D E C I E V E R I O N
Decieverion
2002 Era Horrificus
Decieverion start out making what can precisely be described as dark metal, an amalgam of death, black and heavy metal techniques underpinned by extreme metal vocals which can be of a variety of kinds. The purpose of this music is first and foremost to take the listener through sights both bleak and destructive, but also moving and pensive. To this end, dark metal, and so Decieverion, adopt a variety of techniques which, while not disparate or incongruous, make it hard for the critic to place them within one style or genre. Unlimited by such restrictions, the music wanders around seemlessly without great contrasts being perceived as outright offensive. On the downside, the lack of stylistic focus gives this music an altogether weak voice, even if execution is enjoyable and profficient. Incumbered by the liberties and confusion of dark metal, Decieverion tread a middle path that allows for the transmission of varied emotionality at the expense of clarity and elaboration towards depth. A final valuation of the present work reveals that the greatest treasure to be found here is one of countless things to say subsumed under a same aura and personality.
Dark metal moves, as its name directly implies, towards themes “of darkness.” In short towards the less pleasant, the less visited, but no less crucial aspects of our lives and minds that are often neglected but which are more decisive to human experience than the parts that are “positive” or “nice,” —human delusions not withstanding. Furthermore, dark metal as a whole tends towards personal sensations of frustration or desperation, rather than the painting of mythological outlooks. In this there is the advantage of being able to raise a sign that says “I have seen and I have lived.” The disadvantage is that in taking up the space and time to represent this subjective, changing and capricious individuality, the comprehensible link that would make the music self-evident through structures and style to others becomes blurred and debilitated. Instead, it is the bleeding emotionality that seeps through the cracks that impressionistically transmits a holistic image that can only be captured by intuition. Furthermore, the commonplace nature of the expressions used ensures that it is the intuition of a human unencumbered by layers of abstractions and “artistic” demands that finds the emotional clarity found herein as the Decieverion’s most important asset.
Decieverion then moves between passages that hint at black metal, at death metal and at so-called doom metal, in a way that many would interpret as a that of an undefined underground metal. But being these stylistic differentiations within an ultimately united genre, a prudent mind can fuse them together without the slightest hint of incongruity. Sufficiently intelligible complexity is achieved by smoothing out the textures of adjacent sections, and using contrasts in this texture as narrative markers, rather than as tools of shock, which would have destroyed the music’s credibility. The rightful complaint to be made is not so much that the styles are mismatching, because they are taken back to the power chord, as well as the multi-purpose percussion style that is founded upon the rock-based extremisms of underground metal. As such, and in order to attain stylistic variety, Decieverion errs on the side of more mainstream genres. To summarize, Decieverion let themselves be understood by choosing the more comprehensible popular aspects of metal, as far as they go, while developing a narrative by extending songs that connect sections through a proper minding of texture and by protecting the integrity of tonality.
If music is to be ultimately interpreted as an art of communicating what words cannot describe, then the art of Decieverion is accomplished at that of the transmission of experience-based insight from individual to individual. While other works leave great impressions of great art, they are ultimately impersonal and lacking immediate relevance to the majority that behold them in awe.
Tags: 2002, dark metal, DECIEVERION
Gay alt rock chords open the song. After about 1 minute of uninspired black metal riffing, it sounds like the band ran out of ideas already. Another mediocre piece of shit from the 1$ metal bin.
Isn’t there anything to do around the German Bayern district than parade yourself around on the Internet like this, ever so self-demeaningly?
He’s right, though; this is just a more saccharine and disorganized version of Eucharist and third-album At the Gates with a distracting drum performance.
Or, you can actually listen to all of it and stop comparing it with bands where there is no comparison in overall style or direction.
At the Gates is technical death metal done correctly.
Eucharist is a bad rock-like imitation of At the Gates or melodic-era Sentenced.
Decieverion is DARK METAL.
These are wholly different scopes.
“Dark metal” isn’t a real genre; it’s a label applied to death metal in the vein of “No Longer Silent” or “Soulside Journey” that took Amorphis’s sense of melody and applied an ambient tremolo pick to it.
I reference other bands because it’s a useful shorthand. Eucharist and later At the Gates had the same crisis that this band does — a desire to express emotions in a more personal and humanized way than death or black metal allow, but not the wisdom to see that the more “extreme” aesthetic of those genres arose precisely to express that which was beyond human experience, and thus collapsed in confusion. Deceverion is another band that, if they were more aware, would be making pure heavy metal, because their aims are directly at odds with the genre they’re trying to work within, and the result is mostly unlistenable — without heavy metal’s hooks and soaring choruses to give it some life, this kind of “stream of emotion” falls into the same traps that emo punk did, getting trapped in the immediate sensory sensation of maudlin feelings but not able to find anything to communicate about those feelings other than their own existence and thus leaving every listener bored to death within two minutes.
Deceverion does this style one worse with rampant musical confusion; new riffs have nothing to do with old riffs other than the unchanging pattern of tremolo picked emo, and the band can’t find any way of creating contrast other than random acoustic passages and the occasional hilarious groove riff (seriously, the first distorted riff in track 1 is enough to disqualify this release for most experienced listeners), so there’s no sense of “song”, but rather just a collection riffs flowing by, with the occasional “gotcha!” acoustic break hoping to keep listeners awake.
I know that you have a connection to this band’s labe based on shared spiritual practices, but please, do try to be more discerning in the future. When you promote something mediocre, it weakens your praise of more worthy bands like Gevurahel or Serpent ov Old.
Dark metal is a tag of an intermediate way of doing things with a focus above genre boundaries.
If praise of one thing weakens another in your view, you are simply being narrow-minded, for praise comes in different forms and in different degrees. If you think answers can only come in “good” and “bad” then it shows your own poor mentality.
“If praise of one thing weakens another in your view, you are simply being narrow-minded, for praise comes in different forms and in different degrees.”
If everything is good, then nothing is good. When you praise everything with various shades of “it’s good for what it’s trying to be”, then when something truly outstanding comes across the desk, all you can do is paint it with similar praise. If you either disregard or chasten the bottom 99% of albums that will be forgotten in three months, you let the excellent stand out.
It’s a simple signal-to-noise ratio issue. This is one of the most important reasons that most iterations of this site have been ruthlessly selective in what they hand out praise to.
Nobody said everything is good.
Now you are imagining things.
I said that praise for two different things, in which yo disagree with one of them,
should not weaken the other, when specific and different reasons are given for each.
Most albums are garbage, others are hyped, others connect with people.
Some albums are powerful but they only connect with a handful of people, and become significant for them.
Most people can only perceive flare, others around here can only follow what Prozak dictates, if it matches their preconceptions somewhat.
ah prozak is god
“Eucharist and later At the Gates had the same crisis that this band does — a desire to express emotions in a more personal and humanized way than death or black metal allow, but not the wisdom to see that the more “extreme” aesthetic of those genres arose precisely to express that which was beyond human experience, and thus collapsed in confusion.”
Astute observation.
I too think the album sounds like drivel.
Guess that explains the DSBM-ish vibes in parts.
Thank you D.A.R.G. for the review of this…but looking back on this close to twenty years later, I would have to agree that the songs could have been better produced. The new release is due out soon, and I will send you an advance if you would like. Three of the songs from “The Separation” are on Bandcamp for streaming. Please listen to those songs, as I think they offer a better quality for the listener at large and helps convey the way Deceiverion was meant to sound. The first album was rushed, and not very well rehearsed or produced. The new release is way better by comparision, so I’d ask that people listen to that first before listening to the first release. Thank you.
Concerning the production, I don’t think anyone here was talking about that.
As for the writing, what I heard in The Separation does sound more focused, something which I discussed in private before.
I would be thrilled to be able to listen to the whole album in advance.
Please refer to our common, trusted friend for contact details.
on the new track it is even more apparent that this is only black metal, all this essaying about dark metal is nice for the writer to write, but words stay words, as much as they can create their own reality, in this case they dont really match with the actual music they are describing. even the themselves speak of nihilistic bm..
The new tracks are quite obviously a different style.
That does not mean that my words are “Creating a different reality.”
It’s just the same as saying, because it is true, that At the Gates started playing technical melodic death metal, and they ended up playing embarrassing proto metalcore.