The Black and Silver.

No, not the Blue Öyster Cult song, but the new releases by Venom, Metal Black, and Jesu, Silver.*

Metal Black, a dubious reversal of the title of Venom's classic, genre-naming second record, is, well, Venom, even if the sole original member these days is Cronos. (Fine by me; better Cronos be the sole survivor than Mantas or Abaddon.) This new album is a welcome cross between the "modern" Venom sound heard on Resurrection and Cast In Stone- and a back-to-basics-that-we-never-really-left-behind approach, which means it's still fucking sloppy, Cronos' bass tone rules, and the lyrics are mostly, as Keith Bergman puts it, "nonsensical devil bullshit... just as it should be." Simply put, it's my kind of metal, and it's all I've been listening to all day.

Until.

Silver, Jesu's new EP, made its way from Rachel's hard drive to mine. I've only listened to it once- well, I've listened to "Dead Eyes" twice- so I can't really comment too much**, other than to say that it's been a while since I heard an album that makes me really wonder whether or not I like it. No, that's inaccurate. I know I like it, but I'm not sure exactly how I like it. It sounds like Jesu, which means you can tell that Justin Broadrick created it, but one song in particular ("Star") is... shit, I don't know. Bad? No. Way the fuck out in left field, even for Justin Broadrick? Yeah. My first reaction was "this is a motherfuckin' pop song!", but a pop song written by the man who was Godflesh, which means it's not a pop song per se, but rather- fuck it, if you know Broadrick's work, you know what I mean. Rachel told me she didn't like it, and I can see why, because I'm pretty torn myself. The other three songs are more similar to Jesu's self-titled full-length, but not really. Seems to me that Herr Broadrick is really branching out, which I salute.

Enough shitty, insight-less commentary on records. It's time to write fiction.


*Silver actually comes out the 11th, but I got hold of it early, in mp3 format. I will definitely be buying it, probably on CD and LP alike.

**Har! I wrote more about Jesu than I did Venom, thereby rendering the asterisked statement somewhat untrue.