The Finnish one-man band Dead Reptile Shrine debuted with
the amateurish cassette Isth Narai Ja (2001 - Antihumanism, 2008)
of post-ambient electronic music.
My Ancient Underworld Throne
is 25 minutes of floating electronics and otherworldly chants.
The 30-minute The Spirit Catcher (Aaveen Pyydystys Kellarissa) crafts
an ecosystem of chirping, howling and pulsing sounds
Best of all,
Deathstar Antenna is a ten-minute concerto of dark cosmic drones.
After
the triple-disc The Jewel Throne (Brutal Horde, 2002), containing
a grand total of 58 compositions (most of them very brief),
and NTK (2002), also fragmented in many pieces,
he churned out
A Journey Through The Darkest Of Forests (2005),
a chaotic and dissonant mixture of folk and metal with a
horror-industrial-psychedelic attitude.
The more musical pieces lean on black metal but only in a supporting role.
Bones in the Dungeon mixes shrieks, blastbeats and reckless strumming.
A Cave Full of Corpse Lanterns indulges in demonic frenzy.
Exekutioner of the Final Solution is a macabre dance covered under a
fat distorted guitar that eventually intones a majestic melody.
The zenith of pathos is achieved with the grinding doom riffs of
Our Feast of Victory.
Some of them hark back to the distant punk past.
Reversion to An Ancient Form sounds like a Cramps-ian dance in slow motion.
Best of all, Feuer und Stahl sounds like a cow-punk hoedown of the
1980s.
The theatrical aspect of the project yields the
slow, agonizing grand guignol of Diabolical Plague,
and the
electronic psychedelic kammerspiel of The Snakes of the Earth: Part II.
There are also abstract pieces that don't belong to rock music. Best concept is
probably the ambient exotic electronica of Above the Ziggurat They Dance.
The album closes with
the a-cappella choral chant of A Beastcults Procession.
The quality of the recording is still amateurish, but the ideas are
fleshed out like in more professional works.
Burning Black Infinity (2008) is a double-LP.
Jasse Tuukki (Cloama) and Die Blutleuchte released the collaborations
Cloama & Blutleuchte (New Old Sentinel, 2005 - Anima Arctica, 2009),
From Wasteland Mausoleums (New Old Sentinel, 2007),
Convoluted In Peripheral Sacrifice (Freak Animal, 2008).
Cloama (the project of Jasse Tuukki) is devoted to psychedelic soundscapes
such as
Neuroscan Organization (Spatter, 2003),
Revisionist Knowledge (Freak Animal, 2005),
Cloama (New Old Sentinel, 2005),
At The Mountains Of Paranoia (Turgid Animal, 2009).
The collective
Die Blutleuchte promoted the fusion of folk and industrial music (of the primordial and the futuristic) on
Rus (2002), a historical concept on Russia.
Dead Reptile Shrine's double album
The Sun Of Circles And Wood (Weird Forest, 2011)
summarized their multi-faceted aesthetic.
They are best in the shamanic mode:
Summoner Of Clarity
(a lugubrious voiceover, radio interferences,
Tibetan chanted prayers, pulsing robotic hearts and atonal riffs),
the harrowing vocal harmonies of Nuclear Cult,
and especially
Summer Forest's Magic, an
ugly two-voice chant over distorted guitar and spastic drumming
like the
Holy Modal Rounders' Bird Song
to the square.
Then there are the wordless vignettes,
apocalyptic doom-tinged post-rock theorems:
Walking Under The Winter Sun, built around
snippets of a melodramatic symphonic overture,
The Point,
a simple prolonged electronic buzzing with little explosions built in,
and especially
the machine music of Jihad Priestess for wild hissing, howling and whistling by machines over free-jazz drumming.
Then there is the least successful bunch, i.e. their own brand of black metal:
Weapon Crucifixion And Drowning, almost a parody of the genre,
Beholding The Necrocult Relic, that at least boasts
cavernous bass lines,
the funereal litany Blasphemous Coven and even the
melodic Throne Of Stone.
They rarely achieve more than amateurish status.
The notable exception is Forcefield Across Odensland that shakes
together
orgiastic chaotic quasi-industrial drumming and distorted growling vocals
like fans of Ministry rehearsing in a
gas station's restroom.
Finally, there are two songs that reveal more traditional roots: the
garage rave-up of Possessed By Infinity (despite the drunk ending)
and the
Cramps-ian psychobilly Blood And Iron Eagle.
The eclectic tour de force is certainly imposing, but, as usual, too many songs
do not deserve to be included. Filler is filler, no matter how smart the
ideas were.
Dead Reptile Shrine contributed four disorienting pieces to
Winterforest (Bestial Burst, 2011), a split album dominated by
Goatmoon's lengthy title-track.
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