Orthrelm is a Washington-based duo formed by former Crom-tech and Quix*o*tic's bassist Mick Barr, now on guitar,
and drummer Josh Blair, a member of avantgarde ensemble ABCs)
that debuted with a 99-track 13-minute EP Asristir Vieldriox (Troubleman Unlimited, 2002), in a hardly recognizable metalcore sub-style.
But the real revelation was OV (Ipecac, 2005), a full-length album
containing a single 45-minute track that married the speed of grindcore and
the repetition of Terry Riley's minimalism.
The piece revolves around very few ideas, but each is developed to a manic detail and intensity.
It is a relentless, dense and tense stream of
consciousness. It is as tortured as the post-rock meditations of
Slint or
Don Caballero, although streamlined to the
point of resembling a mathematical operation (not convoluted like a mathematical theorem), except that the fury is punk or metal or both.
The first 17 minutes are devoted to a frenzied repetition of simple guitar-drums patterns with little or no variation. Then a syncopated supra-pattern causes
the micro-patterns to split and drama enters the geometry of spacetime. A new, shrill pattern begins after a sequence of glissandoes with no drums.
By the 30-minute mark, the guitar's manic runs have become quite agonizing
and the drumming has become pure electricity.
Orthrelm's hypnotic and transcendent post-metal explicits the loop from the
psyche back to the psyche that is the fundamental principle of art.
Barr also played in Octis, that released
Ocrilim (Troubleman Unlimited, 2005), a 33-minute piece for guitar and drum machine.
Barr's solo project Ocrilim was credited for
two ferociously inventive (but also maddeningly self-indulgent) guitar albums:
Anoint (I & Ear, 2006),
a massive seven-movement symphony for overdubbed guitars reminiscent of
Glenn Branca, and for the seven-movement
Annwn (Hydra Head, 2008), again for multi-tracked guitar.
The three-LP box-set The Purging Trilogy - Sacreth / Ixoltion / Hymns (Rock Is Hell, 2011) collects rare recordings for guitar and drum-machine.
The mini-album
Ment (2008), credited to both Ocrilim and Octis, contains just two
lengthy pieces.
Josh Blair also drummed for Supersystem.
Shred Earthship (2006) and
ZH/MB Volume 2 (Rock Is Hell, 2007) were collaborations between
Mick Barr and drummer Zach Hill.
Infidel? / Castro!, the duo of bassist Colin Marston and George Korein, released Infidelicacy (2000), Case Studies In Bioentropy (2001) and the double album Bioentropic Damage Fractal (2005).
Mick Barr formed the black-metal band Krallice (drummer Lev Weinstein and
bassist Colin Marston) that debuted with the highly technical
Krallice (Profound Lore, 2008).
Each of the lengthy pieces is a concentrate of tension and pathos, largely built
on guitar noise and quasi-blasting drums.
Wretched Wisdom expresses pure unbridled energy in the juxtaposition of
superhuman fibrillating guitar versus giant pounding beats, the collision ending
in manic Yes-style circular riffing.
Cnestorial, a personal interpretation of the codes of black metal,
stages werewolf-style howling soaring above an intensely epic guitar
progression, so that, as the relentless frenzy stokes even the coldest hearts,
the vocals acquire epic overtones of their own.
The terrifying supernova-like momentum of Timehusk, with
screams buried in an avalanche of frantic notes and beats, basically sprints
towards self-destruction.
The peak of melodrama is perhaps Energy Chasms for
agonizing (and unusually unstable) music, synthesizer-like guitar solo,
and desperate vocals. This is the major exception to the rule that each piece
is a monolith simply repeating itself.
The 15-minute Forgiveness In Rot simply lets loose those
devastating pulverizing drums and guitars strummed to their physical limit,
and it feels like an army of gorillas banging their heads on trees at
lightning speed, an intense protracted act of self-flaggelation.
Krallice's largely improvised sessions yielded
Dimensional Bleedthrough (Profound Lore, 2009),
with Colin Marston now on second guitar and Nick McMaster on bass.
This time the noise and the emphasis tend to outlast their welcome,
like the endless agonies of Dimensional Bleedthrough
and The Mountain
that diligently
piles up stereotype after stereotype but only at the very end manages to
create real pathos.
Inevitably, the lack of inspiration leads them to exaggerate their black-metal
credentials, with mixed results:
Autochthon can be viewed as both a roaring peak of ferocity or
almost as a parody of the genre.
There are, however, moments of great (and grand) poetry.
Barr's "waltzing lullaby" kind of distorted guitarwork jumpstarts the 15-minute
Aridity before turning into the musical equivalent of
carpet-bombing to lead the apocalyptic second half.
Intraum is basically just one massive super-dense drone, made of
brutal guitar noise and electronic processing, with no drumming.
Freed from the constraints of black metal, this becomes the exact opposite
of "black": a quasi-religious experience, a long yearning "om" to the skies,
modulated to sound like a crying human.
And, as impossible as it sounds,
Monolith Of Possession manages to sustain
its supercharged anxiety for more than 14 minutes before the vocals erupt
their calmly desperate lament, which, after so much terror, sounds even
melodic.
Barr gambles too much perhaps on the hypnotic quality of his massively
repetitive guitar strumming technique, but, when it works, it is worth every
second of unspeakable noise and it matches the power of Bach's organ fugues
(another case of simplicity used to create immensity).
Krallice continued their mission on Diotima (Profound Lore, 2011)
with a more open dynamic approach in songs (real songs) like
Inhume and in quasi-progressive
theatrical suites like The Clearing that mostly lurches forward at
a snail's pace (relatively speaking).
Diotima is even better, a combination of the two: a vocals-dominated
melodrama that keeps changing tempo and tone, peaking in the middle with
a moment of lyrical madness, and ending in a chaotic vortex as the voice
mutters something in a martial tone.
There is certainly a lot more variety in this album compared with the previous
two. The 14-minute Litany of Regrets opens with an industrial metronomy
that becomes the primary rhythmic foundation for the lengthy death-dance
(actually more similar to headslamming punk-rock).
Dust And Light is Barr's canonical agony: dying cry buried under
a massive layer of wavering guitar distortion.
Krallice's three-song EP Orphan of Sickness (2011) was devoted to covers
of Orphan, whose bassist Brendan Majewski had just committed suicide.
Mick Barr's solo Coiled Malescence (Safety Meeting, 2011) consisted of
two merciless atonal orgies.
Mick Barr also released duets with
Nandor Nevai:
The Rainbow Supremacy (ugEXPLODE, 2009) and
Labyrintha (Savage Land, 2010).
Ocrilim also released the mini-album
Overvtion R12 (2012), containing the 15-minute
Rememinent Observance,
and especially the double-disc Annwn 2 (2012), that collects
old improvisations of 2007 like the 29-minute Annwn 11
and the 21-minute Annwn 12.
Krallice's Years Past Matter (Gilded Media, 2012) streamlined the
compositions quite a bit.
The first sounds like an eight-minute medieval war chant. It segues into an
equally macabre (eleven-minute) death dance sung in a guttural register
but then, at blastbeat peak, screamed in a desperate tone.
More terrifying pomp is laid down in the twelve-minute third piece
that alternates homicidal frenzy and anxious hesitation fading into
funereal or supernatural drones. The fourth piece opens slow and symphonic
before launching into the usual onslaught. Again, it is neither brainy nor
cryptic: just a torrent of blastbeats and hyperstrums underlying a monster's
narrative, ebbing and flowing, a dynamic piece that sets the album's records
both for violence and moderation.
The 17-minute sixth and final piece bursts out the gates as
a monolithic repetitive pulverizing black-metal jam, a grandiose gothic
pandemonium of little subtlety but of awe-inspiring and exhausting majesty.
Kralice moved decisively out of their comfort zone and into
technical death-metal with
Ygg huur (2015), named after an obscure Giacinto Scelsi composition.
Forsaking the epic-length, geometric, droning, shoegazing compositions
of the past, this album opts for an intricate, dissonant, insanely exhilarating
assault on the sense.
The manifesto of this labyrinthine metal is the
manically convoluted and hysterical Wastes Of Ocean,
as if they had listened to a lot of Henry Kaiser albums.
Krallice seems to imitate the
theatrics of prog-rock in Over Spirit, a song rescued by its breathtaking finale.
The most gothic atmosphere shows up in Tyranny Of Thought, mainly because of the screamed vocals, a song that halfway coalesces in a powerful metal moment.
The standout, however, is Bitter Meditation, a superhuman eruption of
angst and anger. Throughout the album Lev Weinstein is a force of nature,
and here his incendiary, and at time deliberately spastic, drumming
becomes a tragic sound in its own.
McMaster's growl surfaces only in the closer Engram.
Of course, one can argue that Gorguts were doing these things long before Krallice.
Incidentally, four of the songs last exactly 6:41.
The EP Hyperion (2016), released on the first day of the year but actually recorded before Ygg huur, sounds like an extension of
Years Past Matter (2012) but with more pathos.
It's explosive black metal with a soul.
The seven-minute Hyperion, one of the emotional peaks of their career, launches in a demonic gallop with punk ferocity and ends with operatic bombast.
The ten-minute Assuming Memory is a gothic fantasia that begins slow
and solemn, with a melodic undercurrent, but then reaches
extreme tension through epileptic drumming and psychotic screams,
and then transitions to monster growls only to decay with no vocals into
a repetitive, hypnotic pattern and end in a cosmic droning coda.
The EP is probably their best release since Dimensional Bleedthrough.
Prelapsarian (2016) contains only four compositions, for a total of
only 35 minutes, and one is a short song. Unusual for them,
Hate Power is a punk-rock attack with political overtones.
Given that Conflagration is a bit too convoluted and confused to be considered an organic piece of music, the bulk of the album are the 12-minute
Transformation Chronicles, a dense and granitic mayhem interrupted by a transcendental guitar solo and a short pause before the frenzied finale, and
the eleven-minute Lotus Throne, that begins like a cross of
the Guns N' Roses,
Glenn Branca and the
Germs before the growl places it in black-metal
territory, all along massacred by acrobatic nuclear drumming.
A little less cryptic and anarchic than Ygg huur,
Prelapsarian succeeds in creating structure out of chaos and succeeds as well in creating a link between Krallice's original sound and their new technical style.
Loum (2017) was a mediocre collaboration with
Neurosis' bassist and vocalist Dave Edwardson, ruined by
substandard singing,
substandard production (Martson himself),
and substandard synthesizer.
The eight-minute Loum is the notable exception (this should have
been just a single).
Go Be Forgotten (2017) is easily their worst album yet.
In fact, it sounds like a hodgepodge of compositions in different veins,
from the
fairly conventional black metal of the eight-minute This Forest For Which We Have Killed (ostensibly a Beastlor song)
to the
seven-minute ambient interlude for guitar, synthesizer and artificial choir Quadripartite Mirror Realm via
the ten-minute prog-rock fantasy Ground Prayer, all pomp and time shifts.
The eleven-minute Go Be Forgotten feels like a compromise among all
these concentric forces: a quest for grandiloquence and atmosphere that
continues the progression (or regression) from Ygg huur to Prelapsarian towards a more structured form of technical metal after taming
the torrential drumming (and, alas, ruined by the rather tedious last five minutes).
The EP Wolf (2019) contains five short pieces that sound like sketches,
not fully formed compositions.
Barr and Marston teamed up with drummer Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers) and vocalist/guitarist Paulo Paguntalan (Copremesis) to create another death-metal aberration: Encenathrakh.
Their debut album Encenathrakh (2015) is as deranged as anything ever done in/to the genre.
Evviceate sets the tone with
abominable animal shrieks,
visceral and torrential guitar distortion and, above all,
Weasel Walter's insane post-jazz, post-everything drumming.
Atenggor is disfigured by gusts of tortured guitar and
suffocated under a rainstorm of drumming.
There are brief hysterical songs like Akerth and Gethrage,
but the quartet truly shines in the absolute chaos of longer songs like
Thraate.
When you think it can't get crazier than this, they deliver the supersonic mayhem of Ngthra.
Ngeveal boasts the most homicidal discharge of drumming.
As the instruments relent just a little in songs like Akeathate one can finally sense the desperation in the "voice" (or, better, vomited vocal noise) of the singer.
A music of spasms.
The sound of extreme, total, superhuman pain.
This quartet is a force of nature, and not a pretty one.
"Brutal" doesn't even come close.
Krallice's side-projects were many.
Lev Weinstein was the drummer of Fischel's Beast, that released Commencement (2009).
M.N.D.L.S.B.L.S.T.N.G. was the duo of Mick Barr and drummer Nondor Nevai, documented on Infinitum A.D.D. Nauseum (2012), and
Mossenek was the duo with electronic musician Chuck Bettis, documented on Sublingual Glossectum (2012).
Dripping Ancience (2013) documents a live collaboration by Barr with percussionist Mike Pride on which Barr played the "tar", is a traditional string instrument from Azerbaijan.
Mick Barr released solo album under the moniker Or:12r3, namely Groundrest (2011), 12;4;3;11;9;49.1 (2015), 12;4;3;11;9;49.2 (2015) and 12;4;3;11;9;49.3 (2015).
Barr resurrected Octis for the double-disc Uppragn Srilimia Ixioor Ocrilim Nollfithes Mrithixy (2013).
Mick Barr's solo project Beastlor was documented on three albums of old material released in 2015.
Colin Marston released solo music under the moniker Indricothere, notably the EP Indricothere (2008) and the albums Indricothere II (2013) and Indricothere III (2016).
Colin Marston also played in Behold The Arctopus,
in the trio Containor, documented on Asshole (2018),
and in Kevin Hufnagel's
Dysrhythmia.
Marston and Hufnagel were also the duo Byla, that released Byla (2005) and accompanied Jarboe on Viscera (2007).
Barr and Marston formed Hathenter which, after the five-song EP 10000 (2017), added guitarists Eliane Gazzard, Brandon Seabrook and Kevin Hufnagel, vocalist Yoshiko Ohara and bassist Christian Schiller for the 40-minute piece of Ouija (2017) and the four lengthy pieces of Wr w-r wwr0wr-g 0w -er0gw- -0wr w (2020).
Oldest's Bacterial Insight (2017) documents a pre-Krallice project with Mick Barr on guitar, bass and vocals and Brooks Headley on drums.
McMaster and Weinstein played in Astomatous that released The Beauty Of Reason (2006) and the EP Astomatous (2018).
McMaster and Weinstein formed Sallah, documented on Fortune and Glory (2014).
McMaster and Weinstein formed Geryon that released the albums Geryon (2013) and The Wound and the Bow (2016).
God's Bastard was the duo of Lev Weinstein and Drew Hays of Floods, documented on the EP Last Standing Village (2019).
Weinstein played in Pyrolatrous.
McMaster played bass in Solecism.
Marston played in White Moth, Sailors With Wax Wings and Rich Balling's Pyramids.
Mick Barr joined Jon Irabagon and Mike Pride on the 47-minute piece of I Don't Hear Nothin' But The Blues Vol 2 (2020), a successor to the 48-minute piece of I Don't Hear Nothin' But The Blues (2009).
Encenathrakh returned with Thraakethraaeate Thraithraake (2020),
but it was a disappointment:
the vocals are up front,
the guitars are hit and miss,
the production is sleek,
mechanical blastbeats have replaced Walter's creative hyper-drumming,
there are frequent pauses and even the semblance of melodies.
We can actually appreciate the vocal effects in Akeicthakc Attkethence,
which is also one of the most acrobatic songs.
There are theatrical moments in Thraakethraaeate Thraithraake that
detract from the overall feral energy.
Gethevvakeceate Hrageth drops in some funky electronic effects, which are intriguing but feel unfinished.
There is also a general sense of repetition.
