Avsky
Malignant
Moribund
Their dark materials
Just so you Mordor-quoting grim-clowns get where I’m coming from, when it comes to the blackened arts, most will probably call me a “false.” Production that sounds discernible, heavy and not maxed in the red with treble? Totally preferable! Riffs that rock and groove and have an—egad!—black ‘n’ roll flavored grimness (à la Craft and even the last few Satyricon stabs)? Also, totally tits!
Maybe in allegiance to Darkthrone, this Swedish duo has a vocalist, AE, who also drums—rather clunkily—and a guitarist-bassist, TO, who is also the secondary ice-y wheeze-screamer. The band’s been around since 2002, but has only released two demos, as well as last year’s filthy debut album Mass Destruction, and now this even better follow-up. Riffs, frozen in a cool and not-shitty-at-all BM-frosted production, slide from primal Hellhammer doom-plods to mid-tempo Darkthrone-flavored crust-punk to old school paddle-thrash/church-burning blast beat rips. And yet, the stiff Herman Munster skins attack totally works here, giving things that much-sought-after, naïve, kult, we’re-too-busy-reading-grimoires-to-learn-how-to-play-our-instruments charm. (Hey, it worked for the early masters after all...) This twist-the-bolt-in-your-neck drumming especially succeeds on two of the album’s best numbers: the headbanging, grooving “False Heavens,” which climaxes in a hellfire blaze, and the drooling To Mega Therion-like stab of the title track.
Guitar work aside, if you give AE’s drumming and TO’s general songcraft a few years to catch up with their attentiveness to unholy grit, future releases just may be jaw-dropping. —Shawn Bosler
