Black Beast: Endless Night on a Dead Earth
Out 6th June on Trauma Records
Applies a blackened sheen to the reckless energy of Massacra via fluid energy transferences and focused melodic intent. Atonal barrages abound, as does an onslaught of staccato punches as per the proto death metal template. But beneath the amoral violence are connecting threads hinting at tonal centres of a blackened lineage, creating a conflict between the ambiguity of the music’s hardcore DNA set against the heroic confidence of occultist extreme metal. The loose chaos of punk adorns the music at the presentational level, adding a superfluous but welcome affectation of sloppiness despite the obvious ability of the musicians. Vocals wander between the ghoulish amusicality of Attila, to a more percussive bark aligned with early Sepultura in its attempt to navigate the rhythmic urgency of these pieces. Lead guitar material adds little in the way of topography, preferring instead to inject a variety of pitch and texture alongside the unsettling chaos inherent in the banshee wail of overdriven guitars. A persistent, sincere, and studied recapitulation of an underserved form.
Act of Entropy: Oupiroullel
Out 7th December on Centipede Abyss
Industrial, free jazz, and noise merge with the detritus of death metal to create a sonic representation of the contemporary metal picture. Schizophrenic, confusing, deeply conflicted, and for the most part structureless. Introductory material takes the form of labyrinthine passages defined by frantic programmed (?) drum patterns, random guitar improvisation, dissonant piano, and a swirling monstrosity of distorted vocal ambience. Following such an aggressive, scorched earth approach to tonal establishment, it’s remarkable that the music manages to take itself anywhere beyond a nonsensical abyss. But signs of hope are forthcoming. Meta structures don’t so much emerge as force their way through the anomie with aggressive and oddly optimistic aplomb. It begins with the intelligible rhythmic anchoring of ‘RfpneflfefeL’ (pronounced ?), which provides a solid orientation for more improvised interchanges between guitar and bass, but this time with a clear tonal centre and sense of forward purpose, as dynamics gradually escalate the music with layers of traditional tension and release. This sets the scene for the uncanny brightness of the second half of the EP, no less horrifying in its abrasive surrealism, but intelligible on the level of harmonic mores. ‘Oupiroullel’ is another pocket of desperation, a shrill, unfiltered cry for evolution and change within an increasingly unwieldy experimental metal landscape.
SLOW: Abimes I
Out 8th December on Code666
Contemporary funeral doom’s affiliation with oceanic themes is almost laughable. One day Ahab noticed that a slow, ascended chord passage with rolling drum fills sounded like the crashing of waves on a shore, and from there the programmatic musical framework was set in stone, saddling it with an obvious, superficial metaphor, and segmenting the music off from any alternative forms of naturalism, or indeed any abstract or romantic potential at that. SLOW predate this trope, but if we were being uncharitable their mid-career shift from ambient drone to on trend tragedian nautical doom could easily be construed as an act of cynical band wagoning. Whilst far from the most tedious in the modern funeral doom canon, SLOW offer very little to recommend themselves here. Swelling keyboards and a lazy seasoning of guitar harmonies make a show of lifting the music out of its circularity, but achieve little more than contrasting textures that will fool the undiscerning into seeing hidden emotive depths to this music, depths that are sadly lacking. The underlayer of droning guitars and by-the-numbers doom drumming occasionally throw in a jarring shift in key or pitch, as if to wake the audience from the slumber induced by the total lack of substance. Taken as read, this is mood music, pivoting toward texture, arrangement, and what I assume these musicians thought were tasteful contrasts. All of which amounts to a series of hollowed out, inoffensive sonic episodes devoid of the weight or gravitas purported by the packaging.
Cryptworm: Oozing Radioactive Vomition
Out 15th December on Me Saco Un Ojo/Pulverised/Extremely Rotten
Cryptworm append their material with surplus information to cloak a lack of connectivity extending from the internal mechanics of these pieces to their intimacy with their own influences. All of which is indicative of a colour-by-numbers approach to that branch of death metal motivated by a surrealist preoccupation with gore. ‘Oozing Radioactive Vomition’ essentially apes the chromaticism of ‘Nespithe’, but lacks the cerebral edge. Where Demilich evolved the simple to the complex through serial inversions, Cryptworm take the converse approach, beginning from a place of mediocre pastiche and stripping back the layers to deliver a basic, entirely redundant death metal groove. Competence abounds. No one could deny that Cryptworm at least have their head and hearts in the right place. But the compositions are too linear, transparent, dare we say limited, to translate the passion of these musicians into a clear statement. Incantation and Autopsy are both brought to bear when Crytpworm run out of road and are forced into divergent passages requiring a shift in dynamics or rhythmic flow. This is par for the course for the majority of modern death metal suffering from a similar malaise born of the weight of too much history on its shoulders, and when all else fails these divergent influences are deployed togive the music an illusory reset, when in reality we are simply transferring from one derivative sterility to another. Again, the intent is honest, the results sadly lacklustre.
Locus Amoenus: ‘t Gloem Heil
Out 22nd December, self-released
Another overcooked attempt to neuter the armoury of extreme metal into a dirge of sentimentalist nonsense. Locus Amoenus are simply the latest in a long line of would be poets who see nothing more in doom metal than a platform for public selfcare, and in the compositional language of black metal nothing but melodic dressing for a salad of emotional fluff. Trivial guitar lines are given a twist of lyrical development which, alongside the depressed funeral doom tempos, are apparently supposed to give this paper thin material the appearance of gravitas. Refrains are worked into a state of utter tedium, to the point where even the musicians seem to realise they may appear as naught but affectation, at that point they rely on cliched melodic development borrowed from an older heavy metal influence, here recast as something “profound” because it’s played slow and in a minor key. The contrived theatrics of the vocalisations, the keyboards that add nothing musically but again add superficial layers of texture to further adorn this individualist monument to emotive vanity, all speak of an artist interested in metal only insofar as it can further their public persona as nuanced, thoughtful, sensitive individuals. The result is both tedious to sit through and garish in its contrivance.
Suicide Circle: Bukakke of Souls
Out 29th December on Osmose Productions
French black metal has always cherished its international renown as the abstract cousin of the Norwegian style, thanks arguably to the initial anti-music approach taken by the Les Legions Noires circle, whose most famous and accessible project was helmed by one Meyhna’ch. Here we see this idiosyncratic figure re-emerge with a bizarre attempt to surmise the French “sound”, encapsulating everything from early Les legions Noires vampirism, to the aggressive nihilism of Antaeus, through to the post modern redundancies of Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord. Boasting more misses than hits, what sets French black metal apart is not so much a penchant for alienating surrealism, more its perpetual adolescence when taken against other international scenes, and its ability to cloak this in the veneer of maturity through nothing more profound than a series of oddball flourishes and distracting vocal histrionics. Suicide Circle typify this trying black-metal-by-smoke-and-mirrors approach, working in hints of more imaginative musical forms in the guise of a flavouring of Mayhem or even the original melodic flair of Mutiilation at the height of its powers. But such hints at substantive artistry are a mere sideshow, fodder for the real star of the show, an undulating, meandering, directionless circle jerk of naval gazing eccentricity. A carnival of nothing, specifically designed to achieve nothing beyond evoking plaudits for how “weird”, “quirky”, or otherwise left-of-centre this is. Plaudits which no doubt Suicide Circle received for this release (branding dispute between its members aside). But for anyone mindful that music should communicate something beyond a plethora of random affectation should probably give this one a miss.
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