Baron von Swine

Von - Watain (mp3)
Swine - Black soul king (mp3)
Von's MySpace page
American trio Von was a short but important phenomenon in the beginning of the nineties. Their only official record is the compilation "Satanic blood angel", which was released 10 years after the band had already split up. Von is easily the earliest cult BM act from USA, because when they existed, there simply wasn't anybody else exploring that field in The States. And still there aren't any bands who could do it better in this simple but uniquely effective way. Von had easily recognizable songwriting style, which followed simple strong rules. The songs, always short and straight forward like grindcore, had very few simple riffs and the chanting vocal rhythm was like barking of the dog. But unlikely to some other groups, who mixed grindcore and black metal (Beherit, Blasphemy) in the early nineties, Von's music never became chaotic and blurry. It was some sort of old ascetic way of doing black metal, like Terrorizer did grindcore.

Lately I discovered an album "Marked by the baron", done by an english one-man-band Swine in 2004. As said in liner notes, this album is inspired and dedicated to Von. The first time I listened to it, I didn't know about that, and Swine sounded like something fresh, yet familiar. And that's how it is. Swine has taken a lot from Von, but has it's own original way of interpreting it. Firstly, the sound is much more colourful than the bleak demo recording of Von. And there is that reverbed clean guitar with simple slow melodies always in the main focus.
Here you can compare old Von and new Swine. One of them is a definitive classic, the other is a successful modern interpretation. Both highly recommended.