It would have taken a mad Nostradamus to predict in 1984 that the sprouts that grew from Hellhammer‘s and Possessed‘s gory and satanic fantasies would in barely half a decade bear fruits in bridging the arts of dark metal and effulgent progressive rock, even jazz, with a virulence unheard of. While Morbid Angel and Death were building Florida’s reputation for fiendish blasphemy, two bands specifically attended to the science of philosophy and the phenomenological realm of the mind. One was the thrashier Hellwitch, the other was the name to be synonymous with jazz influenced death metal; Atheist. Technical, baffling and impossible to headbang, despite their oddities the band easily captured the attention of open-minded metalheads bored of pop metal and hundreds of Slayer clones.
How did Atheist do it? While fans may argue for the technical aggression of “Piece of Time”, I find this album to be the key to the band’s unbounded ability to use syncopated percussive enthrallment, mathematical measures, subtle disharmony and a perfect understanding of tonality to show every formal musicologist that death metal is up there with other advanced musics of humankind. As the opening track “Mother Man” engulfs the listener to its helical and hypnotic guitar melody, Tony Choy, borrowed from Cynic to replace the tragically deceased fretless bass master Roger Patterson, unlocks the fluttering dormant quality of his instrument from the robust, minimal traditions of Geezer Butler and other heavy metal bassists. By the time we join “The Incarnation’s Dream”, it’s quite hard to recall we were supposed to be listening to death metal, as the eerie acoustic bliss takes us beyond Metallica’s “Orion” to what is the wildest dreams of symphonic rock á la Yes come life through the hands and mouths of irreverent Florida dropouts. Mental revelations induced by New Age literature and TV documentaries on UFOs and mysteries of the universe, or musical heirship to German classical idealist philosophy?
The progressive death metal of Cadaver fulfils itself here in an aesthetically compact, streamlined form that is the best of the style. American styles are clearly a strong influence, with the structural and compositional narrative having the same quality of Death’s ‘Spiritual Healing‘, with phrasings and modes highly reminiscent of the dissonant, staccato heavy riffwork of Prong‘s ‘Beg To Differ’. Occasional basswork that is reminiscent of light, lounge jazz music enhances the eclectic appeal of ’In Pains…’, giving an insight into what ‘Symphonies Of Sickness‘ or ‘Severed Survival‘ could have resembled given David Lynch‘s or David Cronenberg‘s taste for absurd, psychological and physical horror, albeit transferred into a less visual format, or what Cronenburg himself would term as music “from the point of view of the disease”. Much like the early work of fellow Germanics At The Gates and Atrocity, the lyrical and musical concepts concern themes of psychological, emotional distress that bring the most chaotic, despairing moments of Knut Hamsun’s ‘Hunger‘ or Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime And Punishment‘, translated into a modern soundtrack, an opus for the darker recesses of the human condition.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: Death Metal, Grindcore, Norwegian Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal, Psychology — Pearson @ February 26, 2010 16:38 — Comments (2)