Enslaved – In Times (2015)

by David Rosales on June 7, 2015

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Watching the greats fall is always painful. But watching Darkthrone go from Transilvanian Hunger to The Underground Resistance is not half as painful as seeing how Enslaved defile their name in a pseudo-prog mainstream pop metal album like In Times after knowing they were capable of something like Vikingligr Veldi. Even without drawing a comparison, the contrast-oriented sequence of scenes posited by the modern metal of In Times as an excuse for music is in itself enough to throw this out the window.

The sort of failure that an album like this represents is one of the most pervasive maladies that afflicts modern metal, but it was born long before the metal itself developed. The pseudo-prog musical fallacy of either stitching unrelated sections with disparate characters and contrasting ideas  or merely repeating riffs and similar ideas with no subtlety was born as soon as progressive rock became a “thing” and paper-thin rednecks like Camel and Rush were confused with the real-deal bands like Yes and King Crimson which require much more subtlety to appreciate. This is a sickness that metal has to overcome if it is to have an artistic future and if the absorption into mainstream pop music is to be staved off.

This absorption is always taking place, and there are always pockets of resistance. Enslaved is showing us the most dangerous example of this watering down. It is the most dangerous because it gives the superficial appearance of attaining greater complexity. But it is a trivial complexity. It is no real musical complexity as it only consists in stacking elements that sound appealing in passing much in the way Michael’s Pink Frothy AIDS constructs for the intellectual, sensitive hipsters. This music is painful to listen to for any discerning listener looking for coherence and meaning in art and should be avoided by any fan or musician looking for excellence except as an example of a common pitfall of the pseudo-intellectual metal movement.

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Deiphago – Into the Eye of Satan (2015)

by David Rosales on June 7, 2015

Deiphago - Into The Eye of Satan - medresx300

Playing a mixture between the primitive South American black metal of Sarcofago, the unrelenting and mindlessly simplistic assault that borders on comedy of Marduk and something of its own, Deiphago’s Into the Eye of Satan is both a highlight and representation of half-cooked modern nostalgia metal. The references to the influences are pretty clear for someone to see and even though Deiphago escapes them and proposes something of their own, the sections in which we hear the older voices are two transparent. Rather than an integration of influences, we hear quotes to other composers in the midst of Deiphago’s maddened ramblings.

These raptures proper of a madman that Into the Eye of Satan exposes us to are as endearing as they are nonsensical. It makes one think of the epileptic attacks that Colombian’s Parabellum subjected the listener to. The difference is that the Latin American savant band actually produced coherent music within the wild and often disorienting music that nonetheless had a clear large-scale plan. Deiphago on the other hand attacks the listener with pure chaos, subjecting it to passages that border on noise improvisation and structures that appear to  consist of haphazardly placed extreme-sounding sections. The theme here is chaos, the destruction of music and ideas themselves while the picture is not completely given up on. While not incurring in the sin of trying to become atmosphere itself nor becoming self-referential symbols, Into the Eye of Satan sadly still falls short of a year’s highlight due to what I perceive to be compositional laziness and/or lack of controlling musical notions in spite of a solid artistic vision.

 

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Aion – Verses of Perdition (2015)

by David Rosales on June 7, 2015

AION_VoP_artwork

Aion’s music falls into that territory between war metal or atmospheric death metal mistaken for black metal on account of its superficial attempt at creating atmosphere that results in simple meandering. As metal, for reasons that have been explained before on this website time and again, this release fails catastrophically. So perhaps we are listening to this in the wrong way. Perhaps as listeners we are not judging the music on its own terms. Since this does not accommodate the requirements of traditional metal of any kind, how about we take this as ambient music? How does this compare to Biosphere’s Substrata or Klaus Schulze’s Cyborg? Very poorly indeed. Verses of Perdition cannot be compared to Schulze’s work because the man’s work is too goal/conclusion-oriented.

Perhaps a more impressionistic interpretation is more apt for this sort of straight-up repetition of passages for atmospheric effect. In my view, this type of music still fails even if its criticism is taken that far away from metal, since impressionist music still needs a build up and a direction of some sort. Even Debussy’s pictorial approach is not reduced to such self-absorbed attempts at making the music become the atmosphere itself. The problem runs deep and a safe advice for any band is to avoid this route as it will only create vague visages and excuses for music.

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Abyssion – Luonnon harmonia ja vihreä liekki (2015)

by David Rosales on June 7, 2015

Abyssion is an industrial metal band hailing from Finland, a land that typically has been cradle to some of the most pensive underground metal. Abyssion plays music in that same spirit while remaining pretty accessible, making transparent music that can be absorbed on first listen by any experienced listener.  There more of the indie and the Oi! than the traditional black metal in this music.

While some may feel the temptation to describe this in relation to Burzum based on the music’s most superficial traits and on passing and distracted observations, Abyssion’s Luonnon harmonia ja vihreä liekki has a lot more in common with Darkthrone’s early black metal albums. The difference with either is still clear to anyone intimately acquainted with Burzum or Darkthrone. Burzum’s developmental variations have no parallel in Abyssion’s music, which works with straight-up repetition and synth distraction. Even in contrast with Darkthrone’s dense riffing, Abyssion appears more sparse as it is a more blatant attempt at creating atmosphere.

Here in lies the trap: the artist is not trying to create music but the effect of the music. When music becomes about the effect, an imbalance is created through which the music is no longer solid, nor is the effect lasting, since it is self-referential and insincere. Still, Abyssion’s offering is consistent in style and faithful to a spirit. Recommended as a gateway band for fans of Muse into the spirit of underground metal.

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May 2015: The decent and the rescuable

by David Rosales on May 31, 2015

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This is a “best of the month” list for this month, but making the title “Best of May 2015” sounds like giving too much of a spotlight for such a short span of time, and devaluating the word “Best of” somewhat, in my opinion. Therefore I chose a title to reflect reality more clearly: these are the only albums we heard of on this website this month that were decent enough to not be considered utter disgraces to the metal genre (those were in the SMRs or were ignored). The “decent” are those that show consistency in style, coherence, a direction and a clear artistic voice and goals. The “rescuable” are those that are still confused in their composition — unclear, or that seemed to be impeded from development by their own approach to music-making (or that of their own genre).

 

The Decent

  • Ascended Dead – The Advent                                      review
  • Blasphemic Cruelty – Crucible of the Infernum      review
  • Exhumation – Opus Death                                           review
  • Luciferian Rites – When the Light Dies                     review
  • Necrophor – Exterminatus                                          review
  • Nekromanteion – Cosmic Horrors                             review
  • Perversor – Anticosmocrator                                      review
  • Shroud of the Heretic – Unorthodox Equilibrium  review
  • Undead – False Prophecies                                           review

 

The Rescuable

  • Blind Guardian – Beyond the Red Mirror                review
  • Bureviy – Concealed Beyond the Space                     review
  • Dew-Scented – Intermination                                     review
  • Maruta – Remain Dystopian                                       review
  • Undergang – Døden Læger Alle Sår                           review
  • Wende – Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft    review
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Shroud of the Heretic – Unorthodox Equilibrium (2015)

by David Rosales on May 31, 2015

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Skillfully bringing together doom/death, modern atmospheric and war metal styles, Unorthodox Equilibrium is more than a fitting name for describing the musical approach used in this album. Bands playing in any of the aforementioned styles have typically fallen prey to different misconceptions. Some have failed by attempting to adopt an orthodox position simplified to the precept that genre cliches guide songwriting and that the result will be good if it “feels good”. Others have taken a route that attempts to bring more original ideas into the mix but whose ultimate goal is still that each section gives them a certain feeling, an “atmospheric/ambient” effect. We can summarize the cause of these blunders by saying that their approach has been too pleasure-oriented.

In Unorthodox Equilibrium we can hear familiar voices bearing the mark of Worship in Last Tape Before Doomsday, Disembowelment (I refuse to follow ridiculous indications as to what letters should be written in uppercase format) in Transcendence into the Peripheral and Esoteric in Paragon of Dissonance.  Unlike them, though, Shroud of the Heretic only slightly avoids falling into complacency with the immediate effect of their arrangements and instead channels these as methods used measuredly. The band manages to promote a sense of movement in each section while maintaining atmosphere without depending on stagnating in the harmony within one section or getting anchored to one kind of texture or intensity level for too long.  This makes the album an incredibly varied experience within the non-restrictive but focused confines of a florid and eloquently coherent language.

Independently of whether this was a conscious decision or not, the heterodox and non-monolithic composition route taken by Shroud of the Heretic avoids this atmospheric metal trap and represents an excellent indicator of an artistically healthy direction for this subgenre of metal.

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Imposition – Memento Mori (2013)

by David Rosales on May 25, 2015

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Imposition is a single-man black metal project which can be compared in approach to what Sort Vokter did in their sole release, Folkloric Necrometal. Minimalist composition, backed with synths that outline a melody, Imposition creates a racing and urgent music which combined with the sensation of space that the synt-produced organ-voices, gives the listener the experience of going through a space-time portal into a darker dimension. But rather than another physical dimension, Memento Mori seems to bring into focus the spirit world of energies, the subconscious comes to the fore as the material and our conscious awareness of it recedes. Part of the solidness of this is that there is enough space between synth and guitar, but they are also close enough that there is no sensation of emptiness or vaccum between then, which can appear to be grander to some, but is ultimately a cheap trick to make the music appear larger than it actually is. Imposition plays no such trick on the listener and uses the elements at its disposal to honest use, building what it can without pretending to be more.

 

This release is probably only meant as an EP, as the duration of the whole thing is very short, as are the songs themselves. The songs being short is not a problem in itself, as when you string these together, the whole album becomes one whole work with minimalist movements. Taken this way, Imposition’s conspicuous music is one of the most promising if this man is able to solidify this into a full album. A word of advice from my point of view would be to try and develop the ideas in the songs a little further, with the same caution with which the music has been written until now. At the end of this Memento Mori, one has the impression that something amazing has been glimpsed, but no complete memory of it remains.

 

Imposition on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Impositionbm

 

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Deiphago to release new album

by Staff on May 24, 2015

deiphagoband

Filipino violent black metal band Deiphago are set to release their new album, Into the Eye of Satan, on August 7th.

Tracklisting for Deiphago’s Into the Eye of Satan
1. Intro: Abomination
2. Evil and Adverse
3. Bloodbath of Genocide
4. (6 x 6 x 6) / 3
5. Serpentine Anti-world
6. Calculated Acts of Cruelty
7. Red Dragon of Chaos
8. Ritual Death of the Enemy
9. Into the Eye of Satan

 

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