The Serpent's Breath II: Domine Non Es Dignus

My nostalgia for this album can't save it.

Domine Non Es Dignus is often described as "blackened metalcore," and it did set the blueprint for the style that would soon make Anaal Nathrakh popular amongst the underground. Tracks like "Do Not Speak," with its vocal crescendo, would become their staple.

Dave "V.I.T.R.I.O.L." Hunt's harsh vocals are still intense as ever, and the samples on the album add a bit of flare to tracks that are stunted aurally. There are a few memorable riffs (early in "To Err Is Human, To Dream (Futile)" and "Do Not Speak"), but for the most part the sterile production kills it. The drum machine is invasive and as lifeless sounding as you would expect from the two words "drum" and "machine" being paired together. Many of the later tracks are unlistenable due to how boring they are, like "Swallow The World" and the dull blast-fest "The Final Destruction Of Dignity." Shame the final track "Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of the Light" has such a sweet title yet it can only disappoint with a production this bad. Still it's one of the stronger tracks on Domine Non Es Dignus.

The Nietzchean overtones are still there, and some of the track subtitles are even in Deutsch, but it comes across as half-baked when it's predecessor explored the themes in a much more appealing way. Domine Non Es Dignus might be mildly entertaining if you're looking for something proto-Eschaton sounding, but for the most part the album drags its feet through mud on the beaten path of extreme music.

I'm giving the album a bit of a bonus for being nostalgic, but even then the score isn't looking too good.

4.0 out of 10

Tracklisting:
1. I Wish I Could Vomit Blood On You... ...People
2. The Oblivion Gene
3. Procreation Of The Wretched
4. To Err Is Human, To Dream (Futile)
5. Revaluation Of All Values (Tractatus Alogico Misanthropicus)
6. The Final Destruction Of Dignity (Die Letzten Tage Der Menschheit)
7. Swallow The World
8. This Cannot Be The End
9. Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The Light

Listen // Buy

Chelsea Wolfe - The Grime And The Glow

Last year I reviewed Chelsea Wolfe's Apokalypsis. I thought it was a good release that kept my attention with surprisingly bearable female leads and its dark atmosphere. I recently refound my love for it so I decided to check out her previous release and 2010 debut, The Grime And The Glow.

It's similar in some ways, and different in many to Apokalypsis.

Sugarcoating a turd is pointless and I'll tell you right up front the production on The Grime And The Glow is shit. I'd go so far as to say the production is the top reason this album wasn't so well-received, and it gave her the 'noise' tag. I don't even mind noise rock or noise-influenced music (Ghola represent!) but The Grime And The Glow feels very inconsistent. Tracks like the "The Whys" are very lo-fi and it does have a novelty to it, but that novelty wears off about thirty seconds into the song. The mixing is weak on here too. "Fangs," has a bass sound that literally makes me cringe, and that's one of the better written tracks with a relatively 'decent' production compared to the rest of the album.

The songwriting on here isn't half as bad though, and Chelsea Wolfe does display a competence in writing decent doom-and-folk influenced rock. "Bounce House Demons" would later become the track "Demons" from Apokalypsis, and "Moses" would become my favorite Chelsea Wolfe track thanks to the redux. "Noorus" is a bending track that sports some very key-warping when the layered grooving takes a break. The Grime And The Glow is a very subtle album, although I'm not sure if that's a byproduct of the production or the songwriting. The grooves don't directly 'stick,' but they're noticeable, making the album bearable if not memorable.

Wolfe's great, woeful vocalwork is here in a less refined state. "Halfsleeper" is in my opinion her vocal apex on this album with its beautiful simplicity. Her voice harmonizes with itself to create a haunting, funeral atmosphere. This contrasts pretty actively with the bouncy opener, "Advice & Vices," which is surprisingly more upbeat and catchy. Like the majority of the album, it sounds like the whole master recording of this track fell into a vat of reverb and didn't quite make it out the same. The bonus tracks on The Grime And The Glow are listenable but that's about it. You won't be remembering them anytime soon.

Shame her debut wasn't as strong, but I guess it paved the way for Apokalypsis.

4.25 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1. Advice & Vices
2. Cousins Of The Antichrist
3. Moses
4. Deep Talks
5. Fang
6. Benjamin
7. The Whys
8. Noorus
9. Halfsleeper
10. Bounce House Demons
11. Widow
12. Gene Wilder (Bonus track)
13. Move (Bonus track)
14. You Are My Sunshine (Bonus track)

Buy

Zammuto - Zammuto

Zammuto is a new indie synthpop group with electro-infused grooves formed by members of now-defunct The Books. I hear great things about The Books all the time, but after listening to Zammuto's self-titled, I can't really say I'm excited to check them out if they're similar in the slightest.

 

This IS indie synthpop. I knew that going in I would be subject to experimental beats and odd computerized sounds, hoping many of them didn't feel cheap. Luckily most of the sounds used on here have a bit of grit to them, making it accessibly dirty. The songwriting bounces around between funk-grooves (see: "Zebra Butt"), math rock guitar riffing on "Groan Man, Don't Cry," and more complacent, straightforward beats like on "Weird Ceiling." Like a jack-of-all-trades, Zammuto are a master of none of these styles, and the horrid vocal distortions and mixing make it painful to listen to.

There's only so much of a vocoder one can take. I mean if you think you can handle more, go for it, but I certainly can't. Zammuto abuses the effect until your own hatred for it will make you want to join the band in beating the computer (or pedal) into a bloody pulp. It's disgustingly overused on literally every track that its presence is felt, except perhaps "Idiom Wind" which is a nice, mellowed out break that comes too early in the album to serve as one.

My irritation when listening to the vocals is mostly due to the mixing. As primarily a pop album, Zammuto's self-titled has the vocals mixed very high, and thus they overpower the beats and harmonies that the album tries so hard to envelop the listener with. The only exceptions to this would be "Idiom Wind" and the closer, "Full Fading" which features a melancholic vocal line and chord progression. It sounds like Bon Iver, which isn't much of a good thing, but it works well here.

Zammuto's self-titled isn't entirely on the level of horrible I've made it seem. Some of the beats are pretty cool, and I like the riff-heavy sound of "Zebra Butt," the mellow progression on "Shape Of Things To Come," and the intro to "Groan Man, Don't Cry," but some of the tracks reach self-indulgent levels of annoyingness, and the shit mixing doesn't help either.

4.75 out of 10
 
Tracklisting:

1 Yay
2 Groan Man, Don't Cry
3 Idiom Wind
4 Crabbing
5 F U C-3PO
6 Too Late To Topologize
7 Zebra Butt
8 Weird Ceiling
9 Harlequin
10 The Shape Of Things To Come
11 Full Fading

Stream here.

Obscura - Illegimitation

I've had the pleasure of meeting Christian Münzner and he's a pretty nice guy. A bit shy, especially about Obscura's earlier material. I actually asked him if I should pick up Retribution and he told me "No, get Cosmogenesis you don't want Retribution. We were shit back then." Well I already had bought Cosmogenesis, and although I wasn't the biggest fan of the band back then (or now), I liked them because their live performance was solid. They knew how to rile the crowd up, and their playing was precise and not overproduced as happens when you don't have all the studio effects miring everything up.

Personally I didn't enjoy Omnivium one bit. It barely felt like death metal if even extreme metal. Now come 2011 and they've released a compilation like all big name bands in metal seem to do, titled Illegimitation.

Generally compilations are pretty worthless to me. Taking a bunch of tracks everyone has heard before and pulling them together on an album to be marketed to fans as a new release is just a cheap way to make a buck. Obviously that isn't always the case and in particular I love when bands happen to re-record old tracks just for the compilation. Otherwise it just feels like a waste of time and money, although occasionally they'll include a few new tracks to tide over people like myself.

Obscura however, didn't.

Instead we've been given three "new" tracks. In fact they're covers of bands that may have had some sort of influence on Obscura at some point. One cover of Death, one of Atheist, and one of Cynic. Tracks one to four are from Obscura's demo (also titled Illegimitation). Funnily enough, "Fear" is pretty badass. I gotta say it sounds like a less polished, more bass-driven Obscura with a degree of heaviness that their later material seems to lack. Obviously as comes with these first four tracks being demo quality, they're significantly less polished than their recent output. The drumming is imprecise, the guitarwork is much more simple, and the basslines are more mid-paced and groovy. Everything seems to flow well in my opinion, although if you're a fan of Obscura you've heard these same tracks before.

Tracks five to seven are from a preproduction of Cosmogenesis, and I definitely like the sound on these more than that of the album. "Incarnated" sounds more aggressive and "Headworm" is pretty dense for an Obscura track with its chugging triplets. I mean there's nothing special about any of these tracks, but I guess if you wanted to hear how Obscura would sound without the studio overproducing everything they do, this is what it'd be like. The covers however are awful. I cannot stress how horrid the cover of Atheist's "Piece Of Time" is. The vocals are horrendous and there just seems to be some big disconnect between the band and the song. The "How Could I" (Cynic) cover is significantly better but it doesn't really make up for the Atheist cover. The Death cover is pretty passable as is everything Death did post-Human.

There's not much fluidity to the tracks on here and the theme seems to be "unreleased tracks," which is never a justifiable reason to create a compilation unless those unreleased tracks share a similar theme or style. Illegimitation doesn't really show this, with different members, production changes, and stylistic changes all making their appearance on Illegimitation. Oh well. It just further reinforces my opinion that compilations are worthless.

4.75 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	...And All Will Come to an End
2.	Crucified
3.	Fear
4.	Immanent Desaster
5.	Incarnated
6.	Open the Gates
7.	Headworm
8.	Flesh and the Power it Holds (Death cover)
9.	Piece of Time (Atheist cover)
10.	How Could I (Cynic cover)

Alcest - Les Voyages De Lame (Lame Indeed)

Alcest is one of the frontrunners in the hackneyed "blackgaze" front. Oftentimes these bands overlap with "Cascadian" black metal, which is significantly more tolerable than this shit. You could see the beginnings of the movement in progressive goth/doom metallers Novembre, but at least they had the riffs to back it up. Here, sitting at Alcest's third and arguably most accessible (along with 2010's Éscailles De Lune, which I hated) release, we have more of the same shit.

Les Voyages De L'Âme is another attempt at creating a somber, dreamy atmosphere with tremolo riffing and the occasional "tormented" black metal screech. Neige's voice was never particularly strong on either front, and some of his better harsh vocals were done with his Lantlôs side project which I vastly prefer to Alcest, although part of me did enjoy the fuzz rock on Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde. Here we have Neige once again using his dream-like timbre in an attempt to soothe or create an emotional response with half-melodies, but like most of his attempts, it falls flat on it's face the second the corny harmonized riffs play along with his voice. Les Voyages reeks of cheese, and if you came looking for an album with a compellingly ethereal atmosphere far from morbid teen angst, you're looking in the wrong place.

Perhaps it's the occasional symphonic keyboards which irk me. They're blatantly placed in the mix so they always reach the peak frequency as Neige sweeps into a crescendo, except on "Nous Sommes L'Emeraude," where they're just annoying all the way through. The instrumentation on Les Voyages is perfectly fine and fitting for this kind of music, ignoring the irritating keyboards. The major-scale tremolo riffing harmonized with Neige's high-pitched vocals tries to convey a sense of dreaminess, and sometimes the combined two do a really good job of that. "Là Où Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvelles" is a good example here, as the riffs and layered effects build up rather nicely until they all come crashing down, leading into one of the few black metal rasps you'll hear on Les Voyages De L'Âme. "Summer's Glory" is another cool one that builds well into one of the few sequences where the dreamy atmosphere is realized. However most of the time the atmosphere is terribly executed, like on "Beings Of Light," which reaches Darkthrone levels of repetition in all its two-note glory. Sadly it's probably the most intense song on the album.

I keep getting the recurring idea that listening to the riffs is like peering into a rippling stream that reflects the sky, the sun, and all the fun, fruity things in life. This might be the atmosphere that Neige's trying to convey on Les Voyages, but I don't like it. It's whimsically happy as opposed to realistically happy, and it isn't really psychedelic or dense enough for me to get behind it. The latter is what Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde achieved and is the reason I can at least give that one a half-nod of approval. Les Voyages however? No. Not In the slightest.

4.0 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Autre Temps
2.	Là Où Naissent les Couleurs Nouvelles
3.	Les Voyages de l'Âme
4.	Nous Sommes l'Emeraude
5.	Beings of Light
6.	Faiseurs de Mondes
7.	Havens
8.	Summer's Glory

Spawn Of Possession - Noctambulant

Herein I shall review Noctambulant, the latter of Spawn Of Possession's two full-lengths. Since Incurso is coming so soon, I figured I'd go on a nostalgia trip and listen to these guys again in preparation.

I never enjoyed Noctambulant. Going back to it, I don't think my opinion has changed much. It is one of the poster children for the new(ish) neo-classical technical death metal movement. Noctambulant essentially has it all: technical riffs based around high speed arpeggiation, odd time signatures, and diverse rhythmic elements ranging from the belted growls and drum patterns to melodic basslines.

All of it amounts to nothing. In fact 'nothing' aptly describes everything I feel when I listen to Noctambulant.

The production might be to blame here. Everything is glossed over to the point of sterility. By that I mean literally every track and every instrument: guitar, bass, drums, and uh, synth. The bass frequencies are almost nonexistent in the mixing, leaving Noctambulant with a very inoffensive, wimpy sound. The times the bass guitar rears it's dry, progressive-toned head are few and far between as well. One such time is on "Dead & Grotesque," where a montage of riffs and a solid bassline wreak havoc on your brain before collapsing into a mid-paced (for Spawn Of Possession) solo. That track is easily one of the best on Noctambulant, and sadly there's few others that come close to matching it.

Noctambulant is a virtuosic display by musicians with no talent for songwriting otherwise. Despite cleanly played arpeggios and extensive soloing, most tracks often make jarring transitions and change time signatures without warning. Generally this is cool by me and creates an unpredictable atmosphere, but where the production is so pathetic and the riffs are so dominated by modal structuring, it makes listening to them a bore. Take for example "Lash by Lash," a track ruined with mid-paced hammerblasts and a main riff exemplifying all the guitar noodling douchery I've grown to hate.

Another big problem for me with Noctambulant is the "riff salad" nature of the tracks. The fact each song contains so many differently styled riffs and structures makes the whole thing feel like one long guitar exercise. The attempt at adding some jazz flair on "Eve Of Contempt" comes across as half-baked despite the song having one of the better solos on the album, while the useless ambient intro to "Scorched" further diminishes what I presume was supposed to be a 'brutal' track. All those hammerblasts and the metronome being set to 300 make it seem like a giant dick-wagging fest that they lose in every regard.

The redeeming qualities of the album? There's plenty of talent in the instrumentation. If you're a sucker for guitar wankery and listening to theory exercises over and over, you'll probably enjoy Noctambulant. I however enjoy my talent with a side of feeling, and that's something Noctambulant sorely lacks.

4.0 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Inception
2.	Lash by Lash
3.	Solemn They Await
4.	Render My Prey
5.	Eve of Contempt
6.	Sour Flow
7.	By a Thousand Deaths Fulfilled
8.	Dead & Grotesque
9.	In My Own Greed
10.	Scorched

Eventually.