Aura Noir – “Black Thrash Attack” – [Peaceville Records]

2011 remaster of Norwegian band’s 1996 METAL CLASSIC. ‘Black Thrash Attack’ (say it out loud a few times) is essentially a love letter to the dirty, evil underground thrash acts of the 1980s whose love of speed and Satan spawned the Norwegian style of black metal primarily associated with the genre nowadays. So direct is that line of descent that many of the aforementioned 80s acts have been retrospectively dubbed ’1st wave black metal.’ What Aura Noir (composed of fugitives from several ‘regular’ Norwegian BM bands) do here is fuse the ’1st wave’ embodied by Venom (whom, lest we forget, coined the term ‘black metal’), Hellhammer, Destruction, Kreator, Sodom, Bathory, Bulldozer, early Mayhem etc. with the signature Norwegian ’2nd-wave’ sound pioneered by groups like Darkthrone, Satyricon, and Dead-era Mayhem. End result= unbelievably fucking good. Majority of trax feature a wedding of 80s-style amphetamine riffing with furious 90s blastbeats and the definitive up-and-down-stroke tremolo style of Euronymous (whom guitarist Blasphemer actually replaced in Mayhem from 1995-2008). The guitar sound created by competently playing thrash riffs in a BM style is a sonic orgasm (at least to me)– For examples check out track 1 or 8 or really anything else on here. Track 7 (cowritten with Aldrahn of Dodheimsgard) is listed in the liner as “Dedicated to Sodom’s ‘Obsessed By Cruelty,’” and incorporates the riff from that album’s ‘Proselytism Real.’ Track 11 is a cover of Venom’s ‘Heavens On Fire.’ Two members switch off between drums and bass/vox from song to song, but you can’t really tell because they sound the same. My personal fave trax are 3, 5. Would write more about this filthy masterpiece but I’m running out of room. LISTEN.