Diva

At the very least, you probably could dance to this. It's loud, regimented death metal with an incessant groove, a big, modern, boxy thing without a trace of air inside. There's absolutely nothing unpredictable over the course of this album's fifty minutes, and, even if the overall sound is thick and rumbling, nothing resonates in the listener's consciousness. In a word, it's boring.

In the wake of the mildly experimental Close to Prime, Luna Field seems to have fashioned its sound and image into a more accessible, almost club-friendly kind of product. There's a goth aspect to the band photos, an industrial strain in the music and album artwork, and through everything a vibe reminiscent of Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar (especially when a certain goblin voice crops up now and then). Everything is repetitious -- painfully so -- and constrained by a rigidity that would make even the Norwegians cluck. I suspect this repetitiousness was intended to highlight the industrial qualities of the riffing and harmonics. Sure, any Morbid Angel release features its fair share of squawking, grating, and grinding atmospherics, but here it all sounds conceptual and conspicuous.

In fact there is a philosophical concept to the lyrics, one involving the ego (which I know because the word "ego" is used about a thousand times during the run of play), free will, and morality. Furthermore, and for no discernible reason, the album is divided into three parts: "The Great Prologue," "The Mob Dialogue," and "The Vic Epilogue." If there's some sort of narrative here, it's lost on me, but apparently something thematic is happening. The most I can imagine is a pale, angry figure standing at a spotlit podium, wearing a corset and top hat (an ensemble I do not have to imagine, actually, as that is how the vocalist is attired in the booklet), throwing his arm around in some sort of martial salute, alternately accusing and affirming. Who really knows, though?

Songs are driven largely by short vocal refrains and endlessly clipped and recycled guitar phrases (clipped in the sense that they're brief and rhythmic, mostly devoid of any commanding melody), the latter blaring like the horns of eighteen-wheelers and tugboats. The vocalist does have a rich and often intelligible roar, so there isn't a total lack of charisma in the delivery. Both of these voices, the strings and the tongue, are executed very staccato, thus songs become memorable, but in the way that banging your shin on the coffee table a hundred times in a row would be memorable. Maybe that's harsh. Let's just say that the songs tend to linger beyond their welcome. The second half of "Egoism Divine," however, does manage some moments of vague appeal when the swelling keyboards and soloing guitars come in; this noteworthiness continues into the last track, "Diva Messiah," which is a kind of dirge that turns weirdly sunny at times, and travels through all kinds of serpentine keyboard passages. It's almost engaging. Of course, like everything else here, it goes on way too long.

All in all, it sounds very pompous, which, again, dealing with the subject of ego, probably is intentional. It's the hullaballoo of a carnival, lots of brightly colored machinery in endless, dizzying revolutions, the feel of warm ground trod by countless other feet, barkers beckoning you toward blatant scams, a cartoonish mockery of usefulness, and, at the end of the day, a waste of time and money. It does sound professional, I hasten to add, and suggests the band put a lot into it. It sounds lofty, finished, and whole, inescapably complete like a prison tower.

After Close to Prime there was reason to expect something at least unique from this outfit. Rather than continue their attempts at musical pastiches, though, Luna Field chose a style, adhered to it like a fundamentalist congregation, and did their part to keep extreme music mediocre.