Dementia Praecox

When I get a promo of a Turkish band I’m instantly intrigued; I’ve really come to appreciate the country as a source for great music. I’ve heard some amazing grindcore, death and black metal, and with the relatively scarce selection of Turkish metal I find that they’ve got more good bands than bad ones. That, my friends, is truly unique. Now, Acrosome is a two-piece that with Dementia praecox unleash their debut release.

Much like the cover suggests (though probably unintended) this is a record that has its ups and downs. The opening track feels more like an intro than an actual song, just for the fact that it’s a little over two minutes of ambient noise laced with spoken and whispered words. I haven’t got a clue as to what it actually means, but it works really well in building up an atmosphere, and continues seamlessly into Farkindalik reaksiyonu. This is where it takes a turn for the depressively styled black metal that was popping up in the early days of the millennium; a bit like if earlier Shining hinged its wagon to the Burzum train for a bit of ambience. And as it works surprisingly well, the slowdown occurring when the tune hits its one-minute mark is supreme in making me anticipate something absolutely grand to come. But to my surprise the song suddenly ends, and winds up lasting less than two minutes before we’re back to the ambience and spoken vocals of DP 1898. And just before you know it the track moves on into another dose of the aforementioned black metal, once again delivering a solid atmosphere despite the fact that it vocally occasionally resembles the dreaded howls of Varg Vikernes. But this is where I have to put my foot down – why the hell does the song tune out and turn into yet another couple of minutes of ambience and spoken vocals? Haven’t you done this already on the album? I mean, a repetition already, we’re only on the third track.

This is one of the drawbacks of the release. While the songs blend into each other in a most superior way, the fact that every other track is ambience layered with either spoken vocals or crackling screams unfortunately puts a damp on the whole listening experience. Reaksiyonel idea starts out absolutely supremely, and the slow buildup of funereal doom riffs, complemented by the utterly effective drumming, once again makes me anticipate grandeur to come. It is close to five minutes of pure musical bliss, and the screeching noise and weird-as-fuck cymbal work takes things to a whole new level, by far surpassing any previous effect the album’s had on me. And then they go and completely ruin it by having Atenor start with a lame-ass laughter, sounding like some Halloween-costumed dude tried to laugh like an evil witch. It makes it really difficult to take the release serious, while I honestly do think they’re dead serious those couple of seconds is enough to destroy the impact the release’s had on me so far.

The mixture of heavy-as-shit doom, bleak and chilling black metal and moments of ambience is wickedly awesome, but they’ve taken the whole ambience thing too far, I’m afraid. Had they only used half of such sections Dementia praecox would’ve been such an amazing first release. They really know how to create spooky, emotional and powerful music, and they’ve put it to use in a killer production with a deep and full drum sound and vocals that seems to be emitted from the depths of a cave. If they just hadn’t overdone it I would’ve been completely sold…

Originally written for My Last Chapter