No State of Grace

Industrial black metal can be done magnificently, just think of some The Axis of Perdition and Blut Aus Nord releases, but most often it seems to fall into ultimate mediocrity. Iperyt’s second full-length No State of Grace is an inconveniently clear case of the latter category, presenting eleven tracks of ultra fast and rather bland industrial black / death metal.

The main glitch here is how the band tries to be extreme and shocking. This comes evident already via reading the songtitles like ”Scars Are Sexy” and, delving into the music, the aspect of pretentiousness comes apparent in e.g. the exaggerated drum machine speeds. Combine the 3000 bpm audio software beats to slower and remote riffs and ”let’s fuck the life from behind” (straight quote) lyrics, and I’m quite embarassed overall.

I hate to go all the way ranting an album like this, but the truth is that there’s little content on No State of Grace that would deserve the attention of even industrial metal fans. The first track, self-titled one, culminates to some nice, almost epic melodies, but that’s pretty much all I can get out of No State of Grace. Unless the bands starts to focus more on the actual content instead of the mere extreme and ’oh so violent’ attitude it has, I hold no further interest in the band. Technically, there’s no limitations for potential as the band does keep the songs together well enough, but there’s just got to be something more than that’s just trying to horrify the listener - and then even fail at it!

1 / 5
[ http://www.vehementconjuration.com/ ]