Vultures
Vultures
[Independent]


As a bitter potion, reluctantly sipping its way down one's throat, making the drinker squirm with immediate disgust, while drop after a drop the sipper is forced to succumb to the bitter, foul taste and texture, until one is acquainted with it, making peace with it, peacefulness becomes addiction, addiction becomes dependence...

Vultures' music is such, as it starts with demonstrated uneasiness, reluctance, and it gently, firmly, eventually transits to almost addiction and awe...

Unfortunately, from the very start, Vultures' music was born in the wrong place, in the most narrow-minded, intolerable, low-life-infested place one can think of, taking in consideration it being a so-called 'modern', or 'western' country, and I mean Israel...In a place such as this, what Vultures are doing will forever remain the 'black sheep' of the underground, will be mocked at, scorned, and taken non-seriously, and again - intolerably by the masses. Israel is the last place in the 'western world' a band could have started playing music such as Vultures', the last place I can think of. The very few 'followers', the narrow audience of this sort of musical art, is hard to be imagined as being only a starter of a group growing yet, of listeners, of consumers, non the less of media sharks i.e., local record labels showing any interest whatsoever...Similarly to other radical expressions of dark music; Funeral doom, Dark ambient etc., Vultures' music is doomed to stay far away from the limelight, and that is, ladies and gentlemen, only a point in favor of Vultures, at least from where I stand and look at things...

Music that originally was born with the knowledge, or self-consciousness that it is lacking any commercial aspect in the first place, will always be the one whom is truly free to be created and expressed, without any boundaries, artistic, financial, irrelevant ones. Music such as this had to be expressed due to the fact its originators had felt it should be executed, must be played, had that impulse, first and foremost, and musicians such as these are the true heroes of the underground, whatever it may be...Music, any music, must be first born, written, played and heard - before any external, foreign consideration is taken, and in doing so, the musicians leave the music to be owned by the listeners, making them the real and only judges of it. Whether they like it or not, it is only upon the music's abilities to move, to excite and upon the listeners to decide, nothing else. Should music leave its audience indifferent, it will eventually fade, as it has failed to deliver any emotion music should deliver, to be able to strike and aim directly to the inside of each and every one of whom considered as human...Vultures is the most original band to come out of Israel. Period. In addition, its originality does not sum up only in pure avant-garde, insane, incoherent, oh no. They make real music, music which makes sense, coherent, understandable, but yet, still avant-gard-ish, mad, powerful and stirring...Vultures play a hybrid of styles, all could be summed up by the title: Digital Hardcore. No, they do not play any industrial per excellence, as for me, industrial music can be attributed to very few acts, mainly Skin Chamber and its likes...I call Vultures' music Digital Hardcore because I hear in their sound and style another band, the German Atari Teenage Riot, an act whose albums have being released by the label: Digital Hardcore or DHR, as it is more known. Vultures play a post-punk, post-industrial, post-metal crossover of styles and influences, and they succeed immensely in their task because the outcome is powerful as well as extraordinary. They harness the digitalization to their aid, of course, as well as powerful distorted guitar lines, a handful of sampling and harsh soundscapes, verging on pure noise sometime, but although they are often than not labeled as a metal versus industrial band, I fail to hear any of those styles here. Metal stops at that particular point, where it no longer has any meaning, where it can no longer express anything, and from that point on, a different, another musical dimension must be employed, on another level, where another, different musical language is spoken...

Vultures' music stands somewhere on that fine line, on which bands such as Wumpscut, Laether Strip, Atari Teenage Riot, Laibach, Ice Ages and some Frontline Assembly/Skinny Puppy border...The unique sound of Vultures' music is very nihilistic, in the sense that it is very cold and lifeless, music which portrays a dead post-apocalyptic world, a world in which nothing is real or natural, everything is synthetic, exactly like the sounds of this short mCD, where the drums are not really drums, the guitars are far from being guitars, the vocals are not really vocals and all that sums up to produce the perfect hostile picture: A world of nylon eaters, made especially for those who had been the nylon masters, the manufacturers, and now, when the golem turned against its masters, the masters who got what they deserve, the soundtrack of this hostile reality is the sound of Vultures: Music which is not really music, for people who are nothing but mechanoids...

I had watched Vultures playing live, and I must say I was very impressed. If only they could have transformed that utter energy, power, dynamic performance to the actual recording or any other for that matter, it would have been only a blessing. This mCD is actually a mere shadow of what Vultures are really like on stage, playing, screaming and going insane when performing live, like there's no tomorrow...But is there a tomorrow anyway?

Vultures are the best thing that has happened to underground music in Israel at that particular moment.

Highly recommended, should anyone has failed to understand...


© 2003 c. drishner