The Great Deceiver
Life is Wasted on the Living
Deathwish
Throbbing G-burg
From about ’90 to ’93, there was a stretch where it looked like industrial music was going to be the future of metal. Somebody was always dropping Skinny Puppy’s name or sporting the Neubauten stick-figure guy or putting out a remix with some corny designation like “Biomechanical Mix” or “Cyber Mix.” Along with the bands that actually incorporated electronics and samples (I don’t care if “that’s not real industrial!!!”), there were bands with no cyber-augmentation that got lumped in thanks to a vaguely mechanical-sounding stop/start bleakness: Prong. Killing Joke. Even Helmet for a while. And this one French band called Treponem Pal, who had this weird song about a “Soft Mouth Vagina” that went, “TASTE ZE HOLE, AMONG ZE FLESH! SUCK THE JUICE THAT FLOWS FROM EET!” Someone else has to remember this song; I can’t be the only one.
OK, enough with the fucking class of ’92 history lesson, I know. Is the new record with the At the Gates guy any good? Yeah, it’s pretty good. Tomas Lindberg is an interesting guy. He could put together a melodic death metal band and almost certainly rule that whole scene, yet he currently divides his time between a band that rolls with Tragedy and Converge (that’d be Disfear) and the Great Deceiver, who add a mechanized edge to, well, hardcore in the vein of Tragedy and Converge. See: opener “Home to Oblivion,” in which a weird, delay-drenched guitar noise spills over into the silent space between notes. It’s a neat trick that definitely made me rewind a couple of times, but they kinda do it a lot. Guitarists Kristian Wåhlin, formerly in Grotesque with Lindberg, and Johan Osterberg have worked up a vocabulary of squeals, buzzing-gnat noises and quick flanger runs. There’s regular old melody on here, too, though not in any form that will sate MSwDM fans. Lindberg, for his part, focuses Disfear’s fuck-you sentiment on modern-day alienation. Art geeks will want to take note that Life Is Wasted marks a visual collaboration between Wåhlin (a.k.a. Necrolord), who did the cover for Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse, among others, and Jake Bannon. I just want to know why a crust band hasn’t covered “Tin Omen” or “Burning Inside” yet. —Anthony Bartkewicz
