The Wakedead Gathering - Fuscus: Strings Of The Black Lyre

Who are they? What are they doing here? Where are they coming from? These are some questions that may arise in someone’s head when listening to The Wakedead Gathering’s music for the first time. It is not something unique or special in any way. It is just good enough to exclaim: “They will be a good band.” And then you see that “Fuscus: Strings Of The Black Lyre” is their third full length, that they have been around since 2008 and then you scratch your head in denial. “I thought I knew shit.”

The underground can be a deep well of souls and riffs and discovering new bands, that are not new, is part of the game. It is like a gift, that it is not a gift, waiting for the researcher, the explorer of sounds and atmosphere, the investigator of riffs and growls of the night. Maybe they are spirits and they were imprinted into the collective metal consciousness just a few days ago. Maybe I should stop writing gibberish and get to the point.

They balance atmosphere with quality riffs and each song is throbbing with a rhythm that brings to mind traditional death metal covered with dark atmosphere. The pace shifts from slow and doomy to fast, with leads and solos driving through the riffs and the voice being a loud whisper, a demon that sings softly in your ear about curses, witch hunt, the Great Grey Queen and mystical chants that are lost in time. The story is being built along with the dark atmosphere created by the music. It draws the listener in with its mystical and otherworldly glamour.

What stands out as the identity of The Walkedead Gathering is riffs+atmosphere. I want and am generally inclined towards riffs when listening to metal. It is my thing. For example the core riff of “Amnioticysts” is murky, thick and engaging. The voice is covered with the chaotic ambience of the music, giving the sense of slowly sinking into mud. It feels grey, solid, threatening and otherworldly. It is like a fog that slowly covers you and suffocates you.

Simple riffs, murky sound, engaging rhythms, shout whispers and classic death metal leads. It is not about anger and speed and technicality. It is about the proper atmosphere, a bunch of good riffs and decent composition. They induce it like it is their nature. They probably live in a cemetery, drinking blood from skulls, eating from the carcasses.

“Fuscus” is a good death metal album but it doesn’t seem to call me back as much as I would want it to. And I say this because The Wakedead Gathering have the potential to create a great death metal album. It is a fun and enjoyable experience but feels like it could have been more. Or maybe, I just want more. 

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Barus & Hadit - EPs de la muerte

Barus have heavy, big, sharp riffs that move from elliptic rhythms to full circle, slow stomping. The singer at times speaks, as if his describing something that has taken control and rules over us and other times shouts with intensity, while the riffs move in curved formation. The drum patterns form changing structures, painting an ever evolving and moving structure that can swallow everything. Each song engages the listener with hooks and evolves smoothly. They feel as a vortex that is not only awe inspiring but also soothing and relaxing. “Our doom is imminent so we might as well accept it and enjoy it”, the singer could preach before the riffs take their place at the front. This is their debut EP and it’s a damn impressive one. Go on then. Listen to it! The EP has a name your price tag.

Hadit is Chaos, as described by Thelema. They are also a band that moves in the blackened/deathened side of darkness and they create suffocating atmosphere. This EP, an Introspective Contemplation of the Microcosmus, is an intense and thick entity that uses melody as something that exists only in the surface of everything. It is bait and the riffs are coming out in waves before they sink back into the black chaos. As the listener sinks deeper, the riffs and the guitars close in, the drums are hitting relentlessly, until they back up and a doomy pace takes the lead, allowing the song to breath and the voice to rise higher. It is a meditation on chaos, obviously, but it is not as chaotic as it may seem at first. There is structure, there is depth and life in it, but it is so thickly built within the walls of the music that the listener has to allow himself of herself to sink within it. It will not come to you. You need to go there and live it. This is definitely not music for jogging, or for anything else for that matter. Just listen attentively, in a meditative state and it might grow within you.

This is cassette only, limited to 150 copies, and streaming. Streaming is good. I like streaming. Streaming it is.

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Contrarian - Polemic (Review)

The music of Contrarian is not unusual. What is unusual though is the aesthetics of it. Do you remember the sound that “Individual Thought Patterns” had? Cynic’s “Focus”? In the mid 90’s Progressive Death Metal had a sound and a feel to it that was unique and distinctive and “Polemic” feels like it came from that era.

The aesthetics, not the progressiveness of death metal, did not really take off from there. It was forgotten for reasons unknown. Maybe it wasn’t that commercial or not that enjoyable. I do not know. I find it enjoyable and adventurous and when I first heard “Polemic” I was positively routing in favor of it and wanting it to be good. I wanted an album that sounded like this and I found it. Well, actually, I did not found it. It found me, but that is another story.

It has a 90’s feel to it and the song structure and development is progressive to the core. This is death metal that really is not that much of a trend anymore. No murkiness, no slams and breakdowns. Just good ol’ progressiveness, with jazzy breaks, eloquent and assaulting drumming by George Kollias, solos and leads that fly through the songs making them sound aery.  Then the solos dive in, becoming part of the song, the shift is changed, the rhythm brakes and it develops to a new direction that is similar, but not quite. It gives a sense of exploration and creativity, where every instrument is opinionated and plays a vivid role to the whole structure of it, creating a solid entity that never keeps a solid form.

 “Polemic” as a whole is impressive. It has everything that a progressive album needs and it also has the common sense to keep the restraints on and maintain a feel of a song structure. Listen to “Libertarian Manifesto” and observe, with your ears, maybe with your eyes if you have visualizations while listening to music, the morphing of the music, the change of the structure and the difference in the narration. It feels like a process of building and then the whole of it just sinks into nothingness. From within it another theme is being built, while always maintaining a sense of coherence and storytelling.

Production wise, I think the voice was placed deliberately in the center of the whole, maintaining the same breadth, while everything swirls and develops around it. If we see it as a mathematic formula, the voice is the constant and everything else is a variable. This creates an interesting contrast. The guitars are free to move and explore and tell their own stories, as parallel narrations of nonlinguistic entities.

While everything in me says ‘yes’, I have found that I will always, and I mean always, check the player when the song “Diogenes At Delphi” is playing. I think, for reasons unmanifested to me, that the album is just a little bit longer than it should. But then I saw that it lasts about 32 minutes and it perplexed me. It still does.

Striking the balance between quality and quantity is not an easy task and it almost always results into something that the artists cannot control. It is the listener, as a passive experiencer and a third party, that can offer such an insight and it is not done consciously, but rather as an reaction that derives from the relationship between the listener and the music. But, does this really matter?

“Polemic” has every ingredient necessary to make and interesting and intriguing progressive death metal album and the overall result is more than satisfying. I want to believe, like Mulder does, that it is the complexity of the song structure that gave this negative impact towards the end of each session. Even if the listener has a great time, nothing remains in memory. But, considering this is their debut album, I am very positive about their future and their ability to create memorable, enjoyable, adventurous and fun albums. The album closes with a cover of Death’s “Nothing Is Everything” and it shows the love and respect that Contrarian have for “Individual Thought Patterns” and Death. Go on. Listen to it.

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