Aluk Todolo


(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )

Descension (2007) , 7/10
Finsternis (2009) , 5/10
Occult Rock (2012), 7/10
Voix (2016), 6.5/10
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

French post-rockers Aluk Todolo assembled an unpredictable parade of industrial and post-rock events on Descension (Public Guilt, 2007), containing four lengthy instrumental suites. Obedience opens with distorted cavernous drones and slow pounding metallic beats like a warped, slow-motion version of Neu's "motorik" locomotives. Suddenly female voices start screaming and instruments start banging and vibrating at an extremely loud volume, a violent collective fit of vintage Japanese noisecore. Terrifying layers of distortion pile up on top of a primordial drumbeat. The piece sigues into Burial Ground, a calmer, hypnotic Pink Floyd-ian concentrate of psychedelic suspense. Dissonant vibratoes of a stringed instrument interfere with the lulling guitar patterns and eventually decay into Echoes-like pings. The drones return like a glacial wind to blanket Woodchurch, slowly morphing over an anemic industrial pulsation. An infernal guitar distortion emerges from that swampy jam and propels Disease into a more aggressive rhythmic pattern, an android-like cavalcade reminiscent of Chrome's sci-fi fantasies. The first and the fourth pieces are breathtaking. Too bad that the two in the middle do not sustain the intensity.

The piece of the EP Ordre (Ajna) was recorded during the same sessions.

The drummer and the bassist also played in Diamatregon. They also formed the Gunslingers with guitarist and vocalist Greg Raimo. The Gunslingers unleashed a mayhem of rhythm and noise on No More Invention (2008) and Manifesto Zero (World In Sound, 2010), somewhere between the most frenzied no-wave and the most cerebral prog-rock. Gregory Raimo's solo project GR & Full-Blown Expansion debuted with GR & Full-Blown Expansion (World Sound, 2010), an equally challenging slab of noise-rock, notably the 12-minute Descent Along The An-Ti-Fohn-Nul.

Aluk Todolo then released Finsternis (Utech Records, 2009). Premier Contact adopts a more fragile and ominous stance. It segues into the equally anemic Deuxieme Contact, that increases the dose of suspense via languid guitar glissando, but still very little happens. After the relatively brief Totalit‚, which is a bubbling tumor of musique concrete, TroisiŠme Contact increases both the speed and the noise, but then languishes in faceless depression being carved by a steady beat. Quatrieme Contact continues in the frosty and sterile plodding, although it mutates into something more humane and atmospheric. Too little too late.

Diamatregon played old-fashioned (i.e. hysterical) black-metal on The Satanic Devotion (2000) and Blasphemy For Satan (DMG, 2002), and returned with Crossroad (2008 - tUMULt, 2010).

Aluk Todolo's double-disc Occult Rock (Ajna Offensive, 2012) contains eight untitled mid-length jams (about ten minutes each) that range from the frenzied black-metal orgy of the first piece (ten minutes of indiscriminate hysterical drumming and strumming) to the absolute panzer horror doom of the eight, from the brainy cryptic post-rock meditation of the third to the syncopated Neu-ian motorik neurosis of the seventh. The slow distorted agony of the fifth evokes a series of variations on the riff of the Trogg's Wild Thing. Not all the pieces are so monolithic: the second piece pares the languid psychedelic distorted guitar lament with a busy suspense-filled rhythm merging them into a breathless devilish dance; the brooding cosmic crescendo of the fifth yields to a ringing earthly hymn; and the sixth even entertains moments of quiet. The whole constitutes an inspired synthesis of musical types that expands way beyond the metal genre.

Aluk Todolo's Voix (Norma Evangelium Diaboli, 2016) continued their organic growth away from their metal childhood. The album is generally more restless and tense. The mix of cyclical drumming, Jimi Hendrix-ian guitar glissandoes and jazzy bass lines in A1 is both dark and kinetic, and occasionally plunges into Sonic Youth-esque repetitive dissonance. Very fast arpeggios create a mood of extreme tension in A2. The short B2 is a crescendo to jarring swirling repetitive music that sounds like Glenn Branca composing gypsy music. The atmospheric highlights are actually the least hysterical: the sparse jazzy landscape of B1, populated with subtle drumming and ghostly floating noises; and B3, that starts like a jazz-rock version of Godspeed You Black Emperor and ends as hypnotic cosmic stoned music after an orgasmic crescendo.

(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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