Formless Oedon: Streams of Rot
Out 24th July on Memento Mori
Formless Oedon’s debut LP ‘Streams of Rot’ is neck deep in the over saturated Lovecraftian brand of contemporary death metal. It’s a style cornered by the Blood Harvest roster at present, but increasingly pervasive across the topography of the international scene. Defined by dense mixes, chasmic atmospheres, lack of dynamics, a surplus of riffs and dearth of new ideas. Focusing on texture over content, stylistically leveraging the likes of Morbid Angel, Incantation, Gorguts, and a caricature of the explicitly Weird vibes generated by the classical Finnish canon.
The preceding summary may sound interesting. It’s not. Hundreds of artists are currently trying to carve out a niche here. The reason is chiefly due to the low bar of entry on a creative if not a technical level. Despite the mastery of instrumentation displayed by the majority of new artists, they lack anything approaching the creativity of their influences. This is because this style is defined by a superficial aesthetic as opposed to any substantive compositional craft. The result is a crowded market of indistinguishable noise, all failing to articulate any identity distinct from each other or the influences they lay claim to; with the likes of Grave Miasma being something of a paragon here.
Formless Oedon circumvent this malaise by stripping back the production, eschewing the weighted, lumbering inertia of their chasmically bound peers in favour of a clear, chunky mix still accommodating to a considerable atmosphere. This allows them to create space for a genuine dialogue between riffs. What’s perhaps most revealing is that Formless Oedon are at their most creative when branching off into non-metal territory, with elements of post hardcore, groove metal, and sludge bleeding through the cracks.
Whilst these are normally elements to be detested when meshed with death metal, the avant-gardist trappings of a Gorguts influence steps in to act as midwife to the odd intersection of novel riff integration and the more garden variety Incantation offcuts. The resulting chimera is an album fighting with itself stylistically. It presents as an imposing, Lovecraftian horror story, one among hundreds to come out in recent years. But the presentation itself is far too route-one to come across as a convincing representation of tentacled horror. Yet if we take this as a more straight forward affair of bludgeoning death metal, it looks decidedly dull. But it becomes apparent as ‘Streams of Rot’ progresses that we are focusing on the wrong aspects. Despite this posing as a death metal album, these elements merely form link segments, filler content used to stitch together a far weirder, freeform beast of experimental metal.
From this angle Formless Oedon pose as an avant-garde band in disguise. All the foregrounded death metal calling cards are serenely unremarkable. Yet they are mere Trojan Horses, foils allowing Formless Oedon to spread their modestly experimental wings whilst retaining a degree of appeal for true-blue death metal fans. The result is far more pleasing than many bands that foreground their dilution of extreme metal via the trappings of “post” or “groove” influences. The compositional rigour of death metal disciplines Formless Oedon, bringing a focus and purpose to these compositions lacking in more explicitly stylistically fluid outfits.
The result is still unfocused, clumsy even. But what these tracks lack in macro purpose, they make up for in the surprisingly novel tangents and frequently divergent melodic orientation of the riffs. ‘Streams of Rot’ carves out a niche between the saturated market of the Lovecraftian sonic tentacles of the current wave of Blood Harvest clones and the bland fluidity of extreme metal diluted by sludge and post hardcore. This proto novelty may have reached us prematurely, it still being in a developmental state, but at least the subject matter is moving in an unknown direction as opposed to perpetual recapitulation.
Ascendancy: A Manifest of Imperious Destiny
Out 14th July on Me Saco Un Ojo/Dark Descent
Danish newcomers Ascendancy take the primal aggression of blackened thrash and the subtle evolutions of melodic content found in the likes of Greek or Swedish black metal to create a slow burn of playfully dark music. Simple refrains make up the backbone of these tracks, recontextualised via harmonic commentary and some well placed shifts in rhythmic emphasis. These are then devolved into basic atonal barrages of violence, which in turn give rise to developmental material defined by increasing complexity and thematic weight, in turn functioning as compositional centrepieces.
Although explicitly primitive, the production is not without its polish. Modestly organic drums set a rigid pace for the rest of the music. Adopting the stiff lineage of thrash and punk blast-beats as opposed to the loose fluidity of the Nordic style. The guitar tone – although decidedly frigid – embodies an earthy warmth emanating from the fact that distortion is kept at bay by an underlayer of clean tones. That being said, the higher end lead material adopts a cold and calculating aesthetic that stands in welcome contrast to the softer rhythm guitar, throwing the rich counterpoint littering this EP into sharp relief. A mid-range bark of monstrous aggression further colours the textural offering, providing an additional percussive lever for Ascendancy to pull on within music that is otherwise decidedly fluid.
Despite the stop/start approach to tempo, with pieces galloping forward at a bacchanalian pace only to cut into a slow marching pace welcoming of grim inevitability, there is an oddly hypnotic quality to the subtle evolutions of theme on display here. The opening refrains are often simple, yet returned to frequently throughout each piece, and with each recapitulation new commentary is added by way of evolved guitar leads to stand in stark contrast to the simple thrash lineage of this music. But the momentum sits within the creative well of high drama defining this EP, as the music never fails to reach a satisfying finale, the ground for which is well prepared as the piece slowly unfurls its complexity.
‘A Manifest of Imperious Destiny’ is a subtle EP despite its obvious energy. It works within the black metal oeuvre closest to other forms of metal in that it trades on exchanges of riffs, creating expressive statements via the interchange and evolution of said riffs, as opposed to pure melodic and atmospheric rumination. But despite being located in a rather proto chronological location for black metal, this EP steps forth as a fully developed and distinct statement of traditionalist but original black metal.
Cultic: Seducer
Out 20th July on Eleventh Key
Fantastical death doomers Cultic return with a single of their by now trademark combination of ultra primitive dirt metal set against obscurantist tracts of mystical lore and eccentric ambient/experimental accents. ‘Seducer’ alters the conceptual orientation of this artist from holistic fantasy based narratives to character driven pieces. Musically, the metallic elements remain as primal as ever, combining Autopsy at their most sluggishly lackadaisical with the absorbing simplicity of Celtic Frost.
The dungeon synth elements that were once added for mere flavour have evolved into genuine events sitting alongside the lumbering, almost funereal drone of marching death/doom. They colour the raw animalism of ringing distortion with intriguing accents of half formed melodic content. The choice of synth patches is novel in that it tends to avoid the slick orchestration of strings and choirs in favour of more explicitly synthetic tones, brass, and odd textures of noise that serve to bring a welcome degree of alienating weirdness to proceedings. Thundering bass and the basic inevitability of the percussive battery lend self-assurance and bombast to the more experimental elements on display here. Gravelly distorted vocals complete the picture, adding a seasoning of monstrous energy to heighten the dramatic stakes.
This brief two track release re-asserts the best elements of Cultic’s previous LP ‘Of Fire and Sorcery’ whilst developing their unique approach to a subgenre of extreme metal often written off as overly limiting. Much like the elegantly simple world building projects of Celtic Frost, the music is fully immersive, creating its own architecture both sonically and narratively, but from a place of sparse topography as opposed to technical density. ‘Seducer’ is a welcome primer for the next stage of this curiously evolving pocket of fantastical and primal death/doom.
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