Dead Raven Choir - Biography
Biography
D. Smolken was born and raised in Cracow, Poland, where he absorbed peasant folk music, cabaret music and underground anti-Communist sung poetry. His family was asked to leave the country for political reasons in 1986, and he eventually ended up in Texas. He played death metal, dabbled in mediocre noise and miserably failed improv, and eventually formed Dead Raven Choir in 1996
Dead Raven Choir is a horrid blight upon black metal and does great damage to credible black metal artists everywhere. Or perhaps it's keeping black metal alive and interesting. Dead Raven Choir doesn't care which it is and just plays black metal covers of country and folk songs. The sound is much rawer, louder and harsher than tradition would dictate. The instrumentation is built around bowed bass fiddle, distorted bass guitar, drums and screams
Garlic Yarg and possibly also Taint Meat are the various bands of D. Smolken. Dead Raven Choir and Wolfmangler are currently active. In its earlier incarnation Dead Raven Choir was a creepy barbaric folk project with occasional outbursts of exceedingly harsh black metal. It was originally formed in 1996 as a duo consisting of Smolken and a mysterious woman. The idea was to play virulent black metal with lyrics taken from Winnie-the-Pooh. Fortunately this resulted in only one half-finished song before the mysterious woman disappeared. In 1998 Smolken and another mysterious woman set more A.A. Milne poems to quieter, more restrained music.
Dead Raven Choir evolved from that point, growing increasingly more raw and dramatic. In August 2004 after two CD releases and over twenty CDr's, Smolken abruptly ended all Dead Raven activity. However, old material continued to be released and reissued, including the Cask Strength Black Metal collection on vinyl and CD and the Selenoclast Wolves acoustic album. 2006 brought the rebirth of Dead Raven Choir in an even grimmer form.
Source: http://www.southern.net/southern/band/DEDRC/biog.php
Dead Raven Choir is a horrid blight upon black metal and does great damage to credible black metal artists everywhere. Or perhaps it's keeping black metal alive and interesting. Dead Raven Choir doesn't care which it is and just plays black metal covers of country and folk songs. The sound is much rawer, louder and harsher than tradition would dictate. The instrumentation is built around bowed bass fiddle, distorted bass guitar, drums and screams
Garlic Yarg and possibly also Taint Meat are the various bands of D. Smolken. Dead Raven Choir and Wolfmangler are currently active. In its earlier incarnation Dead Raven Choir was a creepy barbaric folk project with occasional outbursts of exceedingly harsh black metal. It was originally formed in 1996 as a duo consisting of Smolken and a mysterious woman. The idea was to play virulent black metal with lyrics taken from Winnie-the-Pooh. Fortunately this resulted in only one half-finished song before the mysterious woman disappeared. In 1998 Smolken and another mysterious woman set more A.A. Milne poems to quieter, more restrained music.
Dead Raven Choir evolved from that point, growing increasingly more raw and dramatic. In August 2004 after two CD releases and over twenty CDr's, Smolken abruptly ended all Dead Raven activity. However, old material continued to be released and reissued, including the Cask Strength Black Metal collection on vinyl and CD and the Selenoclast Wolves acoustic album. 2006 brought the rebirth of Dead Raven Choir in an even grimmer form.
Source: http://www.southern.net/southern/band/DEDRC/biog.php