Band:	Dødheimsgard
Album:	666 International
Style:	Black metal, Avantgarde black metal, Industrial black metal
Release date:	1999
A review by:	jupitreas

01. Shiva Interfere
02. Ion Storm
03. Carpet Bombing
04. Regno Potiri
05. Final Conquest
06. Logic
07. Sonar Bliss
08. Magic
09. Completion

Black metal and industrial music didn't mix too well over the years. I always wondered why. I suppose it must have been due to the 'orthodox' nature of the black metal scene. The result is that good industrial/black metal fusions can be counted on one hand. "666 International" is one of them. The others include Samael's "Blood Ritual", the two Diabolos Rising albums and "In Times Before The Light" by the Kovenant...

This is one hell of a weird album. It's very original and sounds like nothing I have ever heard before. Let me try to summarize this sound for you. The guitars have a definitive "Pretty Hate Machine" era NIN bend to them and are usually used to make controlled slabs of noise and distortion rather than your traditional riffs. The percussion is done by a drum machine and it resembles the kind of stuff the guys from Godflesh would have programmed. Occasionally, the band will go into a rapid fire black metal blast beat rifforama and on other occasions, they will play dramatic piano interludes. The vocalist sounds completely insane. He reminds ma a lot of the vocals on Devil Doll albums, although he has a more mechanical and brutal delivery. This sort of unconventional mixture could easily go wrong. Luckily, it doesn't. For the entire duration of the record we are treated with absolutely mind bending music. It's all good - from the complex structures of "Regno Potiri" and "Sonar Bliss", to the sheer weirdness of "Shiva Interfere" (completely random lyrics in this one) and "Completion" (wacky guitar work here), the utter brutality of "Ion Storm" and the excellent keyboard use in "Final Conquest" (these guys could teach Dimmu Borgir a thing or two). While everything sounds positively trippy in the industrial sense, this stuff is still deeply entrenched in the Black Metal sound and is as evil as it is wacky.

This has to be one of the most original extreme music recordings to emerge in the last couple of years and should be of interest to anyone interested in the cutting edge, experimental avant-garde of metal music. This album get a very high recommendation from me.