In Liaison with Satan

-In liaison with related word lists-

The band is one of those entities that you could have in your possession and be misunderstood when you pull it out: that extreme and experimental movie that makes acquaintances cringe, that artwork that now your friends think you're peculiar from, that t-shirt that gets mixed stares, that knife-comb that is out of place because you're of adult age now. Without hearing the music, the band name tentatively speaks of gore and shock, the demo title could have been rearranged to include 'in conspiracy,' 'in conjunction,' 'in league,' 'in service'...'inseparable,' 'insatiable,' 'innuendo,' 'infatuation,' uh, let's not get carried away. "Murder Rape" is something that is typically read in sensationalist headlines in the local paper, grabbing your attention at the title, and causing you to become sick to your stomach after reading the whole article; but then possibly from more sin than you initially bargained for.

After the token and overdrawn intro track sounding like something out of some old witch-craft film with evil samples and keyboards simultaneously wrecking blasphemous havoc, we get to the two tracks of metal music. The genre here could actually be looked at in either direction: as a death metal band playing with black metal spirits, or a black metal band with a thicker mind set and wanting to add the roped rhythms of characteristic death metal to make a point. Like in the past when Deicide and Incantation got muddled into either genre, the lesser-known Murder Rape could be just as well. Though the band at one point would spend more of their time with ideologies of the black side and this sentiment is what typically seals the diabolic deal.

What might wrinkle your forehead with expression is the music is also slow and sludgy with the acceleration of a slithering slug at points. There is also a pick-up point in the last track, but nothing that breaks a medium beat. The effects reek up the atmosphere with them thrown raw and spoiled into the frying pan. The vocals are also of the deep and growled variety and extend their course throughout the recordings as such. He even does some echoey laughs that cackle and fittingly weave themselves into the spiraling environment that's akin to something like a black, endless void. The guitars carry the song writing with weighted rhythms and some single strummed chords. He manages to pull out some leads and some cool sounding bends at particular points that really promote positive marks to the atmosphere. When I first heard this, I honestly kept on thinking that the songs were going to pick up and break into a blast or something faster due to it building and building into something you might be potentially unsure of. But the band at this point is as slow as the drip-drip of melting ice with the heater some many feet away. And I have to say their performance is still worthy in this spaced use of notes to distribute their nefarious endeavors.

The words "murder" and "rape" is the third world's answer to brute and barbarity. The band possess a name that when reversed and done in steps of action it would make more sense but is still just as extreme. Yet if you can get that notion out of your head, the music possess something different than overbearing gore and coughing-blood sickness, backing away from that pre-set with more of an escaping atmosphere. The music is paced, mostly slowly paced, with some physical and abstract sounding rhythms wafting through the dense air. Something more darkly suave than narrowly aggressive. If you have or haven't heard the debut, I still find this the better of the material. This has more natural climate, where the debut is dusted, and finds itself to some standard chugging sections that can sound middle road and are attempting to be more heavy inducing; the second full length returns with their dragging speed and suits the band more snugly I have to say. This isn't groundbreaking or pivotal in regards to what extreme metal has already done at that point, though its vigor lies with being mood-centered and I feel achieves return listens because of that worked-through feature. The 'In Liaison' demo is material that is worth it for some slower paced extreme metal that could possibly be construed as being death-doom from an unknowing person's stand-back perspective. I have to admit they sound like something in the loose vicinity of New York's Winter if you need a better idea of how these southern Brazilians come across. I can imagine some people need more jump-starts when listening to music of the style, but I happen to indulge in it when it is done right. Yet the musicians still manage to pull that off in a black mindset; whichever way you seem to get to the other side of the tunnel doesn't so much matter that you survived and found your way in the end is what I've essentially come to the conclusion of, and also most importantly if the journey was worth the work and the trouble. (For the next scrumptious review see Lord Blasphemate)