I've always wondered why the Cthulhu mythos were never incorporated into black metal. It has anything that I would expect out of the genre, rituals, horrors, madness, etc.
And The Great Old Ones do a great job of painting exactly that, I wasn't into Post Black Metal, sure I had the odd singles here and there, but I never really listened to a Post Metal album. After listening to this, I even got to listen to Ausserwelt by Year Of No Light, and the two artists seem similar.
I even consider" Al Azif" to be a DSBM record, it's so bleak. Since I don't understand much about song structure apart from "Good riff", I'll be taking a look at the lyrics.
At first we got the lyrics for "Al Azif", it describes the story of the person who wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon a book that details everything about these ancient gods. In that track, our character, Abdul Alhazred, goes fucking insane. We got lines like
Al Azif
In this desert for 40 days
Voices tell me the ways
...
Sitting on the edge of a dune, they dictate to me
Like whispers of Jinns they force me to write
...
Incantations to invoke these gods
Cursed bible, obscene words
Alone in the desert I lose my sanity
And I write the end of humanity
No place to escape
I'm no more than a shape
...
Now they found me in the crowd
Invisibles, they devour me
I would end up in a shroud
No one can help me
For me these seem like DSBM lyrics, they're bleak, they're desperate, they're dreadful.
Listen to "The Truth" and you will find yourself screaming "I'm not crazy" in no time.
The Truth
I know we are not alone
Operating me will change nothing
Ignoring the king on this throne
And one day he will destroy everything
I'm not crazy
When they open my head
I prey they will never discover the truth
And now unto my last favorite track from this album, "My Love for the Stars (Cthulhu Fhtagn)". Ok so, I really never thought of Cthuluhu as a "victim", or I've never thought about how he might have felt being locked up.
My Love for the Stars (Cthulhu Fhtagn)
Am I too ugly,
am I too ugly for them?
My green and slimy skin,
it bothers them?
...
I swear never to love,
I swear to never look to the sky.
Forever I only keep their
light in my eyes, in my eyes.
If you want to hear me talk about riffs, then obviously I'd choose "The Truth" intro, up until 1:40. And I didn't forget 3:30 in "Al Azif". Yeah that's about it for now, I've listened to this some 3 weeks ago, wait till you hear about "TEKELI-LI" or "EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy".
Also if you have made it this far, and can't seem to get enough of the first track "Al Azif", make sure to listen to the Pre Prod. Version I find it very interesting that the track's "Essence" is till in there, even the great riff is there.
