The Last Prostitute

This voluptuous gorgeous prostitute… I hooked up with this hooker in the summer of 1999 on a Black Sea resort. We had quite a few very nice moments together… until she vanished, just like that, literally… only to re-appear in Utrecht… sorry, Rotterdam, married to a Dutch tourism/hospitality tycoon. Where the hell did she find this one? Although such tycoons, both Bulgarian and foreign, have never been a rarity on the Black Sea shores, truth be told…

yeah, the album reviewed here reminds me of this brief affair to remember cause this was indeed the last prostitute I… played poker and belote with. Just to think that I never even got a farewell kiss from her… a sad memory quickly erased by a mere few notes from this great opus here. The Dutch combo hit a peak with the extraordinary “Moratoria”, a technical death/thrash metal beast second to none, and from that moment onward the pressure was completely off their shoulders with freedom granted them to venture into whichever music branch they felt like.

Well, they didn’t venture very far from their roots although the overall approach has been divested of any brutal death metal histrionics. The end result is almost pure thrash with subversive modern-ish overtones which on the title-track very nicely smell Coroner’s “Grin” and Aftermath’s “Eyes of Tomorrow”; a trippy, not very entangled listening experience that is greatly boosted by the frivolous funky/jazzy headbanger "Graffiti". However, frivolities of the kind are not allowed later with things abruptly taking a more serious direction with the patiently-woven, stomping technical riff-patterns of "Women of Injustice"; the eccentric jumps and jolts on the shape-shifting "Independent Remorse", the only death-flavoured cut here; and the twisted hectic thrashisms on the exquisite "Forsaken", one of the band’s finest creations. A couple of air-headed funky strokes resurface on the still fairly contrived "You Ain't Nothing" with "Racist Behavior" finely adding more to the surreal, unorthodox atmosphere with a solid portion of dizzying time and tempo-changes, the spacey dissonant aura ala late-80’s Voivod decorating the proceedings to a nearly overwhelming effect, giving future visionary practitioners like the Poles Myopia a ready template to follow.

A third magnificent effort in a row, a feat not very easily achieved, especially not during the gruesome 90’s, the guys steadfastly holding onto their lofty ideals juggling, or rather flirting, with both death and thrash throughout, producing some of the finest fruit of the decade, including on this last kiss… sorry, effort which showed inclinations towards a slightly more mechanistic, more sterile way of execution. Regardless, these unmitigated innovations still worked their magic with the ties to the previous instalments only too tenacious for the old fanbase to feel let down, placing the album higher than similar adaptation showings from the guys’ homeland like Sacrosanct’s “Tragic Intense”, Donor’s “Release”, and Genetic Wisdom’s “Humanity on Parole”. The genius exuded all over their career hardly has any other similar precedent on the scene, making it all the sadder the fact that the reformation stint in 2009 didn’t quite work out.

Actually, I lied; I met this prostitute (not anymore obviously) of mine again; in fact, we still have these brief encounters whenever we happen to land at the same time on these full of surprises Black Sea shores. I never missed a good-bye kiss again, not to mention these intense, full of twists… card games that we still indulge in. Strange that I have never suggested this marvel here to serve as a musical accompaniment to those… maybe I should the next time around.