No State of Grace

Industrial black metal isn’t an easy genre to pull off. In order to successfully fuse the two genres, a band must be able to both comprehend and effectively harness the chaos and primitivism inherent to black metal, and then twist it into form via the cold, mechanical precision of industrial music. Poland’s Iperyt succeeds where many other bands have failed, using technology to rein in black metal’s tendency toward entropy and forge a pummeling post-apocalyptic sonic landscape on their second album, No State of Grace.

Iperyt conforms black metal to the (relative) orderliness of drum machines and samplers on No State of Grace, while at the same time ramping up the hatred beyond the red. Hate is arguably black metal’s most important emotional component, and let’s face it, there’s plenty to hate in 2011. Lyrics such as “I am the maggots crawling out of a beggar’s wounds / I am the rapist’s seed in the anus of your wife” and “We wield the banners of nihilism / Fist-fucking God’s creation”, as well as the blasting musical genocide of tracks such as “Antihuman Hate Generator” and “Into the Mouth of Madness” offer no shortage of spite. No State of Grace abuses both the body and the mind, as the vocals, guitars and synthetic drums lock in to pulverize or sodomize everything within earshot. These machines are controlled by barbarians.

The quintet achieves their goal of total sensory overload, yet the band also knows when to pull back from the relentless mechanized battering and allow the album (and by turn the listener) to breath. These moments of calm (again, relative) are few and far between, but they do serve to make the band’s all-out assaults that much more crushing, especially the pounding, gabber-style bass drumming that’s frequently employed throughout No State of Grace. I’m no expert here, but I get the distinct impression while listening to the album that the band may be influenced by electronic music beyond the usual industrial suspects. Iperyt’s music doesn’t approach danceability by any means, but there are some thick and menacing grooves scattered throughout the album.

No State of Grace might not be as varied and nuanced as say, 666 International, but it is arguably one of the finest examples of blackened industrial brutality to come down the pike since Anaal Nathrakh’s The Codex Necro. It is an exercise in musical savagery that oozes contempt from every nook and cranny, making it a perfect soundtrack to the misanthropic rage many of us feel as we’re forced to subject ourselves to the cesspool that is humanity on a daily basis. In an era where so much conventional black metal comes off as tired and limp, and so many musicians are attempting to pretty up the genre in the name of “progression”, a filthy and furious killing machine like Iperyt is exactly what’s needed to make us feel the hatred again.

Originally written for http://thatshowkidsdie.com