Reviews on April 25th 2003:
Chaos As Shelter Dead Air Broadcasts
(Flesh Made
Word/DTA records co-release; 10 tracks; 68minutes 23 seconds.)
(File under : Radio noise that killed the radio
stars…)
Another stunning heavy release from this Israel son of
chaos… This record consist of a record made from sounds coming from a short
wave radio. Actually this sounds like a saturation of radio frequency parasites
where you can hear some voices, some guy (Arab I guess) praying, some sorts of
music over tons of electronic manipulations with these radio frequencies as
source. Actually if you think you can do the same thing with your own short-wave
radio, go ahead, but I’m pretty sure that you can’t give this scary ambient
atmosphere this record got. Because I guess it goes further than just (Chaos As
Shelter madman) Vadim Gusis playing with a simple short wave radio. Like on the
first tracks, there’s like a couple of noisy layers, maybe it was a long work to
arrange this kind of records with success. But the result is a very strong
records with very rich textures. This is quite different from that Maelstrom
release, but the artistic way to produce this records and the final product
consisting of some great noise fantasy will sure interest you. If you like very
volatile ambience in your music with a lot of sound research and plenty of power
electronics and anguish atmosphere, get this album as fast as you can since
this is the album you need. Chaos As Shelter kicked my noisy ass once again…
Flesh Made Word www.fleshmadeword.com
DTA Records www.dtarecords.com
Chaos As Shelter Maelstrom
(Flesh Made
Word; CDR; 1 track; 20minutes 17 seconds.)
(File under : Dark soundtrack for a deadly
night of chaos…)
I just discovered Israel’s own Chaos As Shelter, but
they are nearly becoming one of my favourite Dark Ambient/noise act today. This
CDR was release I guess last fall on the Flesh Made Word that I guess became
Immanence Records recently. This CDR delivers a 20 minutes song that reminds me
a little bit of Lull Gerogerigegege on their None Friendly album. I
guess it can be really easy these day to do ambient music, like a keyboard a
computer and a cool mixing project or like using MIDI file, but being you a
good ambient composer is something quite more difficult. What’s great on this
track is that I guess the player, Vadim Gusis, is a good musician. This
composition remains really ambient and quite minimal, but the sound is really
thick and the instrumentation is really efficient, The first time I was
listening to this records I was reading and I played it 5 times. Over that kind
of awesome heavy feedback that leads the track, there’s instrument playing
really loud and reinforce the track. The music (well I guess we’re speaking of
music in a noble way here) is really dark and after all listening of it I feel
like I want more and more. The cover is a kind of galaxy like circle (a
Maelstrom!) and it like printed on a brown paper sheet, but it’s actually a
pretty beautiful package. The problem with this stunning release is that I
guess it’s a limited release, so jump on it while you can, because you have to…
Flesh Made Word www.fleshmadeword.com
Chaos As Shelter http://njstudio.co.il
(Wow! Two Chaos As Shelter
review… Why not?)
Darkest Hour Hidden Hands Of A Sadist Nation
(Victory
Records; 9 tracks; 56minutes 06 seconds.)
(File under : Metal the deathy way it always
should be played...)
Awesome... If I was in this band I should be proud
of me. This is like a kind of a dream coming true album. Darkest hours is like
the Yin-Yan of metal, they combine the stunning violence of mid-to-late-90’s
Swedish death metal with the brutality of late-90’s American metal-core. I
guess if you don’t shake your head to this record maybe nothing will make you
do it. The At The Gates meet In Flames riffing are so vicious, the drumming is
as intense as old At The Gates album were. I mean At The Gates are so much of
an important band in my head (along with Carcass) that trying to sound a little
bit like them can’t be a bad thing. The hardcore thing I guess come from the vocalist
effort that reminds me of a lot of bands, but I really can’t point one in
particular. There is also part where in a common Swedish death thing there will
be brutal blast beats part that goes into a pretty heavy mosh parts. But don’t
be afraid there are very violent gring parts like in the opening of track
three, Oklahoma, that is pretty much of the most voracious song of the
album. This violent demonstration end up with a twelve minutes slow instrumental emotive song
really well executed that will calm you don’t for breaking up everything if
music influence your attitude. I don’t know but I guess I’ll check up to catch
them live since this energy-providing album can’t be nothing than a chaosfest
live. And here’s one of the key behind the album. These Swedish death metal
crazes from Baltimore went to Sweden to records this album at studio Fredman in
Göteborg (yeah, the Swedish death Mecca) with superstar producer Fredrik
Nordström. There is also (when you go to Göteborg, you try to make new death
metal friends) guest appearance by two former member of At The Gates members Tomas
Lindberg (now in The Great Deceiver) and Anders Björler (now in The Haunted
bien sûr!) as long as Marcus Sunesson from veterans of The Crown and Peter
Wichers of Soilworks. I mean this is approved my the Swedish death community as
a great thing if people went to be on this records. This is I guess nothing but
the most intense metal records that will be out in 2003, well at least it will
raise standards. Well there is more fast bands, more heavy bands, more crazy
bands, but when all is when combined, with a voracious production to support
it, this album can’t hardly be exceeded easily in the intense-o-meter. So there
is just an alternative to you : let this trashing mayhem come to you and you
know what violence is all about : Darkest Hour
Victory Records www.victoryrecords.com
Darkest Hour www.darkesthour.cc
Freya As
The Last Light Drains
(Victory
Records; 13 tracks; 33minutes 33 seconds )
(File under : Some metal nu to the core…)
Freya is the new incarnation of what was Earth Crisis.
Well in my opinion this doesn’t at first helps the percentage for the
who-cares-o-meter to get lower… I mean I used to like Earth Crisis a lot, their
first full-length Destroy The Machine, was a really big groundbreaking
album for me. It introduced me to a kind of more socio-political lyrics with
heavy and abrasive metal. I know it was done before but Earth Crisis was a
really nice band for doing this. Their second album was pretty descent but was
too much of an un-emotional album, too slow and loud for me and in a way I
don’t like… I stopped listening to them when they released Breed The Killer
who was less interesting than previous efforts and well who needed Earth Crisis
records in his stereo when you can have pretty more crazy bands like Turmoil, Coalesce
and Converge in it, that’s mainly why I gave up on listening to Earth Crisis
and I’m pretty sure many other did too. And I guess it goes less than decent
after that, I mean I never knew someone who actually cared about them after
that. So that’s why I didn’t got a lot of interest in Freya first, but the
result was really better than what I was expecting. The album begins with
pretty descent chugga-chugga riffing that can’t made people remember of
Meshuggah or well Earth Crisis and with a nice scream. My head was shaking…
But… sadly Karl Buechner start singing. Fuck… this sucks, this shit reminds me
of all the pretty boring nu-metal bands I avoid for years. Fuck off for the
first song. The second song is pretty much of a fast grooving song that can reminds
us of the glory days of ExC with both more punk and metal attitude, it made me
forgot that I wanted to stop the CD at the hearing of the first song. The third
song is actually a nice song until the advent of clean vocals, sorry, that’s
not that I hate clean vocals, I just think that trying to sing like Linkin’
Park is not a good way to earn respect from me. But Karl’s death-core vocals
worth the hearing. On the fourth song the clean vocals are still shitty, but
seems more acceptable, the decent beats make me do more air drumming. Well I
don’t know, but I got the impression after that that the rest of the album
won’t surprise me, even the vocals that used to afraid me didn’t after a
certain moment or maybe they are less present in the end of the record, except
on track number eleven that is as dull as the first track is. The recipe is
pretty stable and have to be respected. One interesting thing about this album
is that the songs are short so if they sucks, the torture is not so long. I
really think this album could have been the 3rd album Machine Head
should have release if they have followed a harder path instead of being the
band that went on being a great nu-metal joke instead of becoming a legendary
band in leading the late-90’s metal scene. The production is really well done,
guitars are very loud and vocals are really well recorded. Well as I was
thinking that this album was going to be a really boring metal, I can say that
it’s a decent album with really more catchy compositions that their previous
incarnation used to provide. I guess it sounds more honest as I can say… And
maybe this is because of these bad clean vocals by the way, but it didn’t make
this records sounds as hermetic as old Earth Crisis were… Nice work for Freya…
You make me respect you again…
Victory Records www.victoryrecords.com
Freya www.freyamusic.com
NxFxTxEx Huuhuuuuuuuuuuu
EP
(Legion
Sudan;CDR; 4 tracks; 36 minutes)
(File under : A noise project that tends to
find his way…)
Denmark’s own Eli Gudnarson started this project I
guess in 1998, I got some of their previous recordings and I don’t feel the
need to listen to these records since I never find their works really amazing. NxFxTxEx’s
(that means Nut For Trendy Ears) earlier releases were like compilation of
tracks he made with his computer and sounded to my ear too lo-fi and too much
of a mix of different housing sound source, like on a song called Nightmare
there got some bad Anal Cunt sampling and sound from a waking-up machine (sorry
I didn’t find the name in English for this). Anyway I was intrigued by the fact
that Legion Sudan say that this album was “brutally harsh computer noise”. When I first heard the
album my reaction was to say that this is not as brutal as it is supposed to
be. Anyway, the first track is a little bit disappointing, but the 3 other
tracks on this record are absolutely magnificent. The thing I think about Eli
and NxFxTxEx is that he possibly don’t know, but his projects (such as Douglas
Nine) are slowly becoming to my hear something as a good minimal noise project.
I guess minimal is not the term, monotone can be the word… I mean all songs are
like long filthy electronic drives with few changes that are what noise is all
about : making people nuts. I really enjoyed the 3 last track especially the
third one that features more high parts but still remains a monotonic wall of
sounds. Well if you like your noise squeaky and fast and violent, NxFxTxEx is possibly
not really for you (but check out the Blakkfetus record also on Legion Sudan),
but on the opposite hand if you like your noise near ambient but still really
noisy and minimal, check out NxFxTxEx since their sound will possibly evolve,
but as they define their sounds as “brutal”, maybe I’m wrong and the project
will evolve on an harsher path. But there’s a potential of becoming a super
nice project.
Legion Sudan www.legionsudan.cjb.net
Rondellus Sabbatum
(The Music
Cartel; 12 tracks; 53 minutes 40 seconds)
(File under : Wacky Sabbath tribute…)
For those who don’t know, this records consist of a “medieval
tribute to Black Sabbath”, which is something that scared me first and you
should too in the listening of it. Actually there’s two way to see this
album. First you have to agree that when a bunch of Estonian dudes decide to
translate Sabbath songs in Latin and arrange them with 14th century
instruments can be nothing more than respected. Actually what I like the most in this records
is the kind of metallic percussion that sounds really heavy and chaotic. The
second way to see that album is to realise that the average Black Sabbath fan
won’t probably take this seriously and will buy this album (if he buy it) to
get some curiosity in his record collection, will listen to it once, will possibly
laugh and put it in his CD rack for eternity. Actually those who risks to like
this are like fan of more medieval music and actually this is pretty more
strange than Carl Orff composition
to give a kind of comparison. Actually by the hearing of to opening Verres
Militares (War Pigs) I was very sad about the fact that the trashing parts won’t
come like in a Believer song. And by the way my favourite song is Symptoma
Mundi (Symptom Of The Universe) that actually sounds like a bunch of
satanic monks with strange dark ambient atmosphere. Well if you’re a die-hard
Black Sabbath tributes, get this. If you’re not, think twice, because that’s
more of that kind of impressive records you respect the works, but you can’t
listen to it.
Rondellus www.sabbatum.com
The Music Cartel www.music-cartel.com
