Industries of inferno

Ah, springtime. Bright skies, pleasant temperatures, color exploding all around, floral-scented winds wafting visions of possibility and twitterpation. Of course, while everybody else seems to be having such a good time, as my last post suggests, these days I'm very much in need of something abrasive, misanthropic, violent and coma-inducing. Remember that "one review per post" idea I had? Eff that. This latest quest for a truly caustic, soul-scraping album has netted a number of musty candidates, which I intend to explore over a number of upcoming posts. I've graded these ugly bastards on an anti-social scale from zero to negative five. Today's subjects:

Dissection - Reinkaos: As previously explained, my blogging pseudonym was pilfered from a Dissection song, and while I feel nothing but scorn and disgust for Jon Nödtveidt's actions (his ideology is idiotic as well), I was an immense fan of his music well before he and his buddy tortured and killed a gay Algerian man for having the poor judgment of asking to learn more about their Satanic beliefs. The pasty fucker went to prison, shaved his head, bulked up and, supposedly, worked on new Dissection songs to record after his release. When the preview single, "Maha Kali," came out last year, everyone was shocked at how crappy the demo-level recording was, but moreso at how slow, tame and average the new offering was. Even the re-recording of the classic "Unhallowed" on the b-side sounded stiff and lifeless compared with the feral, spectral beauty of the original. The consensus, reached with crossed fingers, was that "Maha" was just a way to assert Nödtveidt's commercial metal potential after reaching his status as a FUCKING CONVICTED MURDERER, and that the forthcoming album would be packed with his signature properly-produced, rhythmically intricate, melodically mournful, infectious black/death/thrash metal brilliance. Well, as was the case with the single, I found a free download of the soon-to-be-in-stores result, Reinkaos, and do not feel the slightest bit guilty about not giving Dissection one cent of my money, as it is quite a disappointment. The good news is the sound is somewhat better, not as dry or thin as the single's, but also quite standard for a modern metal album. Storm of the Light's Bane sounded like it was recorded in a damn ice cavern, and that echoing chill remains part of its vivid charm, but this album could be from any anonymous studio. More troubling are the songs themselves. "Starless Aeon," for which Nödtveidt and his crew of hired cueballs shot a video, is pretty catchy, however unambitious, and actually one of the peppiest tracks on the disc. (God Dethroned would eat Dissection 2006 for brunch... then hopefully clean their teeth with Bullet for My Valentine.) One of the few other non-snoozers, "Xeper-I-Set," was previewed with "Aeon" on the Dissection site months ago, and it's OK except for the part where Nödtveidt's actually rasping "I am the murderer who refuses to submit!" - just the sort of gangsta rap braggadocio I really hoped he'd avoid. I will admit that "Maha Kali" grew on me and that it sounds much better on the album than the first version, the female vocals treated with an effect that makes them stand out from all the other sterile tones on the record. But the rest? Turgid, midpaced heavy/death metal with pseudo-mystical lyrics only outweighed on the silliness scale by recent Morbid Angel. If this was a lost early Dissection recording that had come out in the '90s, it might be a cool artifact... but in 2006, literally dozens of bands have made better songs and albums in the style. Just take one listen to what long-gone countrymen Eucharist were able to accomplish with similarly plodding melodic black/death tempos on A Velvet Creation, or even Greeks Rotting Christ on Triarchy of the Lost Lovers, and it will be clear that the era for this sort of thing to be effective passed Nödtveidt by. I've had a lot of hope for this album over the past decade or so, only to learn in retrospect that gap-filling knockoffs like Raise Hell's Holy Target and In Aeternum's Forever Blasphemy were both better third Dissection albums than Reinkaos is.
NEGATIVITY: -2 (hope = liabilty)

Entombed - Same Difference: The least-loved album of Entombed's storied career, this dropped in the late '90s, when so many seminal death metal acts had disappeared, lapsed into self-parody or just plain dried up and vanished. The enormously influential Swedes were one of the first death metal bands I ever liked, as I bought a copy of Wolverine Blues for $3 from a dumb Lincoln Park yuppie CD shop and ended up a fan. I didn't realize until later that at that point, the band was seriously changing its sound. I heard some songs off the follow-up, DCLVXI: To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth!, but they sounded weak and commercial compared to the blistering heft of Left Hand Path. Some years later, I heard the whole album and was surprised to like it for what it was. Anyway, Same Difference followed To Ride..., and upon its release, tons of reviews slammed it as soulless garage punk rawk shite (most of the mags still covering Entombed being European). But following the quintet's transcendently violent and pleasingly diverse set at Milwaukee Metalfest 2000, my interest returned, and has been there ever since. Until recently, Same Difference was the hole in my Entombed collection, since its reputation says it sucks. And yes, it turns out to be my least favorite of their sets, since it is pretty much a bare-bones version of the To Ride... material. It's basically slower Entombed groomed into a gruff, groovy '90s alterna-metal mode, sounding like something that could have possibly been part of a REAL Lollapalooza line-up had it been released a half-decade earlier. The major culprit is the clean production, perfectly characterized in the link above. It is a regular pro hard rock sound, like something by Audioslave or whatever. Now, I don't hate Audioslave, but Tom Morello does not write the same sort of tooth-kicking, dirty-ass "death n' roll" riffs that Entombed brought the world. Entombed's guitars need, if not the "Sunlight sound", then at least something suitably ugly and abrasive, and they unfortunately lack that here. There's also not as much psychedelic weirdness as To Ride... offered, and although it shares the variety of that album, it's more polite. L-G Petrov doesn't holler as hoarsely as he did before or after, but he sounds fine semi-singing on opener "Addiction King." Most of the actual songs on Same Difference are okay to me, since they are not a million miles away from what the band has done elsewhere. I like the newer Entombed albums, which have a lot of slower and midtempo tunes, and this album focuses on that side of their style. Seen through the gauze of all their other records, it makes sense that this less misanthropical path was once explored. It's not as bad as some would have you believe, but I'm still glad that Uprising followed, putting the fangs back in and veering from the more "respectable" path the departed Nicke Andersson followed. By the end of my life, I think I will say I listened to the recently-acquired Nihilist demos more often than I did this.
NEGATIVITY: -1 (could definitely use some harshness)

Mysticum - In the Streams of Inferno: Here's a regular kvlt act for ya. Althouth apparently still active, Norway's Mysticum has only made one proper LP, this one from 1996. It's amassed a small reputation over the years as a pioneering piece of electronic/black metal synergy. I must agree, this is a wicked mix of chainsaw guitars and club beats, and it really stands on its own, apart from other landmarks of the black-industrial canon like Samael's lush Passage or Dødheimsgard's amazingly fucked-up 666 International, laying the groundwork for acts like Red Harvest, Diabolicum and Aborym. (Mysticum guitarist Prime Evil is actually Aborym's current vocalist, taking over when Attila Csihar went back to Mayhem.) There are only two modes of operation for Mysticum on this debut: tooth-rattling apocalypse or eerie drone. That's not to say there's much monotony, a common trait of much "industrial" styled music, as the programmed beats change up in a fairly structured, Baroque manner. In fact, a track like "Wintermass" might actually go over with a more mainstream crowd if it remained at the clanging trudge grounding its verses. My personal favorite, though, would be "Where the Raven Flies," which starts as a minimalist two-note keyboard dirge. The tension builds for about a minute and a half before exploding into an overdriven dance track, one which happens to include a wall of scraping guitar, cold and fuzzy in that special cheap, static-y black metal way. Used more for its rhythmic quality, the guitar is pretty subtle here, the keyboard carrying the weight of the spare melody, very similar in effect to Darkthrone's beautiful "Transylvanian Hunger" - a song which I always thought would sound pretty cool if someone turned it into a straight-up Eurodance number to piss off the underground elite. (That will be on my upcoming split 7" - co-participants T.B.A.) Even the final track, one of those "mood piece" jobs so popular with your more pretentious black metal acts, is effective, run through enough effects to keep the texture consistent with the rest of the album's crackling terror. Entitled "In the Last of the Ruins We Search for a New Planet," it sounds like a spooky phantom transmission from a diseased sector of the galaxy, far from the sun and damned beyond hope. Although unconventional, this album is a perfect example of what I really want from black metal, a desolate and vehement outpouring of otherworldly misery. I doubt Mysticum would appreciate the word "communal" being associated with their work, but it's really nice that they let you download the whole thing for free at their site (get the .zip under "releases"). Highly recommended, although I suggest turning the files into .wavs and boosting the sound levels a bit before burning.
NEGATIVITY: -4 (bleak, numbing, inhuman)

Update, 5/8 - Here is a gander at some non-metal stuff I'm enjoying, new products by Zombi and Stephin Merritt. Catch you on the flipside.