Variation on Inductive Theories (Architecture Screenplans)

Once upon a time in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France, lived a young man who played death metal. He had named his band after a famous 17th century play, and promoted it by telling his interviewers to “fuck off”, claiming that he lived on frogs and wine (after all, he’s French) and that the less people came to his shows, the better. Some may wonder why in that case he bothered playing any show at all, but that’s beside the point. He spent his days in perfect solitude writing inductive theories to encourage his fellows to kill themselves, while dreaming of himself as the Great Architect. So now you understand the title of the album, already a poem on its own.

In any case this young man, let’s call him Philippe, was left at the end of 1992 without any bandmate – no doubt these had finally choked on the frog diet – so thought easier to hire another already-existing band to back him on his upcoming debut full-length release. That happened to be Krakkbrain, a local technical thrash act. Thus, Variation on Inductive Theories (Architecture Screenplans) is the brainchild of a single man, who after all the posture and attention-whoring bullshit going on at the time, of which the first paragraph only gives a foretaste, could not have recorded just another progressive death metal output. It had to sound novel. At any cost.

Once you’ve captured the spirit, this album comes as little surprise, musically speaking. It primarily focuses on the ramblings of a sick kid who liked to play God, backed by session musicians wondering in what kind of madhouse they had stepped into. Obviously, one cannot deliver inductive theories the same way the fat guy next door gargles about raping dead children, even if there’s a song about incest. The work contains genuine growled parts, indeed, even if those sound overall weak, not helped by a cheap production which has a tendency to emphasize the guitars over everything else. But don’t be fooled by the opener Aquarium, good slice of early melodic death metal; it is not representative of the whole. As early as the next song Childhood Memories, the growls regularly degenerate into an unspeakable mixture of psychopathic moans, sighs, cries and squeaks, all intermingled with spoken lines. Misanthrope’s unique vocal style was born – in suffering.

The backing music is a mere pretext. Yet, it is not as eccentric as the somehow cult status of the thing might have suggested. The instruments used are honest guitars, bass and drums, with the very, very limited use of a simplistic keyboard to highlight the occasional important moment. The bizarre is less to be found in the instrumentation than in the song structures. That is, when there is any semblance of structure. As the end draws nearer, it sounds more and more like the guys were randomly jamming around while poor Philippe was crying his soul out. Jean-Jacques Moréac manages to slip a few of his trademark bass solos here and there, while his brother Charles-Henri seems to do well on the guitar, even if the part actually devoted to him is unknown. Slow doom-ish riffs, melancholic leads and acoustic breaks make for an overall soft atmosphere, unexpected from a band (rather, a man) who was still playing straigthforward death metal six months before. One may wonder how Philippe would have reacted if one had told him his baby at times reminded more of Black Sabbath than of any of the extreme bands he was worshipping. However, no doubt he would have gladly accepted a Celtic Frost reference.

In fact, the only song which can fully qualify as such is, once again, Aquarium. A case could be made for And Also the Lotus, as if the album had to close on a somehow wiser note – still, that last number bears its fair share of bizarre breaks and agonizing vocals. Not that the thirty-minutes-or-so which stand in between these two tracks cannot grow on the listener with time. But these are more to be enjoyed as a continuous flow of weird poetry over free-style metal improvisation, than as an actual succession of songs.

According to the legend, the fish on the cover was put back in its aquarium after the photo session, and the title of this review is borrowed from symphonic metal band Æsma Dæva. To each his own inductive theories.

Highlights: Solstice of Poetries / Aquarium, And Also the Lotus / Mourning Humanity

I often catch myself thinking about fittingly-titled albums, names that reflect a certain trait possessed, or coveted by a band; those can either be wishful thinking that may never come to pass, or a factual statement shared by both the fans and the musicians. Regarding the band under scrutiny here, it’s their 1997 outing “Visionnaire” because, if there is a “Visionary” award within the metal circuit, this bunch would be one of the five or six most worthy candidates for it.

The musicianship was already fairly accomplished from the very beginning the guys unleashing some quite effective progressive death metal on the first “Inductive Theories” demo (only a few references style-wise to the album reviewed here) which only flaw was the very sloppy production quality. It’s beyond comprehension why the guys abandoned their potent elaborate tactics for the sake of a much more stripped-down, aggressive death/thrash delivery on the following demo and split… those two also contained moments of rampant genius but were way more streamlined and more conventionally-executed.

It’s worth of note the participation of two members of the excellent technical thrashers Krakkbrain during Misanthrope’s first period (until 1995) whose more eccentric frivolities gave the early works an unusual avant-garde depth. Take the album here for instance: the stylish but disheveled bashing from the preceding variations is irrevocably gone replaced by a weird complex doom/death hybrid that is quite comparable to what the Germans Dark Millennium were cooking at the same time. The quirkiness is bigger here, first because of the uneven but intriguing vocal “clean hypnotic vs. brutal deathy” duet, and second due to the more frequent, often completely unheralded stylistic switches which on “And Also the Lotus” alone send you from protracted romantic balladisms to choppy Confessor-esque doom, to dramatic deathly accumulations, to morose funeral-like marches. The more melodic and more conventional material (“Aquarium”) is a sure reminder of The Gathering’s first, and the baroque officiancy of “Childhood Memories” winks at same year’s Therion (“Symphony Masses…”); in other words, all the ground-breaking recordings from the early-90’s have a gathering here the supervision provided in the form of entangled progressive trips (“La Demiurge”, “Atlas”) where more aggressive death metal-ish elements take the upper hand for a thrilling dynamic ride, leaving the more cumbersome histrionics for the imposing doomy processions “Monolith in Ruins” and “The Grey Orchard”, the latter a fabulous doom metal riff-fest, one of the finest examples of the genre to come out of France.

A very unexpected, near-profound change of heart after the much more energetic previous works, this very cool original album is another illustration of the band’s visionary stance, a very atmospheric as well offering which holds the listener ensnared till the end; you have to tolerate the slowmotion developments, though, as those are the prevalent ones, and they also provide the more interesting twists. This is by no means a flamboyant exhibition of bizarreness; this is a carefully-assembled opus which doesn’t test the listener’s patience with constant outside-the-box decisions. The mentioned stylistic jumps are not easy to predict, yes, but since we largely have doom and death that have been juggled throughout, there’s isn’t a drastic incongruent change of scenery to be come across. The vocal duel may appear annoying to some, mostly the clean side of it as the man never changes the pitch, keeping to a not very attached monotonous croon. Not much drama to be generated from this one, but there’s plenty of energy coming from the semi-shouty deathy department so there’s balance on each front in the long run.

The quirky template was preserved for the “Miracles: Totem Taboo” compilation, which is factually an all-new track effort, that featured a similar advanced death/doom blend; and partially for the follow-up “1666... Théâtre Bizarre” where the band’s staple melodic prog-death approach started shaping among bouts of more adventurous deviations. With the mentioned “Visionnaire” they hit their stride and never looked back, and although avant-gardism is not exactly the first word to come to mind when listening to their past few albums, there’s still enough material on them for the creation of another bizarrely inductive theory.

After being moreless a technical death/thrash band for one EP (I haven't heard the demos before that, so I don't know what they were like), Misanthrope moves on to this. I can blame most of that on the fact that this band only contains Philippe from the original incarnation, and adds bass master Jean-Jacques Moreac on bass, as well as his brother on guitar. In fact, the whole "backing band" was originally from the thrash band Krakkbrain, a highly original band from France. But this is neither thrash nor anything else...it's, well, pretty sick and twisted music, as expertly purveyed by the French, but not too well done.

To say that this is a doom album would be somewhat accurate, even though the album really lacks the chug and heaviness of real doom. There is an all pervading atmosphere of gloom and darkness, mixed in with some serious mental issues.

"Aquarium" is really the best song on here, and most listenable. It plods along with pretty catchy melodies and interesting twists, never leaving you too confused as to where they are going. "Childhod Memories" is slower, real heavy, with a lot of twists and some very sick lyrics (all the more sick due to the poor English). Then...the rest of the album is a very eccentric mix of weird, illogical turns, a few choice moments, but overall nothing too memorable. There are some really great moments of "La Demiurge," but the other songs really don't have much to offer. Nothing seems to live up to the first two real songs on here, and I think that's mostly due to the confused direction they're trying to take the music. Sometime it borders on jazz fusion, complete with great bass work, sometimes it wants to be My Dying Bride, and sometimes we get some strange blast of goofy technicality for a moment, kind of like Watchtower, before going off in some other direction.

Probably the closest stylistic comparison would be Celtic Frost's Into the Pandemonium, as far as a mix of eclectic styles, and strange uses of synth, but whereas Celtic Frost had something you could understand, Misanthrope seems either off their tits on LSD or just trying to use everything in their arsenal all at once. The sad thing is, no one but Jean-Jacques Moreac seems really good at even playing the music at this point, none the less composing it.

The production is hit and miss. It does add more gloom and weirdness to the finished product, but the guitars and especially drums seem really muted behind everything. The dreamy melodies sound great, but when they're trying to be heavy, the shit just doesn't work. Philippe's vocals are demented as all hell, going from growls, a sort of crying moan to the occasional shriek. If there's one award to be given out, it's to Philippe for his excellent vocal work.

This album makes me realize that France has always been the best at producing really fucked up music (early Anorexia Nervosa, Supuration, Deiseal, Eros Necropsique, and even some of the lyrical themes of Loudblast), but sadly this really doesn't do much for me. A little more time running over the songs and working out the kinks would have made this album a lot better. As it stands, it's amusing but hardly stupendous.