Illuminations of Vile Engorgement

When you are trying to establish any kind of ranking order in the mess of things, one can't judge Enmity like other bands, critical perception based on songwriting skills, sound design, artistic devition or proud genre spanking savagery is just a method to put this band back in line. Fans do not repeatedly fall in love with Enmity because they are a very very very brutal death metal band. The world is filled to the brim with other bands from the same stock, people that are blasting, growling, pig squealing, shredding and chugging along like there is no tomorrow, what's one more or less band in the eye of greater things?

It's not the question of what this album hast to offer, but what it demands from you instead. Enmity put you to work. Make you look at yourself. If you play this at a party, even as a joke, the effect will wear off pretty quickly. Enmity has to be inhaled alone, on the borders of nihilism and depression, this album starts to make sense when everything else has long stopped making any goddamn sense at all. Being alone with it, you will lose the urge to ridicule it in any way because it is most certainly not ridiculous.

All masks of optimized consumerism and parasocial attachment are stripped away, there are no lies present, what you hear is what you get.There is no drum performance, instead you get the abstract essence of brutal death metal drumming hammered into your ears. That is a difference in motivation, isn't it? There is no beginning and no end with these blastbeats, it does not matter at which point in time you and the blasts are. They just are, like you. And that can be pretty frightening. The occasional visit of a snare hit during the double bass ridden slam passages is just there to remind you that snares exist. We are not here for the rhythm or the money.

As paradoxical as it sounds, the communication between your self and this album can only be established when you both start to take each other seriously. Enmity are meeting you half way, the rest is up to you. You can listen to this record for 20 times and the chances are high that you will still not be able to decipher the riffs with your ears. But you will stop caring about that and be fascinated by the fast plectrum on his journey through cold lands, up and down, down and up. This guitar is not played to entertain, the notes are a by-product of looking within. And I'm not sure if the dudes behind Enmity knew what kind of strange work they were creating at the time. But here it is, so much more than quickly admired and forgotten brutal death metal. Does any one really care what the vocals are gargling about? It's enough they are present. Like an ugly wall that you can still lean against. The wall doesn't care if your jacket gets dirty. But it also won't let you down. Letting you down is YOUR job.