Malignancy - Inhuman Grotesqueries

There have been simpler times. Don't take that statement as me being nostalgic and contradicting a previous review, though. I'm merely stating that, some time in the past, there was an interval of time when things were less complex than they are in the present. Take, for example, the Cambrian period: back then all you had to do was swim around and evolve extremely slowly. No worries about global economy, taxes, jobs and such. Also, if someone had played an ultra-technical solo back then, they would have been praised like gods, and subsequently eaten. Save for the being eaten part, I always get the impression that the rest of the previous sentence also applies to mostly any time until about since a decade ago. Ever since then, showing technical prowess appears to have become something close to “masturbating at Starbucks” in the Frowned-Upon-o-Meter.

I'm not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing. I hate wading through 3 minute solos for something to happen as much as the other guy, but I don't believe that those instances alone are enough to justify dismissing anything fast and shreddy and confusing as “wankery”. The worst part of this is that people seem to ignore a more refined style of overly technical music, that employs technicality not to destroy fingers, but to challenge minds. Enter Inhuman Grotesqueries, where being as mind-annihilatingly unfollowable as possible takes as much of a backing role as it takes the center role. At face value, this is even more of a pure wankfest than Inhuman Rampage, what with the drummer going berserk at random moments, and the pinch harmonics that are present for about half the album length, and the vocalist mostly saying variations of “HORRR”. But after repeated listens and after analyzing the album time and again, it becomes apparent that this umpteen-notes-per-second music is more of an exercise in controlled unpredictability, rather than a self-indulgent orgy.

Look at the guy on the cover. That's pretty much what the music is like. Malignancy seem to have learned a characteristic way to pick up normal brutal death metal songs and then warp them to the point of unrecognizability. They have many tools to do this, such as the mid-riff spasms of technicality, random speeding up and speeding down, and ingenious bridges that turn out to be riffs, to name a few. Mix that with an unusual  but obvious style of rhythmically challenging riffing and you have yourself enough ingredients to perfect a half-hour of very strong material. Really, they don't change the formula much, if at all. Just to get an idea of what I mean, the only track with something even remotely reminiscent of dynamics and melody is the song “Xenotransplantation”. Listen to “Xenotransplantation” and tell me if it's very dynamic or melodic. Not that this matters much, though. Because of how intricately tailored the music is, with nice details to pick up every now and all the freaking time, there's no reason for any more elements to be present.

One way or another, though, it's up to you, the listener, to make sense of Inhuman Grotesqueries. And your situation is not so good. You'll find yourself relistening song sections to understand where you are almost constantly, and you better get ready for a lot of frustration if you're going to venture into trying to make sense of the chaos. I do recommend that you do, though, because when you do, you actually begin to realize how well written the material here really is. Believe me, the songs do make at least a little bit of sense once they're dissected deep enough. This album is kinda like a jar of chocolate chip cookies, if the cookies were mixed with sushi, beef stroganoff, lutefisk and a slight hint of smoked owl. It's a level above the regular stuff, and it's the sort of thing you ingest calmly and with an open mind, enjoy it for what it is and have to learn to appreciate. Even after having proven myself worthy, though, after the eighth Aberration Cookie I just want a regular one.

Standout tracks:

Indigenous Pathogen
Predicated Malformations
Embryological Teratomas
Benign Reabsorption
Xenotransplantation

Liturgy - Aesthethica

….eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh  eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh eeeeh....

You know what? People are always on the lookout for new things to hate, so, without a new Radiohead or Metallica album in sight, other things have to fill in the void. One option is to find something completely cliché and incompetent, hand it over to Victory Records and call it Design The Skyline, while another is to find something inventive and competent in ways that will piss as many people off as humanly possible. Hunter Hunt-Hendrix alone could probably make a forest go up in flames just for existing, but he also wrote the infamous manifesto on transcendental black metal that he seems particularly proud of, and found three more guys to form a band to play transcendental black metal with. Oh, and they're hipsters. So yeah, Liturgy could be the definition of awful right from the start. That is, hadn't they written any music.

Now, I'm not one who knows his way around Black Metal, but when I like something, I can tell, and I really liked their debut Renihilation. It had this unusual atmosphere, with guitars weaving in and out of melodies and drums pulsating and vocals incomprehensibling. It was inconsistent and incoherent, but somehow that helped. I was expecting more of the same here, but this time around they have decided to experiment. Not only have they made an album over an hour long, as they have also fused their sound with everything that sticks out like a sore thumb in it. You have math rock passages, stoner-like passages, long songs where nothing happens, huge passages where nothing happens, a huge passage where literally nothing happens, an ear-piercing synth sound, amateurish singing... you name it. As if that weren't enough, they also decided to organize the tracks in the most lopsided way this side of their previous album.

The album is arranged into two halves and into four parts, so you have the three more direct and better constructed tracks to start with, then progress into experimental but nevertheless rewarding territory for the next four, then Liturgy give you a chance to wonder why they're being so boring and repetitive all of a sudden, and then pick things up again with the two final tracks, meanwhile having everything stop completely at the middle. They also seem to have put quite a lot of effort into improving their original sound, and that definitely shows on songs such as “High Gold” and “Sun Of Light”, and that is primarily what saves this album from being an absolute mess. I mean that there are better ways of incorporating experimentation than bashing it into place and hoping no one will notice, but these guys don't seem to have received that memo. For the most part, they seem to be more focused on ruining everything rather than writing good music.

Some of the experiments are actually quite interesting on their own, such as the way underrated “Glass Earth” or the way overrated “Generation”, but there's no denying that they're mostly filler and that they ruin the flow of the album with their too-long-for-their-own-goodity. All that I really wanted to hear was given away in the first three tracks: impressively structured and impressively written songs with a knack for atmosphere. Those three songs are probably some of the most inspired I've heard yet. A perfect balance between all the elements put in play on Aesthethica and on Liturgy's career so far in general. But then the rest of it sounds like something went wrong, like they're desperately trying to get that balance back without repeating themselves, and consistently fail. Still, it's a failure that is undoubtedly pleasant to hear, for the most part. It's just that the album is divided into fantastic and okay that gets me.

PS: The lyrics are unintelligible for a reason. DO NOT read them under any circumstance. They're that bad.

Standout tracks:
High Gold
Returner
Sun Of Light
Glass Earth
Harmonia

Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns

I'm in a good mood today, so let's talk about dead people. More specifically, dead assholes. And I don't mean the  assholes who spray “cunt” on your car unprovoked and then go on to die in a freak tanning bed accident. I'm referring to people who would feed innocents to lions for fun, would torture people for three months before beheading them, and would make people call them a god, all of which Caligula apparently did at some point. I take it that most people will agree with me that those considered evil are considered so with good reason. I mean, most people go through their lives not murdering masses without a hitch, and I find it a pretty good thing that social conventions dictate that that remains the case. But what if we look at it from the evil person's side of the story? What if there's a rational explanation for the necessity of performing such an action? What if, the way they saw it, they were doing humanity a favor? That probably doesn't apply to Caligula, dude was just insane, but take Hitler, for instance. His actions defied all morals and his logic was beyond flawed, and now I'm terrified of racists, but it's hard to deny that he did virtually the same thing as the Crusaders centuries back, and in his point of view he probably was, in fact, creating the perfect race or whatever. That being the case, Linkin Park are worse than Hitler.

There is no way that they could have listened to “Waiting For The End” and have thought “Yes, this song is perfect. We're not changing anything. This is the final version.”, and I just can't imagine a group of serious musicians saying “Yes, we do need two intros. The first intro introduces the actual intro. Works flawlessly.”, or  even “Yes, every single one of the interludes is absolutely essential. In fact, we'll even throw in interludes into  some of the songs, because there doesn't seem to be enough of them.”, and I haven't even mentioned how cheesy it is yet. The way I see it, A Thousand Suns was just Linkin Park fucking around. Because the other option is to believe that there is a collective of people who worked day and night to lovingly craft one of the worst  pieces of garbage ever and not even once noticed that something was not quite right.

If there is a point to any of it, I would assume that it was to make something epic and grandiose, and they pull it off pretty well at the beginning. No, seriously, the first 58 seconds are incredible! A masterful build-up in tension. But it's quick to slip into tasteless and cheesy territory, and very few times does A Thousand Suns resurface. I guess they tried their luck with a pre-apocalyptic vibe and I don't have a problem with that, but didn't they notice along the way that employing rapping and turntables into such an atmosphere does not work out? While we're on that topic, what are cheerful pop songs doing in a pre-apocalytic album? Why is there no dynamic development between songs? Why are two thirds of the album filler? Why is the songwriting both illogical and formulaic? How is that last one even possible? Why do the vocals make me want to pour microscopic knives into my ears? WHO THE HELL THOUGHT ANY OF THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!

And then, it's time for “The Catalyst”, and everything changes. Within a river of shit, we finally find a speck of gold. One song in which all that makes this album terrible only makes cameo appearances and doesn't affect what is by far the best song I've ever heard by Linkin Park. A song that puts cheese aside in the name of creativity and reveals a surprising maturity. And it makes me hate the album even more. You see, that's where they show just how evil they really are. It proves they didn't make A Thousand Suns terrible by mistake. They never thought the album was good. They knew what they were doing all along. And this last song is like a final insult after the torture that was.... oh, wait, it's not the last song. There's “The Messenger” after it, and it is one fucking terrible ballad. I guess you wonder why I even gave this release a chance. Well, the thing is that I was fooled into thinking it was great, and I was fooled into thinking that by “The Catalyst”.

Standout tracks:

Robot Boy
Blackout
The Catalyst

Cranial Incisored - Lipan's Kinetic

Last time I checked, I wasn’t crazy, and I’m not that much of an idiot either, so I’m not particularly adept of Sadist’s Lego. They switched to nu-metal and failed at it. And let me stress the “failed at it” part, rather than the “They switched to nu-metal” part. I really don’t have a problem with bands changing style from one album to the other. I couldn’t care less if Deathspell Omega started playing dubstep as long as it were good. I do have to admit that it would have been quite a shock if Deathspell Omega had switched to dubstep just like that, but I know people who would hate them simply for the fact that they changed. But I suppose those people will avoid Cranial Incisored like the RIAA anyway, so I don’t really know why I mentioned them. I mean, it’s not like their style on Rebuild:The Unfinished Interpretation Of Irrational Behavior was that easy to put your finger on to begin with, unless you could call “AAAARRRRGGHHHH WHATTHEHELLISGOINGON???!!! with a hint of Jazz” a style. They were called Death Metal, and we went by with that definition.

This time around, well... let me just say that if Death Metal were found dead in an alleyway with its pants down, Cranial Incisored would have been the lead suspect. Lipan’s Kinetic is what you get when System Of A Down and The Dillinger Escape Plan have a baby and it’s born inside out and is then left in a saxophone for too long. After a rather soothing 30 seconds, the listener is assaulted by an onslaught of jazzy, mathy, brutal, confusing whatthefuckery. The concept of genres doesn’t really apply to these guys’ music, but it’s still recognizable as Cranial Incisored, much like a serial killer leaves a signature on their victim. To be honest, I’ll have to say that this album actually affirms Cranial Incisored’s style instead of changing it, but it’s still quite a shock on the listener’s part finding out that these guys were as Death Metal as a bald person is a Segway all along.

The original unusual style of extremely memorable wankery presented on the debut is now fused with everything that would fit in, which turns out to be quite a lot, all topped off by the  always welcome yapping of the vocalist. And all the ground explored on Lipan’s Kinetic means that this time it’s easy to tell the songs apart. Sort of. And I might risk saying that this is one of those cases when you have a very weird album that is easy to listen to. You don’t need to concentrate all the time to know what’s going on and actually get some enjoyment out of the experience. In fact, most of the time that I spent listening to this sophomore I didn’t know what was going on, but enjoyed the music anyway. I must say, though, that what saves this album is that it is really fun and enjoyable, because song-wise the tracks only make sense to one’s neck.

Lipan’s Kinetic wouldn’t be a completely crazy endeavor if the craziness weren’t evenly spread through all aspects of it, so it is evenly spread. Some of the only lyrics I could distinguish were from the song “It’s~”, and they were “Why, where’s your car? Why, where’s my car? Where is our car?”. And the songs themselves are in a very strange order: The album begins to show more jazz and folk influences as it progresses and then all of a sudden it turns into a trilogy of noise remixes that seem like an appropriate musical depiction of one’s brain after listening through the 20-something minutes of material. That is one thing I didn’t like about the album, that it was very short. Sure, I’m already used to 20-something minute releases being called full-lengths and all, but this one is just tiny. I really wouldn’t mind having my mind raped for another 5 minutes or so. Also, like I said, the tracks don’t really make much sense in terms of structure. There are dynamics in here, but they don’t seem like the real thing. There are changes in dynamics, but there isn’t all that much movement. The guys go from one thing to the other without any kind of explanation to how they got there. There are sometimes a few subtle hints, but they don’t really seem enough. All in all though, Lipan’s Kinetic is like the best seizure you’ll ever have.


Standout tracks:

Paradox Of Paradoxical Paradigm
Slossosynthesis
Friday I’m In Love (the Cure cover)
Double Talking Jive

Letlive - Fake History

You know those people on Facebook who like their own chain statuses and have thousands of photos of themselves in the bathroom holding up their mobile phone, in an album going by the innocuous name of “meee  =^-^=”? That’s what generic -core sounds to me. Everything from the dumbed down riffs to the frustratingly standard drumming to the insulting solos to the painfully illogical and reckless song structures and the even more torturous mandatory “clean vocal” choruses, all arranged at random in an overproduced package labeled “Please listen to me...”, just scream of attention-whoredom. It’s not so much an insult to one’s intelligence as it assumes one doesn’t have any. Much like most extreme metal, it has pissed on subtlety’s grave, but much unlike most extreme metal, it hasn’t done so as part of a ritual to ressurect subtlety. And it’s not even worth listening to for shits and giggles! It’s about as entertaining as a person trying to be entertaining.

That being said, Letlive’s Fake History doesn’t inject generic -core with new life as such, and more tries to go at it from another angle. The “let us entertain you, pretty please” attitude is still present, but now it’s buried ankle deep in good musicianship and a production worthy of a temple and goat sacrifices. Actually, it’s not that simple. It’s like these guys put as much work here as on any other  generic -core album, but gave a lot more attention to certain parts. So you’ll have absolute killer material such as “Homeless Jazz” sharing run-time with absolute duds like “H. Ledger”, or, more frequently, have songs with really good ideas ruined by what the fuck is that doing there. Just as you are half-way through “The Sick, Sick 6.8 Billion”, the song abruptly stops and decides to head in a completely different direction before inexplicably going back to where it had started, and that’s just a warning of what’s to come further along. Throughout the album, Letlive walk a fine line between making sense and the complete opposite of that: sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, they regularly even go as far as destroying a perfectly good song, as “We, The Pros Of Con” can testify.

And the playing is just as rickety as the song structures it is supported on. The guitars will frequently hit some amazing riffs and then just forget them and blurt out a couple of terrible ones to compensate. The drumming is a weird blend of maturity and Lars Ulrich: one moment it will be controlled and intricate, and the other it will follow the pattern of “HIT ALL THE THINGS”. Meanwhile, the vocals will usually range from incredible to appalling, and when they don’t range from incredible to appalling, it’s probably because they’re being both at the same time. And the production? It is worthy of a temple and all the goat blood it can get its hands on, but I think the same of Skittles, and even I just want to die after a packet of ‘em delicious bastards. And speaking of Skittles, I’m okay with recycling the almighty verse and chorus for a couple of tracks here and there, but an entire full-length album is overkill.

So, what has Fake History got to warrant even a measly three stars? I mean, I think I’ve criticized everything about it without going into the limbo of lyrics and album artwork. What warrants it three stars is that when Letlive gets its act together for long enough, a person dodges a falling piano. When they put effort into perfecting a song, it shows. The result will still be encompassed within the spectrum of genericness, but it will be good enough to show wannabe bands how it’s done. They have all that it takes to be brilliant, but their lack of focus and difficulty mastering even the most basic song structure really upsets me.


Standout tracks:

Renegade 86’
Muther
Homeless Jazz
Day 54

Boris - Amplifier Worship

Is it possible to be completely impartial? Theoretically it is within human capability to do so, but in practise I assume that Arcade Fire are overrated despite never having heard anything by them. That also effectively explains my grudge against anime. Two of my favorite movies are Snatch and The Departed because of all the things they don’t have in common with anime, and one of the things that makes these movies inviting is that they aren’t mentioned all the time and don’t have whole sections of the Internet and Google Images dedicated to them. Also, the way the Earth seems to be divided into USA!!!11, everything else and JAPAN!!!111 makes me tend to root for everything else.

I must say, though, that I’m glad I let my skepticism slide from time to time. After all, Boris is like The Beatles if The Beatles didn’t give a fuck, thus making it the coolest band in existence. They are group of fantastic musicians who know how to churn out something good, and when they want to, they churn out stuff that is almost life-changing, but they prefer sticking to being merely good. It’s like they practise making incredible music just so that they can not record it afterwards. That being so, what makes or breaks a Boris album are the instances when they accidentally make something awesome, and Amplifier Worship has a lot of those. The way the album is written makes it sound like it was initially a lot better, and had to be worsened so that people wouldn’t die from overexposure to magnificence. It is consistently promising, but only delivers whenever, and ends up kind of disappointing. Nevertheless, understand that I don’t mean that it doesn’t leave an impression, because leaving an impression is Boris’s middle name, or... uh... might have been.

Amplifier Worship has a rather slow start with the comparatively unimpressive “Huge”, moving on to the chunky and powerful “Ganbow-Ki”, with its crushing beginning and mesmerizing ending, followed by the ultra-aggressive “Hama”; “Kuruimizu” comes afterwards and takes the aggression of the previous song to its limit, but has a rather misplaced post-rockish ending, and “Vomitself” closes the album with some very hypnotic and trippy pure drone. In a nutshell, this release is badass. I can almost feel my beard grow when I listen to it. Meanwhile, the combination of and excellent sound and a fleet of rhythmic intricacies means that it’s very rare for the music to become boring, despite being a mixture of some of the slowest and most boredom-prone genres in history. Not only that, but when the music mellows down, it doesn’t just turn mellow, it becomes as beautiful as the likes of Explosions In The Sky or Sigur Rós. When Boris decide to do something, they do it better than the pros.

Yet, I feel disappointed. It feels like Amplifier Worship is not complete. It gives you a taste of everything, but it doesn’t really give much more than a taste, and it never sticks to anything long enough to actually achieve its full potential. I wish it were mindblowing, and all the elements to make it so are there, but it’s not mindblowing. It’s just promising. It’s only very good. It’s amazing how these guys manage to always keep one interested without actually giving much of interest. I don’t think they would have even gotten much recognition had they come from some other country, but the recognition they get, they certainly deserve.


Standout tracks:
Ganbow-Ki
Hama
Kuruimizu