“Every now and again, even I stumble across an album that I struggle to overwrite and, in this case, that is because a terrible mistake was made. I picked up I, the debt by Canadian-German duo Alexander after spotting it, alone and unattended in the promo sump, sporting a funeral doom tag. Only it didn’t say funeral doom, it said funeral drone, something I realized only after the No Takesie Backsie policy had kicked in.” Strong policies, harsh consequences.
“I wanted a black metal/noise hybrid. I figured it was the trvest style out there: the ultimate form of pitch-black atmosphere that could conjure abstractness and bleakness to new heights. While there have been plenty of artists that have tried, like Enbilulugugal, Gnaw Their Tongues, and Abruptum, success has been limited, so I wished upon a star for noisy black metal.” Cut off your noise to spite your face.
“For those of you acquainted with the Dutch black metal scene, this is another project from Maurice “Mories” de Jong, whose sadistic tendrils puppeteer acts like Gnaw Their Tongues, De Magia Veterum, and Obscuring Veil, to name only a few. He and an anonymous member released three demos and an EP in 2019 under the moniker Dodenbezweerder, which attempts to fuse the sprawl and evocation of ambient black with the edge and claustrophobia of raw black.” Noise as a weapon.
“Imagine, for a second, what could and would happen if musicians with backgrounds in free jazz, free improvisation, and modern composition became metalheads. What sort of music would they then make? Perhaps they would attempt a take on death metal, deconstructing the genre’s elements, perverting them, and piecing them back together into maddening soundscapes. A fantasy befitting of phase-shifted thinking and playing mechanisms. With their debut Putrid Tendency, Catatonic Effigy give flesh to this feverish reverie.” Choose the sound of the Destructor.
“To write about Gensho, the latest in a 15 years long series of collaborations between illustrious Japanese experimental metal, rock, and everything in-between trio Boris and legendary noise musician Merzbow (alias Masami Akita), is to write about three different records: a Boris shoegaze-cum-drone meditation, a Merzbow harsh noise attack, and a mammothian combination of the two.” What’s with guys who like drone and writing run on sentences, anyway?
