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Tulus

Pure Black Energy

Hot Records, 1996

Review by Brett Benzie


Thirty-one minutes of twisted genius - that's how I'd describe this album. Imagine Billy Gould from FNM, playing in a Black Metal band. The cover features drummer Sarke, complete with GREY platted hair, classic transilvanian aristocratic garb staring back at you. When you lift the CD out of its tray, you see a closeup! ghastly!

The vocals on each of the tracks are piped through an effects chamber, with a really eerie edge to them, best witnessed on "Inscription Over The Mound Of Earth". They seem quite adept at using effects too, as on the occasions when violins creep into the mix, and before you realise they're there, they have a chokehold on the entire song!

The bass is really what makes this CD stand apart. The bass plucks of Gottskalk give this album a real Faith No More feel to it, and in doing so add a bloody, sickly psychotic edge to the music. Prime examples of this are track 4 and track 6.

If their bio is indeed fact, Tulus have been around for almost a decade, but until now haven't done anything about putting out a CD. Now that they have, one can only hope they decide to keep going at it, because quite frankly, Black Metal is in dire need of new life, new blood. Tulus certainly aren't generic, but they are definitely exciting.