Dark Regards
by Dave Hill and Artyom Topilin
Many thanks to Oni Press
and NetGalley for keeping it metal with Dave Hill’s hilarious and absurd Black
Metal odyssey Dark Regards. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting
into with these 4 issues that are now combined into one volume, but when I read
the description about how a stand-up comedian’s attempts to promote his
fictious black metal band Witch Taint by disparaging Norwegian black metal
bands, I knew I had to check this out. I was glad to see that Lords of Chaos also serves as a reference point for this book, and that author Hill
was able to find the humor in the book. When I first read Lords of Chaos, I couldn’t finish it. It was so bleak and dark, but I’m glad that I
returned to it a few years later and was able to read through the cannibalism
and Thanatos to find the humor in how extreme these Norwegians wanted to be.
Ultimately, their pursuit of Mayhem (pun intended) led to violence, murder, and
church burnings as a way to prove their metal/mettle. Hill focuses more on some
of the absurdities of these Scandinavian scallywags like the desire to use torches
for lighting in a record store. However, Hill also maintains the threats and
extremes that these bands are willing to go to in order to be the bleakest, darkest,
harshest sounding band around. Plus, he creates some killer band names like
Rectal Heresy, Devil’s Snot, and Odin’s Pile.
The story is a little
slow to start, but once Dave is turned on to Nachthammer, Viking Colon, and
Misery Buffet (more realistic sounding bands) by uber-cool record store worker
Tierny, he’s visited y Lord Abscess, one of the singers who died from
self-cannibalism. Again, this sounds almost like something you’d read in Lords of Chaos. Just like Dave, I sometimes can go to extremes when I hear a new
genre of music, especially music that’s hard and heavy. However, Dave goes even
more extreme, developing a fake band and trolling real Norwegian black metal
bands, which eventually brings them to the US to hunt him down. Dave eventually
gathers a group of metal maniacs to form the band Witch Taint. However, with the
arrival of the Nordic Warriors, Dave and Witch Taint will have to battle these
true black metalheads to prove whether they are extremely extreme. This was a
really fun story to read, with lots of great references to metal, not just
Norwegian black metal. Also, the artwork by Artyom Topilin was great. It’s
extremely colorful, and yet the artistry really captures some of the darker elements
of metal. I loved the way the Norwegians are portrayed as big and hulking. Dave’s
corpse paint is also well done. Sometimes with these kinds of absurd stories
the art might be overdone or too comedic, but I found a nice balance between
humor and horror that helps to capture these complementary tones of the story.
I especially loved the alternate covers in the back of the volume that reference
classic metal albums from the likes of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Dio. This
was just a fun read, although I wish there was more of Lord Abscess. Hopefully
there are more stories in the works about this character. Dark Regards is a fun and wild ride. Highly Recommended!
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