Deathspell Omega - Paracletus

My dad told me something that shocked me the other day. He told me that it's stupid to hate things just because other people like them. I try not show it, but I'm pretty sensitive to that kind of comments, so I felt a little insulted, and, goddammit, I have very good reasons to hate The Dark Side of the Moon! It's insipid, boring, agonizingly predictable and sounds like Pink Floyd pulled most of the songs out of their ass. I would go so far as saying that Pink Floyd were the masters of pulling stuff out of their asses. Otherwise, how can you explain stuff like the song “A Saucerful of Secrets”, the song “Bike” or, well, most of Atom Heart Mother? It's not like I hate them or anything. They simply rarely impress me. With The Wall, though, they have. There they picked a format where cheesiness and failure lurk at every corner, and pulled it off. Wait, scratch that, they didn't just pull it off, they goddamn nailed it. They made overproduced prog rock opera their bitch.

So, what does Deathspell Omega's Paracletus have to do with any of this? Well, I once saw a person wearing a Deathspell Omega tee at a small gig once, and in my book, that means they're huge. I haven't heard any of their older material, but if it is in any way similar to this newest work, then their status is perfectly justified. This masterpiece has a promising and dramatic start with “Epiklesis I”, and from that point on, it delivers and surpasses already impossibly high expectations. The riffing is at the same time very melancholic, intense, powerful and carries a very theatrical mood. The production is one of the best I've heard yet. The vocals are at the same time monstrous and very human and emotive, in other words, incredible. But I could say that about quite a lot of great but not a-freaking-mazing albums. What really makes Paracletus so good is how well planned it is.

The album is a bit longer than 40 minutes, and it seems like every single one of the minutes is part of something bigger. Much like The Wall, listening to this album feels like an event. The songs manage to perfectly stand on their own, but together, they're as good as... uh... fuck it, I don't know what to compare them to. And, as far as I can tell, it all boils down to timing. Everything just comes in precisely when it should in order to be pleasant. It's like this release had connected with the listener and complied with their every wish. There's this balance between dissonance, absolute chaos, “bigness”, tension, humanity, inhumanity, and emotion that is kept throughout and is never broken. Just as one gets tired of a certain mood, it switches to the most appropriate next mood, while managing to simultaneously never border predictability. Despite this, the songs themselves still somehow sound like actual songs. You can easily tell any two of them apart, and that's not something that can be said about quite a batch of extreme music. And it doesn't even sound like Deathspell Omega have even presented their full range here. It leaves you still wanting more, like if they had a lot more to show, but decided not to. All in all, imagine Stanley Kubrick deciding to make an Avant-Garde Black Metal album. Actually, don't imagine that. Just listen to this one.

Standout tracks:

Wings of Predation
Abscission
Malconfort
Have You Beheld The Fevers?
Devouring Famine

Element - The Energy

I cringe when people talk of “the good old days”. They appear to believe in this mythical time when everything was simple and everything made sense and the world was a sunny, happy place, and that it corresponds exactly to the first two decades or so of their lives. And, from what I gather, it was actually better in every single way than whatever faggy bullshit we have these days, apparently. I'm glad there was a time in these people's lives when they were too naïve to know that stuff was kind of fucked up, but it doesn't mean that trying to return to that time is a very good idea. Everything evolves, and in evolution the only way is forward, because otherwise we're talking about regression. (And this is the moment I say what has probably become my catchphrase by now:) And that applies to music as well.

Take, for example, Death Metal. There was this time in the early nineties when Death Metal seemed to have reached its pinnacle. The genre had morphed into something that was at the same time very accessible and very mature, whilst not leaving behind its roots as being a more silly version of Thrash Metal. But by 1996 or so it seemed to have transformed into something different entirely, and, with time, the focus turned more to creating challenging compositions, and the elements of the genre were used for completely different purposes. There is still the occasional release that goes back to the olden days, but generally that will only work in favor when some kind of modern reinvention is applied. That is what Element have done with The Energy. Here they pick up the spacey, Prog-tinged Death Metal of Cynic and the like, and fuses that with the more modern aesthetics of acts such as... uh... Children of Bodom?

Well, admittedly, Element have improved upon most of the aspects that needed improving upon on Aeons Past: they got a far better production job this time around, much better vocals and they have improved the fuck out of the interludes. I'm not kidding, if it weren't for the awful sounding programmed drums, this album would have been up there with Bring Me the Horizon's 2010 album (no, I'm not writing that stupid name) in terms of sound. Oh, yeah. The drums are programmed now, because the album was recorded entirely by one person. And that isn't the only thing that has changed about Element. This time around, instead of making rather generic but good Technical Death Metal, this one man band is playing a kind of original but bad Prog tinged mixture of Death Metal and Mall Metal. Now, I'm not saying this is a bad release because the style changed. I'm saying it is bad because it is boring.

There are many ways, all varying in difficulty, to attract one's attention to music. One can opt for providing an interesting yet difficult listen, while another can go with engaging dynamics, while a third can choose really memorable parts of songs, and a fourth can simply provide very interesting song structures. While the best is to try and create a balance between all of the above, Element here chooses to go for most of the album length with none of those. In short, The Energy lacks energy. Also, I really disliked the way the more progressive influences were employed. They were used like duct tape. The songs will be going in one direction and then they'll just stop and try to go in a completely different one for no apparent reason, sometimes more than once per song.

And what's worse, you actually get a preview of how great the album could have been within the same album! “A Gesture From November” is fantastic and “Everchanging” is not much worse. It just makes me wonder what the hell went wrong with everything else. These tracks are like what Element wanted to do with the album done right. Yes, they are still kind of generic, but I can't deny that they are epic, that they are atmospheric, that they are progressive and that they make sense. Why couldn't the whole album be like that? Why couldn't this be another early nineties classic from the noughties?

Standout tracks:

A Gesture From November
Everchanging
Dreaming Forever

Element - Aeons Past

You know what I hate? People who make out at the cinema, that's what. 'Cause no matter how loud the movie is at any given moment, you can always just sort of distinguish the noise they make, and frankly it's pretty distracting. And is there any better way to show complete apathy towards another group of people's work? It would be understandable if the movie were some stupid time-waster, but there was almost an entire row of people making out when I went to see Inception. Then there are the irritating people on the other end of the spectrum. Those who gasp and go “Oh my god!” or “Did you see that?” when watching a movie. Not only are they irritating and inappropriately amusing, but they also seem to have never learned the unwritten rule that overenthusiasm about anything will make anyone look like a tool, or a mom. And the fact that overenthusiasm and apathy are both annoying means that I get slightly pissed whenever someone loses their shit over some completely unremarkable piece of music, and that the other person gets slightly pissed whenever I don't lose my shit over the completely incredible work of art they are unveiling. Well, I dare even the most Disturbed-iest metal noob to lose their shit over Aeons Past.

Element's debut takes quite a lot of time to grab one's attention because, well, there really isn't anything in it that would grab one's attention. It's not so bad as to be dismissed entirely, but it's also not so good as to warrant another listen. Sadly, once you forget about it, you'll never get to realize what a mistake you had made by not concentrating on it enough. Aeons Past is like that kid everyone thought was boring and then ended up being Isaac Newton. Once you reach beyond the uninteresting outer shell, you find someone brilliant, but who needs other people's help to put his clothes on. The songs are mostly comprised of boring tech death guitars, backed by boring tech death drumming and with rather bad vocals on top, and the only thing that seems to break the dullness is the occasional heavier part. A casual listen will also make it close to impossible to tell any of the songs apart, and the production sounds like Lego.

But if one is to listen to the album with some previous knowledge of the songs, it quickly becomes apparent how well constructed and unpredictable they really are. The songwriting here is some of the most convoluted I've heard yet, but you simply can't deny that it makes sense. The way the songs go in and out of riffs, going back and forth between themes in an eclectic yet logical fashion. It's like if every song were a Rube Goldberg machine on that rare occasion that the ball falls exactly in the right place, and the washing machine motor is turned on at the right moment for the paper boat to hit the button and everything works. And as a bonus, there is the occasional badass riff and the drumming sometimes has the power to astonish.

One thing that an album like this obviously couldn't go without were the samples and keyboards here and there for the listener to catch their breath, but they only left me thinking that they could have been so much better. It's a very considerate thing to add a breather here and there, but even breathers are not supposed to suck. I blame the production for this. The crunchy, plastic and sterile sound is tolerable, and may I even say, slightly enjoyable on the actual songs, but the interludes really ought to be more spacious,  give a feel of the surroundings created by the album. What most suffered from this, though, was “Within Singularity”, which could have been a fantastic, fantastically simple little piece to serve as an epilogue to Aeons Past, but, as it is presented, I just wonder what the hell it's doing there. And, well, the vocals are just silly.

Also, I've talked about how the riffs are occasionally badass. That's mainly because I think I might be able to count on my fingers the times they were actually awesome. So make no mistake, there's no way you can look at this release in which it is not generic Technical Death Metal. It's generic Technical Death Metal with an interesting twist, but still generic. But, then again, we are talking about a band with a discography of only two full-lengths, and they already managed to use up the words “Element”, “Aeons” and “Energy” with only two album covers, so it's not like they were making people expect them to be very original in the first place. And you know what? They are good at what they do.

Standout tracks:

Kronor VII
Sentiment Dissolve
Dying Sund Descend
Aeons Past

Waking The Cadaver - Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler

If there is one thing that is more paradoxical than hipsters, that would be the notion of being a “true” metalhead. If you are considered a “poser” and don't enjoy that, you can try to make changes so as to fit better within the “trueness” criteria. Change that Slipknot to Slayer, change that Evanescence to Epica, switch from Roadrunner Records to Relapse Records. Declare jihad on rap music, despise the “breakdown” and the gay “pig squeals”, and adore the almighty SOLO. In case you're afraid you may have missed a few steps, there are handy “How to be a metalhead” guides all over the internet that will say everything you need to know about what bands to listen to, what classical composers to bring up in the middle of a conversation and what bands to detest with all your molecules.

To me, though, it seems like a nuclear war between your ego and your musical taste which always ends with everyone dying in the nuclear winter. Right off the bat, if you sacrifice your whole identity just to be considered part of something, it makes you a poser. Just the fact that you're searching for “trueness”  automatically makes you as “untrue” as one can be. And what's worse, it harms music. It means some truly awful music gets lauded, and some not so awful music is hated like if it were an RIAA lawsuit. Well, Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler has been received like an RIAA lawsuit with a trollface and saying “Problem?” at the end.

So, this debut presents a sound that fuses Deathcore with Slam Death Metal, meaning that a fair amount of people already detested the album before they had even heard it. Their argument goes somewhat like this: “Deathcore and Slam use breakdowns, and breakdowns suck balls, right? There you have it, I already dismissed the album as absolute shit and haven't even heard it yet. Hooray for me!”. A quick listen would not only prove them right about the breakdowns being omnipresent on Waking The Cadaver's music, but it would also make them notice the constant pig-squeals and the lack of almost anything else. So yeah, the album consists entirely of stuff people tend to hold a grudge against for no particular reason. And it only gets worse when you read the incomprehensible lyrics. And did I mention just how mindless it all sounds together? Yeah, this sounds stupid.

Now, I would like you to put two and two together. The band calls their genre “Slamming Gore Groove”, and it is a mixture of Deathcore and Slam Death Metal. The album is called Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler, and the songs have names like “Raped, Pillaged and Gutted”, “Pigtails Are For Face Fucking” and “Interlude”. It's funny how quite a lot of people seem to have missed the dead giveaways that this release is not trying to compete with their beloved Megadeth or even their beloved Machine Head. This is an album that does not challenge your intelligence in any way and makes it fairly obvious that it isn't even trying to. As a result, if you feel insulted by it, the joke's on you.

I agree that the music is really stupid, structurally uninteresting, lacking in atmosphere and otherwise anything respectable, and that the riffs suck, if they exist at all. But the end result is fun. It's unintelligent, unengaging, unadulterated fun. I rarely headbang when I listen to music, but that didn't keep me from doing so while I listened to the chug-a-lug guitars and barely present bass, all accompanied by some of the dumbest and most anticlimactic vocals I've ever heard. And you know what? The vocals are awesome! And the breakdowns are cool! And behind all the layers upon layers of stupidity, there are some hints here and there of some actual skill, which makes an album that would otherwise be worth only a handful of listens now be worth a handful of listens and another two or three more.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that this album is good. It's not even close to good. But it definitely isn't absolute garbage. It's okay, and very entertaining. It won't change your life or anything like that, but it won't make you regret having listened to it. So, drop your “true metal” bullshit and give this a listen. Or don't. Like I fucking care...

Standout tracks:

Connoisseurs Of Death
Type A Secretor
Blood Splattered Satisfaction
Pig Tails Are For Face Fucking