Счастье для всех

Ever since the genre’s inception, a lot of acts tried to elevate death metal to the level of Art. Death, Atheist, Nocturnus and Atrocity started the process which made a huge step forward on the Pestilence output in the early/mid-90’s, alongside the much-vaunted Cynic debut album. However, the greatest contribution for death metal to be considered now as one of the 8 Arts was made in Finland, of all countries, in the face of Impaled Nazarene… ha ha ha!, kidding of course, two hugely talented outfits: the more known Demilich, and the lesser known one, Nomicon. Those two bands almost completed the application form the genre needed to present for its inauguration as an Art form, but their untimely disappearance (Demilich) or surrender to other styles (Nomicon; black metal, that is) left the process unfinished with a couple of strokes still missing…

Then the technical death metal formations from the 90’s (Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Necrophagist, etc.) concentrated on speed too much leaving the surreal, twisted beauty of the Finns’ repertoire far behind. The Swedish wizards Theory in Practice almost put their signature underneath the aforementioned application form, but again they didn’t last long enough to achieve that… And when Gorguts took the genre into galaxies far far away with “Obscura”, it seemed as though death metal wasn’t going to achieve an Art status, provided that hordes of acts followed on the steps of the Canadians stumbling along this ultimately abstract, beyond-death metal road, the rest painstakingly emulating the previously mentioned hyper-speed practitioners. So that seemed to be it, a creative cul-de-sac condemning the genre into an endless cycle of self-repetition and awkward, larger-than-life, blends with other, more or less suitable, styles…

Then appeared these Russians, with the absurdly retarded name Beheaded Zombie. No chance for the more sophisticated side of the death metal fanbase to ever check them out since who would expect anything else, but brutal semi-amateurish death/grind with a name like this?! Well, their debut “Suicide of Hell’s Sinners” wasn’t very far from what the death/grind cohorts were doing at the time, albeit coming with a strange avantgarde flair, not far from the one displayed on another pioneering effort from the early-90’s, Carbonized’s “For the Security” (1991); and quite a bit of characteristic twisted technicality. Comes “Paradigm” a year later which was a bit over 15-min of the same, maybe a tad more controlled and marginally more elaborate. However, two years later things have gone up in almost every department, and “Life Line” serves fast relentless bash “ornated” by all kinds of niceties: illogical backward riffing, atonal rhythms, super-technical guitar “puzzles”, weird slower atmospheric passages, etc. Still, it remains a rough-around-the-edges listening experience at times with a lot of speedy chaotic sections scattered all over for good, or not so good, measure.

3 years later the guys “make all happy” with their swansong “Happiness for All” which virtually ends all the genre’s strives at greatness, perfection, completion, illumination… whatever. Starts “Other Side of Loneliness” following a meaningless half a min intro, and the listener will immediately exclaim something along the lines of “What the hell is that?!”, quickly followed by a reverential “Wow…”, and this is exactly where he/she will be at 32-min later once the final chord from this colossal album has faded away. This same opener is surreal spacey avant-gardism with otherworldly backward playing applied at every corner to a maximum beautiful effect the same one already achieved, but only partially, on the Spanish Unreal Overflows’ “Architecture of Incomprehension” (2006). It hits straight in the guts, and an uncanny feeling arises from there; the same one the listener felt for the last time while listening to Demilich’s “Nespithe” (1993), and Nomicon’s “The Me” (1992) and “Yellow” (1997). The weird atonal rifforama goes on unabated on “Tell Me, Friend” and every other track, beautiful enchanting semi-lead rhythms leading the way on the title-track those last heard on the works of Nocturnus and Theory in Practice, aptly supported by superb, equally as strange, bass lines (remember Mekong Delta’s Ralph Hubert on “Heartbeat” from “Kaleidoscope”, but this is more out there). Then comes the sublime “The Worms”, an immaculate mix of hard-hitting headbanging riffs and gorgeous melodic tunes which supplement each other in a great inimitable way with some macabre proto-doomy hooks wrapping it on.

Chaotic proto-blasts reign supreme on “Black & White” which is graced by stupendous melodic lines, the same approach applied on the short 2-min perplexer “The Creature” which is indeed “a creature from outer space” with its constantly changing time and tempos; music like this can’t possibly be “cooked” on the Earth plane… The same goes for the remaining four numbers which blend technical, progressive and avant-garde death metal in a way never done before: unexpected twists await you at every corner the culmination being the brilliant melodic leads on the closing “My Poetry” which alone certify the genre’s status as one of the 8 Arts; this is “poetry” and beauty stitched together by some of the most expertly crafted, both technical and melodic, guitar lines on the whole metal scene. Wait a minute, this is not death metal anymore… this is ethereal transcendental music which carries you away into another dimension where ugly “beheaded beasts” are “guilty” of handling the most stunning “beauties” around the latter feeling utterly blissful with the situation.

This is an album which one will listen to sitting and thoroughly concentrated overpowering the several temptations to stand up and mosh around on the more aggressive passages. This is just too unexpected, overwhelming and seductively bizarre for the listener to dare miss even a single note of it distracted by a spasmodic air guitar jump-around. Multiple listens will inevitably follow for one to fully grasp what has happened here; some may even blame the guys for killing death metal since this is already a pleasantly mutated form of our beloved genre; a transformation which some would dismiss almost instantly due to its again, beautiful (I start hating this word now…), ephemeral nature; after all, death metal is supposed to be “ugly” and brutal, right? It’s neither of those here, but at the same time it’s everything a thinking death metal fan would be happy to hear: technicality, complexity, strange rhythms and song-structures, atmosphere, unexpected twists and turns… all this served in a fairly individual, even innovative if you like, manner.

Seriously, one can hardly think of where death metal can possibly go from here… Certainly, we will be expecting the next Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Martyr, Necrophagist (this one already took too long), or Atheist album eagerly, but we will do that by calmly anticipating the complex “carnage” those efforts will provide without hoping for another “beauty & the beast” opera along the lines of the one here. This one can only be achieved by dearly “beheaded” half-dead lunatics who, even without their heads on, have managed to provide “happiness for all” except for the historians and publishers, of course, who now have to rewrite all textbooks and other artistic resources in order to add our favourite death metal to the list of Arts as the 8th one.

The band are no more, but their artistic endeavours have pricked the ozone layer, and have leaked over Norway's social consciousness thus completely shattering the foundations of the already stagnant black metal scene over there. As a result we have two true auteurs that are sanitizing death metal's muddy waters at present: the more black metal-prone Drottnar, and the futuristic technicallers Diskord. Both moved up the perfection scale on their sophomore efforts ("Dystopics" for Diskord; and "Stratum" for Drottnar, both released in 2012) showing strong signs of contamination from the "plague" spread by this already extinct zombie species, and hopefully would further consolidate the genre's new Art status.