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The Hall of Fame - edition II Instead of writing about five separate albums, this edition of the Hall of Fame will deal with the majority of the works of one single artist, namely Jouni Havukainen of In Slaughter Natives. ISN was born in 1988 and it was one of earliest projects to arise on the nowadays legendary record-label Cold Meat Industry with a tape, simply named In Slaughter Natives (later re-issued by Staalplaat on CD). In time, more music from In Slaughter Natives was released through both Cold Meat Industry and Staalplaat and the project eventually rose to a legendary status. Jouni's way of mixing elements from dark Industrial and neo-classical music and giving it a sick touch has made an impression on a lot of people (including me) to this day and I can't see why this eminent project shouldn't still be gaining followers; CMI recently re-issued all 4 ISN full-length albums and released it in a box along with a CD of rare material and a live-poster from a gig in Athens. The 4 CD's, In Slaughter Natives, Enter Now The World, Sacrosancts Bleed and Purgate My Stain have all been remastered by Peter Petterson of Arcana/Sophia and as far as I can hear, he has done an excellent job. The box is limited to two editions of 1000 copies each and if you haven't made up your mind on whether or not you are going to buy it, I suggest you consider it fast since it won't be available forever and the first edition of 1000 copies sold out very fast and forced CMI to have another edition printed. Although it's quite hard to give an appropriate general definition of the music of ISN, two elements that are evident in nearly all the tracks from Jouni's career are a certain heaviness and wickedness in the sound. The typical In Slaughter Natives track is composed of ultra-massive beats, dark sampled choirs and orchestral pieces that could just as well fit as court-music in the court of the dark lord himself. The closest comparison to a more commonly known musical piece I can come up with would be to the Omen-soundtrack, although ISN's music has a more industrial touch. The music is utterly symphonic and majestic though and on some tracks, for example on the massive Among The Lost And Wordless, the music feels like a gigantic sword which is slashing through the landscapes of the earth, ripping our little planet into shreds. While listening to the five CD's in the box, I am constantly discovering new effects and I am amazed by the richness of this guy's discography. According to someone I recently met at a concert, Jouni is apparently a perfectionist who has great problems getting satisfied with what he composes. He's known for having thrown away a lot of material that others have found great instead of putting it on CD's, which may explain why these CD's are so freaking well composed and great. The composing skills of this man are abosulotely fabulous. The song structure is really very simple but along with samples, an excellent ensemble of sounds and that little special touch of black gold, Jouni creates sound textures that are powerful enough to blow anyone up against the wall. High volume is recommended while listening to these CD's. A small straying from this Orchestral-Industrial path was conducted on ISN's third album, Sacrosancts Bleed when Jouni experimented a little with a more metal-like sound. Some seem to have complained about this and even though I don't find ISN's more metal-like tracks as good as his more orchestral tracks, I consider the tracks Koprofagi Christi and Scum to be two of the most sadistic metal tracks I've heard to this day. This album itself houses some of the most wicked ISN's tracks ever composed, for example Mortified Flesh, Christians and Taste of Human. The choirs in ISN's music are often sampled from Danish composer Carl Orff, which has misled some people to accuse Jouni of ripping-off the Industrial giants Laibach who have also sampled a lot from Carl Orff. This isn't true, it's more a case of two bands sharing the same sound-source and these samples aren't necessarily from Carmina Burana but from Orffs more unknown works. Other than these samples, Jouni has also used a lot of samples from movies, especially horror-movies such as Hellraiser and he has also used samples that remind me of the dogmatic preaching of typical American TV-preachers. The latter mentioned samples give the music a very sacral feel, and they are more frequent on ISN's earlier works where the music is more Industrial while they are almost totally gone on his last album, Purgate my Stain. I think this album is quite special though. It maybe is not as playful as Jouni's past material, yet it feels like it is ISN's most mature album to this day and it's also the album which is most neoclassical of all ISN albums. It is a true masterpiece of dark neo-classical music that few have managed to surpass to this day, an excellent evolution that sadly had to be interupted far too soon. Unfortunately, it seems as though ISN has fallen away from the scene for a couple of years due to understandable circumstances in the life of the composer: Nevertheless, ISN's music still stand as a paragon of how dark and sacral Industrial music should sound. I'm already filling up my wishing well with coins, hoping that there may come a day when a follow-up to Purgate my Stain enters my CD-player. Until that day and every day after, I call for this excellent music to echo in eternity, always haunting mankind with its sacral beauty. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISN DISCOGRAPHY (Incomplete? - additions are welcome): Albums/cassettes etc. Compilation tracks ISN is featured on the live-video collection Deadly Actions with the tracks Clean Cathedral, Chaos Breeding and Sacrosancts Bleed (excerpt). Jouni once had a side-project named Un-Core that participated on the CMI collection In the Butchers Backyard with the track Sicarius. |
IN SLAUGHTER NATIVES: Re-enter Salvation 5CD box