá Svatozář” and “Géniové,” were provided with promo videos. Wonderfully hammy and Venom-esque in nature, both are somewhat at odds with the mystical ambience of the album, though hugely entertaining. “Both videos were [made] by dull directors in official TV studios without understanding our music,” Štorm comments. “They are just funny.”
Keeping the momentum going, this lineup of Master’s Hammer made a swift return in 1992, previewing two new songs (under different titles) on a seven-inch entitled Klavierstuck, before releasing a follow-up album entitled The Jilemnice Occultist, this time on France’s Osmose Records.
“Monitor’s approach to show business,” replies Štorm simply, when asked about the reasons for the move. “They became a part of EMI very soon and we hated the kind of music they released, whereas Osmose seemed to us a distinctive heavy underground company.”
An ambitious work, The Jilemnice Occultist was a conceptual piece constructed as a “black metal operetta,” with Štorm’s lyrics giving voice to the various characters in the band’s native Czech language. Essentially based around a young character named Altrament, the story follows the protagonist as he arrives in the small town of Jilemnice and meets a fellow occultist, Kalamária, as well as Poebeldorf, a man masquerading as the captain of the town who throws the drunken Altrament in jail and attempts to make off with the local treasure.
Musically, The Jilemnice Occultist moved away somewhat from the sinister atmosphere of its predecessor, the songs being less straightforward, emphasizing the more orchestral side of the band, with more prominent use of synths and timpani complimenting the black thrash riffs.
“We love operettas, with [their] lascivious verse-mongering,” explains Štorm. “My great-grandfather was a Jilemnice district officer back in 1915 or so. This album has a fully epic story of poor occultist Atrament coming to Jilemnice to rescue beautiful Kalamária and the treasury. Definitely it was hard writing, it [needed] a logical concept.”
Three years would pass before the band returned with their third album Šlágry. Featuring only Štorm and Voral, the record was, to say the least, a shock to the band’s fanbase. With the exception of the final song, the group had now moved away from black metal—indeed, any kind of metal—altogether. Instead, listeners were presented with a collection of irreverent and highly experimental covers of pre-existing compositions (among them Aram Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” and Chuck Berry’s “Rock & Roll Music”) along with one other new composition, “Indiánská Píseò Hrùzy,” actually one of the stronger tracks on the album. A highly bizarre collection of music, the album has often been viewed as a prank of sorts, and indeed from Štorm’s words it does seem that the motivation was, at the very least, somewhat reaction
ary.
“We needed to move outside a black metal cliché after rumors that we were a ‘living legend’ and similar nonsense,” Štorm replies. “That album also captured the attention of non-metalists in our country, whereas orthodox fans were disgusted about the fall of their idols—that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve. The message was clear: don’t ever trust us, not one word, always go your own way. If this remains as the sole asset of Šlágry, I’m happy.”
Perhaps the least likely looking band to make it into black metal’s history books: a more candid photo from the archives, courtesy of František Štorm.
To this day rumors persist of a “lost” black metal album recorded by the band between The Jilemnice Occultist and Šlágry, entitled Zaschla Krev. In interviews even Hervé Herbaut, owner of Osmose, has claimed that such a thing exists, though admits he has not heard it, and bootlegs have even been released featuring material purporting to be tracks from the very same work. On this subject Štorm is terse, stating simply:
“I will not comment on unauthorized leaked material, [but] Zaschla Krev has nothing to do with Master’s Hammer. My computer is crowded by unused music which will never be released.” On this subject, the band’s official website adds only that “Zaschla Krev was not intended for release, someone just picked a tape from trash bin in a studio and misused [it]. We’ve never signed it, so most probably it’s not Master’s Hammer on it.”
Following Šlágry, the band undertook a long, seemingly permanent, hiatus. Some members would begin to appear in their own side projects, most notably Necrocock, who would pursue a truly surreal death- and sex-drenched solo career in his eponymous outfit and the project Kaviar Kavalier. Utilizing laidback beats and seemingly tongue-in-cheek lyrics, he has penned numerous bizarre songs, such as “Saigon Lady” (“suck me baby”) and “Hong Kong,” apparent odes to sex tourism that are complimented by somewhat voyeuristic music videos largely comprised of home videos of his holidays in the Far East and bemused local women in various states of undress.
In 2009, however, to the surprise of many, the band not only returned with a new album, Mantras: Venkovska, but did so with all of the members of the Ritual/Jilemnice Occultist lineup, save for Valenta, the percussion being handled by Štorm using live and programmed drums.
“We’ve been in touch since about [2005], for not just musical reasons, and suddenly found that we can do something together again. We were aware of rumors that Master’s Hammer were going to the studio, so we did. I don’t remember who triggered it, most probably those bootlegs took a part also. That was not a ‘return,’ because we never really split. Let’s call it rather awake [sic].”
The work was typically eccentric, but more surprisingly featured (some) music not entirely dissimilar from their first two albums, frequently touching on black metal territories alongside Šlágry-esque experimentation and electronics.
“I think you’ll safely recognize a true black metal band only by its lyrics, don’t trust just what you hear sound-wise,” warns Štorm. “There are many miscarried—indeed in good faith—and shallow projects. We don’t seem a black metal band anymore, because our lyrics are mostly about fun, but we still use black metal properties occasionally, including Satanic subjects.”
Likewise, while 2012’s Vracejte Konve na Místo (an album whose title is taken from Czech cemeteries and translates as “put watering cans back in their place” and whose wonderfully idiosyncratic cover features said garden implement alongside an angel) showed lyrical playfulness, musically it was essentially a piece of avant-garde/progressive black metal, and indeed improved upon the sound of its predecessor in many respects.
What the future holds for Master’s Hammer is all but impossible to say. Though sadly the band have stated publicly that they will never play live again, the fact that they are active at all is surely cause for celebration. Furthermore, their back catalogue remains essential listening, both for those interested in the development of the black metal genre and for fans of pioneering and radical music in general.
13
VON
“I didn’t know about VON until Varg and that ‘name thing’… I’d heard them at his apartment but didn’t pay attention. Then after some years I started to listen to some tracks and thought, ‘Fuck, this is like ‘Nitzer Ebb black metal!’ Simplistic, toneless…. it’s anti-music, it tries to do things you shouldn’t do in music and break some of the rules, maybe make it so simple, or ‘bad’ that it’s not necessarily very easy to listen to. I hope someone sees that in my music.”
—Snorre Ruch (Stigma Diabolicum/Thorns)
“Metal in the eighties was hectic, often complex and intense. Monotony was seldom heard, but one black metal album had just that—Bathory’s Under the Sign of the Black Mark. However, it was well ahead of its time, and didn’t ‘take’ as much as it could in 1986. The decade wasn’t ready for repetitive coldness. Five more years of hectic metal and the world was ready for it, we could feel it in the tiny Norwegian scene when VON’s demo hit our shores, and it cemented our belief that this could be elaborated upon. I think Burzum, Mayhem and Darkthrone all did it, and many that followed.”
—Fenriz (Darkthrone)
THERE CAN BE FEW BANDS in the world of metal with a history as convoluted and confusing as VON. Formed around 1987, the group were arguably the first black metal act in North America and proved both revolutionary and uncompromising, illuminating some listeners while simultaneously alienating many more, their truly barbaric primitivism proving unpalatable to the majority of heavy metal fans at that time. But despite that fact—or indeed because of it—in the years that followed their three-letter, one-syllable name would be spoken in the hushed tones of utmost respect. VON would take on an almost mythical status, not least because there was so much confusion about the people behind the band.
For almost two decades the only evidence of the outfit’s existence was a handful of live photos and a single demo entitled Satanic Blood. A twenty-minute assault upon the senses, its short songs boast a level of barbarity that is still all but unheard of, even within black metal circles. Unrelenting, save for short snippets of strange spoken word poetry, the simplistic pounding of its backbeat provides the foundation for a combination of hypnotic riffing and possessed, guttural vocals, drenched in reverb. Needless to say, it has become mandatory listening in black metal circles.
While the band was ultimately short-lived, splitting—seemingly forever—in 1992, Satanic Blood would have a profound impact on generations to come. Though its release a few months before the band’s demise was limited to a few hundred cassettes, the eight songs would nonetheless feature heavily on the tape-trading scene in the years that followed and would impact the emerging international black metal scene significantly, including that of Norway. Indeed, there’s no doubt that many people’s introduction to the band came courtesy Burzum’s Varg Vikernes, who not only mentioned the band in a now-infamous interview with Kerrang! (where he famously spelled out the name of the band for his interviewer as ‘V for Victory, O for Orgasm, N for Nazi,’ causing some readers to mistakenly believe this was what the band’s moniker stood for) but later wore a VON shirt during his well-publicized trial for murder and church-burning.
From the mid-nineties onward the opus would be released in a number of seemingly official CD pressings, perhaps most famously as a split with Dark Funeral. The popularity of this mysterious group slowly grew, resulting in literally hundreds of cover versions including recordings by such high-profile names as Abigail, Nachtmystium, Dark Funeral, Urgehal, and Taake, not to mention Swedish outfit Watain, whose very name was taken from a VON song title. Hard facts regarding the group or the recording itself were all but nonexistent, but the musicians detailed on the minimal sleeve art—namely Goat (guitar and vocals), Snake (drums), and Kill (bass)—naturally came to be considered the core members of VON, the sleeve’s brief text also revealing the band to be based in California. In fact, Kill would for a time become the only tangible elem
ent of the group since it was later revealed that he was none other than Joe Allen, bassist of death metal act Abscess/Autopsy.
But as it was revealed some two decades later when the band made a most unexpected return, the group’s genesis had taken place not in California, but in Oahu, Hawaii. It was here in the unlikely setting of a deli and bagel joint that the three founding members were brought together; “Snake” (originally “Vennt,” first name Brent, surname currently lost to the sands of time) worked as a manager, and “Goat” (originally “Von,” real name Shawn Calizo) was employed alongside his longtime friend, a bassist known as “Venien” and born Jason Ventura. Shawn and Jason were both aspiring musicians who had met at school when Jason moved to Hawaii from San Francisco, and had played together in a short-lived band called Mesmeric, fueled by metal inspirations such as Venom, Slayer, and Sodom and hardcore punk bands, most notably Idaho’s Septic Death.
Shawn and Jason—who were interviewed for this book at the band’s controversial one-off show in London, as well as before and after that event—both turned out to be likeable and eccentric characters, but appeared to be an unlikely partnership, the nervous, twitchy and often cryptic Shawn contrasting with the considerably laid-back and notably more straight-talking Jason, apparently something of a reversal of their personalities at the time of the original VON incarnation.
“Shawn and I had been kicked out of rehearsal spots in town for being too loud and the times we had played in our homes, the neighbors did not take kindly to the sounds,” explains Jason. “Brent told us we could jam upstairs in the factory after work and after many failed attempts, I convinced Brent to grab a five-gallon dough bucket and my drumsticks and bang on it as hard and fast as possible. We plugged in our amps and jammed to it. VON was born. But we had discussed everything, even playing the entire set in its entirety, no blabbering about, continuous with no pauses except drumsticks clicking for tempo and song changes. We both played active roles in the development, direction and tone of the band… We both wrote the music together, then Brent came into the picture.”
Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult Page 14