Archives: Reviews

1 - Empyaema (liquefy till putrefy) 2) Pernicious anaemia 3) Cerebrospinal fluid and vitreous humour 4) Puncture an pustule 5) Verminous ptomatophagous

I think I won’t walk too far from the truth if I stated that the band struggles with all its essence to imitate the CARCASS of “I Reek of Putrefaction” era. A noble task. The track titles and the sheer chaotic grindcore feel talk clearly, double vocals and all the grind holocaust that follows. Nevertheless the music is really too discordant and quickly gets on the nerves. Even grind core needs its coherence while the instruments here really sound as if they go each on their own. There is a cave-effect on the whole sound, a constant metallic echo which gives the impression they were rehearsing in a huge metal pipe. The fast parts while fuzzy are not too unbearable but improvisations in the middle of the songs are some of the most disjointed, illogical bundle of notes I can come up with in my imagination. I don’t think I can rate a demo like this as “extreme”, it is just a continuous nonsense. If you have a band, just plug in the mixer while you’re tuning your instruments and you’ll get something similar to this, kinda GONKULATOR regulating the sound in a studio. I tried hard to find something splatter/gore in this demo, elements of PATHOLGY or GENERAL SURGERY, but nothing came out. Apart from the titles, I really found little pathological gore. Not my stuff.

DIKTAT shows no sign of liking subtle tricks and merry melodies. In fact they play some of the rawest, more technical Death Metal out of France. Not that I know many Brutal Death bands from the country (MORGUE, maybe) but these guys play real nasty and heavy, not just fuzzy goregrind. Remind me a bit of SUFFOCATION and ORIGIN in sheer no-nonsense continuous pounding, tempo variations and relentless thumping and slamming. There is little space for bridges and no space at all to catch your breath, it’s really claustrophobic Death Metal jam-packed with solos and riffs. Could also remind somewhat of SEPSISM and SCATTERED REMNANTS if you like, but just remind that it’s an onslaught that never, never stops. Now the bad is that the sound might not the most accurate thing about this tape, as my speakers continuously crackle and sizzle. I am not a fanatic for crystalline productions I struggled to convince me it was just a sample and it served perfectly the scope, but a good chuggy, sturdy sound a la DYING FETUS would have valorised this stuff 100 times more. Shockingly skilful, DIKTAT surprised me by sheer blunt force, if a band like this doesn’t get contract from “at least” a label like United Guttural, something is going really wrong.

DIKTAT shows no sign of liking subtle tricks and merry melodies. In fact they play some of the rawest, more technical Death Metal out of France. Not that I know many Brutal Death bands from the country (MORGUE, maybe) but these guys play real nasty and heavy, not just fuzzy goregrind. Remind me a bit of SUFFOCATION and ORIGIN in sheer no-nonsense continuous pounding, tempo variations and relentless thumping and slamming. There is little space for bridges and no space at all to catch your breath, it’s really claustrophobic Death Metal jam-packed with solos and riffs. Could also remind somewhat of SEPSISM and SCATTERED REMNANTS if you like, but just remind that it’s an onslaught that never, never stops. Now the bad is that the sound might not the most accurate thing about this tape, as my speakers continuously crackle and sizzle. I am not a fanatic for crystalline productions I struggled to convince me it was just a sample and it served perfectly the scope, but a good chuggy, sturdy sound a la DYING FETUS would have valorised this stuff 100 times more. Shockingly skilful, DIKTAT surprised me by sheer blunt force, if a band like this doesn’t get contract from “at least” a label like United Guttural, something is going really wrong.

Much better is Stargazer. Some sort of weird combination of Death Metal with Arabic riffs a la early Death/Atheist. Fast and quite varied and with excellent sound production, the rhythmic structures are definitely three-dimensional, setting up a weird, bizarre, technical yet aggressive base for the whole song. Vocals are sort of hissing a la OFC but span quite wide as does all the rest of the music that ends with an instrumental tail. It’s original, yet extreme without being as “prog” as MISERY’S OMEN.

This is one of those Death metal bands that are slow without being neither evocative nor doomy, remind me some sort of slow version of MASTER, with acrid, throaty vocals that are the opposite of modulated (read: totally stiff), roughly reminiscent of NUNSLAUGHTER/MASTER in tone. But it’s the musical base that really doesn’t make me shoot form the hip. Just mid tempo chattering, with no cohesion and 0,0% structure. I will throw in one point more just because they sound so old-school, but to say I’m impressed I’ll be far from the truth.

1) Antartic Chasms 2) To Worship Stone Gods

Macabre, avantgarde Black Metal with vocals that remind, at least on emphasis, joy and variety those of Attila (“Mysteriis” era). This albums is strongly evocative of death, yet being at the same time as bizarre as old DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, as dissonant as KOROVA, as possessed as FUNERAL ORATION, as insane as latest CARBONIZED. It’s quite difficult to organize feelings about these two songs becouse they can start with classic Swedish melodies just to drop in clogs of harmonic twists with hyaena screams on top and other inhorganic forms of experimentation two steps later. I kinda like when bands come up with this RIGHT way to experiment, when I hear monstrosities like TARTEROS or LUNARIS, I can become quite close minded, but when things are arranged as gracefully and as completely insane as here, well, I feel at home, lost in a labyring of madness.

1) Blood Division 2) Superion Revenge

I think if we took Black Metal and brought it to the extremes of experimental grindcore (PROPHECY OF DOOM etc) adding IMPALED NAZARENE (1st album) influxes we might get something close to this. Hysterical Black metal that begins from the point where CONQUEROR ended. An orgy of god damned screams, an amazing drumwork and some martial force even behind all this fucking chaos makes this 7” a must have if you’re not into average Norwegian (spit in disgust) shit metal. Vocals are raucous and high yet not squawky as many of the genre. But what is most impressive is the array of fucking loud noise they can raise when they get faster, everything becomes total hysterical Chaos as much as more classical OFC Metal. If I was Chris Forbes i’d rasie my thumbs up.

What can effectively be said on NUNSLAUGHTER, they’re the paragon of a Death Metal band, uncompromisingly Death Metal. No bollocks or fucking shit when we talk about Nunslaugher. The two songs here bear all the arrogant stand of other giants like ORDER FROM CHAOS, with amazing raspy vocals, a couple of whispers a la CARNAGE “Infestation of EVil”, solid no nonsense riffs and all the raw energy this music was born with. Nothing to add, these songs are just Death Metal. Period.