Welcome to The Harmonic Series, a daily(ish) music review series - exclusive to Steemit - where I’ll be discussing music across many different styles and genres from metal, to electronic music, to jazz and beyond! I’ll be talking up exciting new releases, some of my personal classics, and anything else that I think is worth checking out. Some of the reviews I share will be brand new, and some will be from my personal archives.
I'm just getting settled into school and haven't had time to write much yet, so here's an old review of one of my current favorite albums. As this was part of a series, it makes references to other things I did around the time. These are mostly irrelevant, so don't worry if they're confusing. It also reflects a slightly different writing style from me than you may be used to:
Mastery - VALIS (The Flenser, 2015)
Genre: Metal
Style: Raw Black Metal, Thrash, Ambient
[this album is an unrelenting and frantic barrage of raw black metal that jumps between stylistic influences faster than one can process. it sounds just as striking as the album art is. definitely for fans of: Cleric, Artificial Brain, and maybe even early Dillinger Escape Plan?]
Let me preface this review by saying that I may not be able to properly think about this album, because since first hearing of it I've been completely enamored with the art. I often find myself compelled by album art to a degree that biases how I think of the music (both positively and negatively), but I've been really head over heels about this one. Thus, it becomes a challenge of finding the balance between appreciating the art as part of the total aesthetic package of the album and overvaluing the music based on how I feel about the art. As for how I actually found the album, I think it was through that Reddit year end review list that I keep mentioning, and when I found out it was on The Flenser (a label associated with many great acts in experimental heavy music such as Botanist, Deafheaven, Have A Nice Life, Lycus, White Suns, and Kayo Dot) I knew I had to check it out.
The first second of this album forecasts the atmosphere of the entire thing: complete chaos. This album is rooted in black metal and the "raw" production style common to that genre, but unlike most raw black metal which tends to be repetitive and with fairly straightforward form, this is an overwhelming and mind bending tangle of ideas and styles. As someone pointed out to me as I was listening, this is named after a Phillip K. Dick sci-fi novel. While I haven't read it, the implied aesthetic connection seems clear. Even in the incredibly analog style of raw black metal, this album felt digital. The three proper tracks on here, ranging from 7 to 18 minutes are a chaotic whirlwind of blast beats at breakneck speed, guitar lines that frantically fly across the fretboard between different registers and playing techniques, and screams that are pushed with distortion for extra harshness. Think of the vocal in Come To Daddy by Aphex Twin, but like, more black metal; that sort of digital coating in conjunction with the two interlude tracks that I would describe as digital and metallic ambient solidified the idea of the sci-fi aesthetic. In these ways, maybe this album could be looked at in similar conceptual territory as Liturgy's The Ark Work.
A more accurate sonic comparison would be the album Regressions, by Cleric. Similar to that album, VALIS is centered around a few very long tracks with a plethora of ideas and fast, sharp, unpredictable shifts in style. In the first two minutes I must have heard at least 4 different textures, between tremolo picking, fast tapping or shredding riffs, and palm muted low end. Cleric is the only other band I've heard who even attempt to keep this kind of pace and density of ideas over track lengths like these. Most noticeably, there are elements of mathcore in the jagged mixed meter and syncopation, grindcore in the ridiculously fast tempos at times, and technical death metal in the occasional dazzling guitar flourish. There's an acoustic section on the first track where plucked guitars are set against blast beats and screams in a mix that made me think about the scale and size of those instruments in comparison to each other. Thrash was prominent on the last track, albeit at above normal tempos, but the palm muted playing - punctuated by melodic stabs - was undeniable. There was even a section that felt almost like a punk beat on this track. Occasionally things would settle into more consistent themes in a straightforward black metal sound, but these parts are the exception to the rule. The harmonic sense on here was just as out there as everything else, with plenty of hyper-dissonant riffs and planing of tritones and other dark intervals, and the clearly melodic moments, while rare, were strong.
I wasn't disappointed by this at all, and I think all my worrying about hearing this incorrectly went out the window in the first couple minutes. VALIS is dense and cerebral, but still completely overwhelming in its ferocity. To write 18 minute songs that are this fast and unrelenting must be an incredible undertaking, and Mastery succeeds at it spectacularly. Weirdly, I feel that this is sort of similar to the Joanna Newsom album from yesterday in that its dynamics and texture are fairly homogenous, but that the texture is an incredibly complex one in the first place. I almost felt rushed to make note of everything I was hearing and thinking; to call this challenging is a vast understatement.
To buy or stream VALIS, head over to The Flenser's bandcamp!
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