Inferno

Like the vast majority of the bands I've reviewed positively, there's a lot to say about this Black Tribe demo. Few are the Black Metal releases of these days that have the determination to take part on aggression and misanthropy and don't mindlessly rehash what was already done with a passive, even suicidal tendency. This is belongs to that selected few couple of bands, being released in 2002. Some things about this are quite contradictory, some aren't. This album has a minimalist outfit, but its development is evidently complicated, notably due to the manually programmed percussion and partly because some effects used on the guitar and bass playing. This demo is twisted: there are moments of complete sonic blood feuds and there are moments of severe industrial experimentalism and military drumming, and often both combined. There are hallucinative experimentation moments that fail to weaken the archaic Black Metal nature and there are heavy archaic Black Metal moments that fail to weaken the hallucinative experimentalist nature. There are the tracks which are more industrial and experimental and there are the tracks which are more Black Metal: each of whom don't turn into total rhythmical endurance; all of them have considerable rhythmical and atmospheric variation. There are the revolting screaming lines and there are the spoken word verses: both highly distorted and coarse textured, heightening the quasi-Industrial sound of the demo.

Every instrument and note is articulated perfectly, even if the production values were forgotten after recording this, like if the instruments were recorded clearly but there were little effort in polishing the demo to be likeable for normal ears. The sound is quite stained and solid but (positively) slim, letting few (if any) harmonization live withing our normal human auditive range in the main instruments within the obdurate carnage that compromises most of this work.

The guitar composition, when not buried in effects is quite ominous and discordant, however more authoritative when it is needed. The abominable use of persistent short riffing that gradually evolves and involves is preferred over the use of long drawn out passages. The bass is most of the time is extremely gravitative and complementary for the other instruments, especially in the slower parts, being responsible for the destruction of the demo's monotony. The drums are considerably saturated and pounding, making the album resemble a lot Industrial music, often featuring machine-like sounds. On a side note, the drums are the result of extreme patience, the samples were cut and put together only with the Windows Audio recorder (this labyrinthine work took John Gill 9 months!). The vocals are also an interesting part, they most of the time resemble Ildjarn's, albeit way more disruptive with a static distortion remicent of EBM. Some other interesting things about all of this are the feature of piano in some tracks, the abolition of guitar protagonism in its conventional form, as a few tracks are mostly led by bass, notably 'Inferno'. Some ugly effects filling the duty of guitar solos and a seldom use of voice clips, notably Dead's voice taken from Live in Leipzig and a part of the Event Horizon. Structure wise it voyages through all paces, but the mid-paced path predominates by significant ratios. This may be often evolutionist; some songs consist only of a short riff repeated a reasonable amount of time accompanied by crazy effects and feedback. Another songs feature abruptly arranged changes within the same minute (migrating from traditional blood-feuds to odd experimentalism, remember?). The electronic influence is also an ever-changing factor throughout the album, it's more superfluous in Pure Fucking Armageddon; quite surprising, isn't it, with the song being a cover? Well, this isn't truly a cover but a very literal representation of the song title and not the song itself, however prevailing somehow loyal to it.

As typical for Black Metal, the overall idea that is rendered to you throughout this demo is that it doesn't acknowledge the problems that make the world a total disaster, it acknowledges the world as a total disaster that is a problem itself and stands for its very demolition. In a hopeless way, you get the image of a world being mercilessly obliterated and slaughtered by inhuman forces. All of this done in a hearty but reasonable way, taking it very far away from childish angstinence. For namely influences and inspirations I could perhaps say this features a little bit of Einstürzende Neubauten, Ildjarn, early Mayhem, Thorns and Sort Vokter.

As a sum of all of that, this is what you will encounter while listening to this demo: A chaos of order (and quite often the other way around too!). As a previous reviewer said, this isn't amateurish: lots of work and ideas were put meticulously into this, making it quite the opposite of what something amateurish could be like. I already exposed the reasons to get this and I recommend this work to, well, everyone who thought the description in this review was promising.