Neonism is the second full length album by Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 Post-Black Metal band Solefald

Solefald

Solefald is a Norwegian avant-garde metal/black metal band that was formed by members Lars Are "Lazare" Nedland and Cornelius Jakhelln in August 1995, with Lars singing and playing keyboard/synthesizer/piano and drums, and Cornelius singing and playing guitar and bass. The meaning of the band's...

. It was released on December 7th, 1999 by Avantgarde Music

Avantgarde Music

Avantgarde Music is an Italian record label, formed as a continuation of Obscure Plasma Records, focusing on black and doom metal artists. The label has a sub-label called Wounded Love Records, which has released albums by Dolorian and Taake....

.

Sound

The album expands upon the debut The Linear Scaffold

The Linear Scaffold

The Linear Scaffold is the debut full-length album by the Norwegian Avant-garde Black metal band Solefald. It was released in 1997 on Avantgarde Records.-Track listing:#"Jernlov" #"Philosophical Revolt" #"Red View"...

 by bringing a concept to the unique sound. It is in theory a black metal

Black metal

Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....

 album, but contains many sonic elements and themes the genre usually does not touch on. The vocals by Cornelius and Lazare are different on this album than the first; though Lazare retains his clean singing and Cornelius continues his black metal screams/growls with some delivered in a rap like cadence and one song, "Omnipolis", sung in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

. Some songs feature keyboards and electronic sounds unlike those typically used in other black metal songs. Indeed, the album was so far from traditional black metal, the band received a death threat.

Lyrical content

Although there is some thematic continuity between songs, the album is not as strictly a concept album

Concept album

In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

 as some of the band's later works. The lyrics to the album focus on consumerism and pop culture, which is a departure from many metal lyrics. American and European consumption seem to be targeted, as there are countless references to many brands and consumer icons throughout the record including Naomi Campbell

Naomi Campbell

Naomi Campbell is a British model. Scouted at the age of 15, she established herself among the top three most recognisable and in-demand models of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was one of six models of her generation declared "supermodels" by the fashion world...

, The Marlboro Man, Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...

, Calvin Klein

Calvin Klein

Calvin Richard Klein is an American fashion designer who launched the company that would later become Calvin Klein Inc. in 1968. In addition to clothing, Klein has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewelry....

, Disneyland, Prozac, Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards....

, Special Agent Dale Cooper, James Bond

James Bond

James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

, Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park (franchise)

The Jurassic Park franchise is a series of books, films, comics, and videos centering on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs...

, Visa Card

Visa

Visa or VISA may refer to:* Visa , a document issued by a country's government allowing the holder to enter or to leave that country...

, McDonalds and Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan

Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats...

. There are also references to philosophers and thinkers such as Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

, Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

, Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, and Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

, as well as references to various religious allusions, such as Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born...

, Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

, Sodoma

Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....

, "Satan

Satan

Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...

istan", etc.

Track listing

1. "Fluorescent (The Total Orchestra)" - 5:20
2. "Speed Increased to Scaffold" - 8:27
3. "CK II Chanel" N*6 - 3:31
4. "Proprietors of Red" - 6:33
5. "A Motion Picture" - 1:55
6. "Omnipolis" - 5:36
7. "Backpacka Baba" - 5:24
8. "Third Person Plural" - 4:03
9. "04.34 PM" - 3:22
10. "The New Timelessness" - 6:00

Personnel

• Cornelius
  Cornelius Jakhelln
  Cornelius Jakhelln , also known as Cornelius von Jackhelln, is a Norwegian vocalist, guitarist, musician, writer and poet.-Musician:...
  
   - Rhythmic rhetoric, oxneck and dandyhand strings
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  
• Lazare
  Lars Nedland
  Lars Are Nedland , known also as Lazare, from Kristiansand, Norway, is the vocalist, drummer and keyboardist for acclaimed avant-garde black metal band Solefald. He is also keyboardist for the progressive black metal act Borknagar...
  
   - Fiery voices, red keys
  Keyboard instrument
  A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
  
  , acoustic and artificial beats
  Drum
  The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
  
  

Miscellaneous

• The album's recording sessions were marred by a mixing console that caught fire.
• The album takes its name from a synonym for the word "neologism", which means a made up word which enters everyday use.
• The album's production is as such because the band wanted to use a "true black metal production" sound, having it recorded at Sunlight Studios (home to many reputed black metal acts in the mid 90s)