Nucleus - Sentient

Imagine a religion of alien sentient beings. One could argue that an advanced alien type 3 civilization (according to the Kardashev scale) will/do/did not have any form of religion, since we project logic and reason at the forefront of advancement. But if we take into account that we are both sentient and logical/rational, then a spiritually and rationally advanced civilization would be more accurate. The one doesn’t exclude the other and this correlation can be detected in art. It is not only mind and it is not only heart. There is both method and freedom from method, structure and release from within it.

Imagine if we reached these heights of rational and empirical thinking, devoid or oblivious to the fact that consciousness contains both thought and heart, and then ask ourselves: Would there be art? Imagine a futuristic world where music is nonexistent and considered a part of human history. Maybe even be frowned upon as a barbaric and uncivilized form of expression and communication. What a horrible world this must be? Thank the gods of all times and spaces, this is not the case in our current timespace.

Our timespace is a ship floating in the endless voidness. Let us view the ship, the non-sentient structure, as the product of rational and empirical thinking and the passengers as the heart of it. If we see it as a whole, we may come closer to what “Sentient” from Nucleus is.

Nucleus play death metal that is reminiscent of American death metal acts that had a more progressive and complex song structure. Their uniqueness comes from the aforementioned introduction between heart and mind and the way they communicate in every song.

The drums and the bass play in a simple manner, creating the basic stripped down structure of sounds. The drums work with patterns that change form but yet remain precise and disciplined. They give away the aesthetic of the marching effect we listen in industrial music. The bass works very closely with the drums. It maintains the thick wall of background sound that gives mass and depth to every song. This is the ship.

The heart is always a slippery and undefined function. It moves, it explodes, it strikes, it flutters, and it changes forms. The riffs and the voice are the conscious beings on board of that ship. The riffs are swirling, spiraling in circles from within the ship and upwards. Lead guitars appear from within them and play solos that create the unsettling feeling that only death metal can create. Twisting and ugly and frightening, this album might as well tell the story of an interstellar travel that ended up beyond the event horizon and deep into the timeless hell. A rational account of a tragedy.

The voice is the storyteller, moving above the instruments, singing about the planet “Dosadi”, as it is described in the sci-fi book “The Dosadi Experiment” by Frank Herbert. The “Cantos” is, as Wikipedia explains, a form of division in a long poem and it could be attributed to the novel series “The Hyperion Cantos” by Dan Simmons. I do not have the lyrics, but we can safely assume that the lyrical themes of “Sentient” came from Sci-fi worlds (novels, movies, tv series).

All of these different aspects work together and create a tight and cohesive debut album from Nucleus, with the riffs and solos being its strongest asset. The riffs are engaging and inviting to the listener. You will move with them, bob your head, air guitar and even feel the joy of headbanging while you are in the bus, the car, home alone, in the middle of town square or what have you.

I really enjoy this album. I would say that my favorite riff/riffs are that of “Insurgent” and I am assuming that it is about a great galactic battle. The pacing of songs change, the riffs are all good and the song structures are interesting and engaging. I find all songs to be of the same quality.

As an end note, the cover art is made by one of the most prominent artists in metal, Dan Seagrave, and it reflects the album’s quality and aesthetics. Oh, and why does the logo remind me of something?

Recommended track: Insurgent

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UnspeakableAxe Records

Release date: 15/04/2016

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Zealotry - The last Witness

(This review is also featured at No Clean Singing. You can read it HERE.)

Zealotry is a Boston based death metal band and they have been around since 2009, when they released their first demo. The Last Witness is their sophomore album and my first exposure to their music. Their members play in various other known bands. Tougas, for example, plays in Chthe’ilist, who released an impressive debut album earlier this year, and First Fragment, who will release their first full-length in the next month. Zealotry play a unique and difficult-to-approach death metal and The Last Witness is a tough nut to crack, but once you’ve done that, you’ll be exposed to a mesmerizing creation.

But who is the last witness? And what is he a witness of? Let us begin from the artwork and then proceed to the music. Maybe this isn’t a very common approach, but neither is Zealotry’s music.

What I find impressive about the artwork is that it gives away a sense of totality. The all-Seeing Eye is the creator which gave life through the double helix DNA, taking root in the ground like a tree. Different life forms appear and among them are birds and humans approaching the center of creation, reflecting the unending search of man for god or the overmind.

I think it reflects the overmind’s power over mankind; a force that leads man toward ascension, but in the expanse of creation itself, as it is described in Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi novel Childhood’s End”. Or it could be viewed as the technical social construct of control and power over all. A man-made creation, through the means of eugenics, that will give birth to absolute control, since everything and everyone will be predetermined from their birth — automatons that are endlessly repeating programmed tasks in a dystopian world, where freedom doesn’t exist even as a word. The all-Seeing Eye is not god, but a machination for control.

The artwork may reflect the lyrical themes and the loose sci-fi concept of the album, but in a way it reflects the aesthetics and the music displayed within it. It is as dark, distorted, and twisting as it is progressive, complex, and adventurous. It is death metal that could be described as progressive in its true sense. It is not about the myriad of notes and the solos and the technicality, but about the complex structures of the songs. They feel as if they are morphing, shifting spheres that change the surface of what we see, but always remain solid in the core. Imagine gigantic orb structures that change shape in time, yet remain the same in essence; that essence being, Death Metal.

The songs move from the basic structures into an exploration of new territories. Each instrument speaks its own tongue, creating a communication of seemingly different languages. A conversation of individuals, where each one has something unique to say and express on a collage of impressions, painting an overwhelming and at times mystical and difficult-to-uncover story.

In order for The Last Witness to uncover itself it must be listened to with full attention. The listener must allow himself, or herself, to sink into it, in an effort to experience the totality of it. There are so many different expressions and paths taken on each song that it may bewilder the listener. It is exciting and at times exhilarating and adventurous, aggressive and atmospheric, subtle and attractive, like a secret that wants to be exposed, but finds it almost impossible to do so. It is death metal that offers a wide range of impressions and emotions through structures that take surprising forms.

The movement of the guitars stands out in Zealotry’s music as their most unique and impressive asset. From riffs, they move into a chatter of lead guitars, merging into the bass lines and under the voice, and then they turn into solos that move in swirling formations. They feel like a conversation between the voice and the guitars. Sometimes they cooperate and stand together and at other times they take different paths. The bass has a very distinctive role, too. It is clear in every song, holding more specific forms and placed just above the drums. Their music may bring to mind the progressive death metal music of the ‘90s and a number of bands whose complexity was what made them known.Gorguts, Incantation, Atheist, Demilich, and others can be mentioned, but only as references and not as direct influences.

The songs, even though they stay the same with each listen, having the same notes with the same structure, still change every time you listen to them. They feel like a magical book, where every time you open it, something different appears. The words have changed place and the story changed form, the characters are different and they take different paths, they make different choices that have different impacts on themselves. Maybe it reflects the current mood of the listener, like a mystical mirror, or maybe it is the listener itself who changes form, exposing different faces every time.

The Last Witness feels so wide-ranging and complex that even after a lot of repeated listens, it still amazes me. It is not an easy album, but it is so interesting and filled with impressions and imageries that will stand the test of time. This is one of the best death metal albums I’ve heard this year, even if I can’t completely pinpoint why or express specifically what it is that I like so much about it. I would say the guitars, but if there wasn’t so much depth created by the bass and the drums, the ambience and the samples that are being used in places, the different vocals and the change in pace and paths, then I wouldn’t spend so many words trying to explain why I like it so much, without really explaining anything. And this might be the best/worst compliment I have ever made for an album.

Recommended Track: Heralding The Black Apostle

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Lavadome Productions

Release date: 22/04/2016

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Sunnata - Zorya

(This review is also featured at No Clean Singing, one of my most frequently visited sites as a reader. You can read it HERE)

I like bands that put together slow rolling, riff-laden, psychedelic, hook inducing, head bobbing, transcending, sludge crushing, spiritual exploring, doom albums. I think I covered everything that may or may not appear within you, while listening to Sunnata’s sophomore album, Zorya.

Poland is known mostly for her black metal industry and I like the foggy darkness that comes from there (There are more than 2000 bands from Poland, but I will leave the fog reference as it is). Darkness is good, but there is a different approach to the exploration of heavy electric music and Sunnata are moving on that territory. They’ve been around since 2013 and have been working their craft, giving shows with some known bands, like Conan and Kylesa, and writing long and heavy songs that build themselves around psychedelic hallucinations.

The meditative aesthetics of their music is evident even by their name, which is Sanskrit for Emptiness or Voidness. Where we consider the Emptiness, especially in black metal, to be a bad, negative place, it is the source of being in the Far East traditions. There is a merging of heavy music with spiritual explorations, that doesn’t come necessarily from the lyrics. It doesn’t have to come from there. YOB’s music, for example, can cause transcendental experiences, without the listener knowing the lyrics. And what causes that? What is the core element that can release emotional energy in such a way? Is it the shape shifting wall of sounds that is created by the bass and guitars? I think it is.

See it as a body of liquid, or ether, moving in wave like formations through the sky, changing shapes. Sometimes big, slow riffs that are vaguely more precise than ambience emerge and other times they are clearly defined bodies of groove. See it as a passion that comes from the ground and reaches up to the sky. See it as a spiral that moves inwards, towards the center where Zorya lives, the goddess of midnight, the third sister of the Morning Star and Evening Star, who looks after the night (Slavic Mythology).

The album opener, “Beasts Of Prey”, begins with fuzz, the distinct sound of the bass communing with the drum patterns and the guitar making noise until it forms into a full, heavy and slow riff. A slow meditation of noise that sets the ground for the second part of the song, at around the fourth minute, where it transforms into a giant moving being until it sinks into psychedelic acoustic chords and ambience. The vocals appear, resembling a chant, above the same chords. Then it explodes back into the big moving wave, where the double vocals, clean chants and rasp shouts, are at the top. It is a song that evolves and expands around the same patterns, creating a circular movement that gets swollen, explodes and then calms down.

After the explosive beginning, we are introduced to the title track, “Zorya”. “Have you ever spread your wings up high?” sings the voice, while a repetitive mantra of sound is building up. A mystical song, that moves upwards. The bass works in the background like red stingrays that vibrate through the blue of the day and into the night, while Sunnatra express a calling to the bright side of being. A slow moving creation with huge riffs, lead guitars that rip through the fabric of noise, ritualistic drum patterns, vocals that chant and vocals that shout, creating an interaction between two individuals within the structure of the song.

Now, I won’t describe the visualizations that are created in me for every song. I will say though that Sunnatra are really good at what they do. If you like doom, with spiritual and transcendental tendencies, that sinks into psychedelic and oriental rhythms, you will have a great time listening to Zorya.

I like all the songs, especially “Long Gone”, but I feel they misplaced the fourth and fifth track. “New Horizons”, the fourth track, is the slowest and heaviest song. The way it is build and the interaction with me, the emotional response in me, feels like a preparation for an ending, or as the final chapter of a book. When the song ends, I am ready to let it go. But the album doesn’t end there. It should, but it doesn’t. This doesn’t mean that “Again and against”, the last song, isn’t good. An album should be viewed as a whole movement and not as a collection of different songs. They all work together and they create a single entity which is divided into sections, where the listener is invited to explore them and experience them. This is an error of album architecture and not of composition.

Having said that, Zorya is a big, heavy and noisy spiritual doom album that you’ll enjoy. Listen to it.

Recommended Track: Long Gone

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Unsigned/Independent

Release date: 11/04/16

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