777 - Sect(s)

In which Blut Aus Nord almost make a Godflesh album. That's going too far. What I meant to say is that the razor is my hand and the means to a uncomfortable end of days lays in this album's harrowing nihilism. That's pretentious. A dark Disneyland of dissonant chording and chaotic noodling. Closer to the mark, but this is getting out of hand. Blut Aus Nord have made an experimental nightmare come to life, and describing it is kind of trying to grasp the details of that fresh nightmare after waking.

I can't help but feel that this is a weird kind of Godflesh album, though. The dank rusted musical corners the music explores reside in the same bombed out neighborhood. The songs, or compositions, are demarcated as Epitomes 1-6, and longest of them, Epitome 4, is the greatest dirge never Justin Broadrick wrote. And in between the blistering, strangely churning black metal, when the music exhausts itself enough to slow down, it manifests as a slow industrial hell engulfed by a lava of molten iron. That's the strange new world these Frenchmen are exploring.

And when your guitars chime and resonate as they do here, when your percussion pounds like a million strange anvils, when the sound is as dense and impenetrable as a black hole, then yes, comparisons to Godflesh may apply. Not vocally, though. The vocals are still a very familiar black metal croak, a shrill witch/demon cry. And these songs/opuses are not nearly as repetitive, taking many jarring twists, blasting off into oblivion often, and then, unexpectedly becomes a quasi-dance/trance oddity.

All in all, a jarring and ugly industrial hellride. Recommended.