While I knew absolutely nothing about this band previously, few of my pals decided to do this "review the album of the week thing" and someone submitted this record (and it also ended up being the chosen album) so here I am listening to a band I never even heard of (mostly because I don't keep up with anything made by current or ex-members of Revenge), and I can safely say that this is the album that gave me the most trouble categorizing. Sometimes it feels like a death metal release with black metal vocals sneaked into it, but other times it just feels like a black/thrash album which is interesting to say at least.
After an intro track taken straight from 2001: A Space Odyssey, we get hit by the second track The Edge of Forever. It's fast and chaotic. These two words are the ones that could describe the entire album the best. The production (on this song especially) is extremely raw and when I say "extremely raw" I mean war metal levels of raw. This comparison is also fitting considering that war metal also shares the chaotic nature. So you might think "Oh well this is easy then, it's war metal", but the thing is that war metal usually doesn't have a huge variety in the riffs, unlike this record. While the aforementioned track is probably my least favorite on the entire album, it still has a massive wall of sound that just crush your eardrums.
The third track (Power Elite) on the other hand is a lot less noisy and actually has some pretty loud drum bass at times. This is still a song that focuses on the black metal side, but you can clearly hear that the riffs have some death metal feel to them and the tremolo picking is nowhere to be found. The vocals are worth praising here since the screams are pretty hellish. It's closer to the black metal shrieking than it is to the death metal growling, but at the refrain (of this song) it feels a lot more rhythmic and energetic.
While I like the first half (4 songs if we are counting the intro as a different song) since it has some memorable parts (such as the chorus of Power Elite), the rest of the album is definitely superior. The songs after Iconoclasm Conquest all have a more death metal edge to them, but they are also filled with grindcore influences (dare I say even thrash at times?). The title track is probably my favorite on the entire record since it has a little bit of everything. The black-ish vocals (with some effects to complement it at times), some riffs that remind me of early Bold Thrower and the insane drumming without blast beats.
The only thing I don't like about the album is the inconsistency. While the first half is good on its own, but I would rather listen to an album that is consistent in the quality since now out of the 8 tracks only 4 ended up being memorable. I should also mention that the noisy and raw production might be a throw-off for some (but if you managed to even look this band up the chances are you are into the noisy shit), but luckily it didn't really affect me at all.
Overall this record is unique to say at least. It's a heavy, noisy and riff-filled 35 minutes. Highly recommended to check out at least once if you don't mind listening to bands with elements from more than two genres.
The highlights of the album are Power Elite, Stillbirth Machine and Blood and Thunder.
Order From Chaos. Stillbirth Machine. These two terms are analogous to death metal, and unfortunately haven't received the full recognition they deserve until more recent years, with various reissues becoming available. This album is a downright classic, and manages to capture the true spirit of death metal (and extreme metal in general), and at the same time avoids being like anything else that has come out of the genre. The combination of 80's death metal and the power of hardcore punk coupled with Pete Helmkamp's lyrical genius has made "Stillbirth Machine" (and every other OFC release for that matter) a top release in the metal world.
The album starts off with "Aion", which some may recognize as a piece used in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey", and is quite an appropriate build up of ambience and eerie noises to the first actual song, "The Edge of Forever". Right away, the production stands out. The guitar tone is thick and filthy, with the bass simply adding to the album's black mass sound. Overall, a very fitting production style, it suits the riffs and makes them just all the more devastating, with the other instruments coming though without sounding polished in the least.
The riffs here are fantastic. Chuck Keller certainly has his very own style of riff writing, with tons of rhythmic flair and variation. This works extremely well with Mike Miller's punk influence drumming, as he pummels away and pushes the riffs in just the right spots. Each riff is carefully arranged, ensuring that they each stand out and have purpose in the song. Nothing seems out of place, and at the same time nothing seems predictable. Order From Chaos manage to keep their songs interesting, and you never feel like anything drags.
One will probably notice after a few tracks that there are no blast beats on this album at all. This works pretty well for Order From Chaos, as they never really do anything typical for death metal. This band, as mentioned, works a lot on rhythmic flair, and such a straight through beat as a blast beat would probably not benefit them very much. Instead, intricate work between feet and hands playing barbaric and sometimes primitive beats are the main offering on this album.
Keller's lead work is also worth a mention. The horrifying guitar tone achieved on the rhythm tracks has also been translated over into the lead tone. Dive bombs, slides, tapping, among various other techniques have been utilized in his solos. Thankfully, Keller's technique is not the main focus of the solos, as he strings together memorable licks that sound chaotic yet have their own sense of melody. Some solos are certainly noisier than others, like in "Iconoclasm Conquest", where others are more lick oriented (see: "Forsake Me This Mortal Coil").
Of course, one of the winning features about Order From Chaos is found within the lyrical department. Pete Helmkamp wrote the majority of the lyrics on this record, Keller handling two of the tracks. Helmkamp's lyrics tend to revolve around Nietzsche influenced philosophy. Helmkamp's basic idea is about the "will to power", a belief in the self's ability to achieve, as well as ideas related the band's name, all mixed with some occult allusions. His lyrics in Angelcorpse were great, but these are more focused in a "grand scheme" of things. Keller's lyrics have more to do with the cosmos and prove to be just as interesting to read. His interest in space certainly expanded later in OFC's career, and later in his solo project, Vulpecula. Helmkamp spits these lyrics out in a violent rage storm, proving himself to be one of the most ferocious vocalist in all of metal. There is use of double tracking, with the second track being much lower, much like Sarcofago.
There isn't a single thing I can find wrong with this record. It's memorable and well written, has one of the most horrifying atmospheres ever recorded in death metal, features great musicianship while managing not to be flashy, and contains thoughtful and provoking lyrics. This is a record that every metal fan should hear, as it unites music and lyrical concept very well in ways that so many bands wish they could.
For one so overlooked, this truly is a landmark album. Perhaps it's that everyone was too distracted with the then burgeoning second wave of black metal. Probably it's the fact that this record didn't so much birth (or even belong to) a single sub-genre of metal but instead created it's own idiom with a philosophy attached. And that idiom would only be taken up by a handful of bands to come.
Sonically, this record is/was totally mutant to it's time. Imagine the Teutonic thrash trios bathed in LSD and hanging out listening to Morbid Angel with martians. Yeah, it's THAT weird. But don't get me wrong, this stuff is in no way confused or primitive. These guys have a message and know exactly what they're doing, even if you don't.
One aspect that makes this album so unique is it's hyper technical musicianship meets fuzzed out production quality. Helmkamp delivers some of the craziest death metal bass-lines the '90s had heard through a sponge of distortion. This gives the songs a manic, death metal-y feel. The drummer enhances this by never playing any blasts and rarely resorting to straight-forward kick, snare beats. As much as macho metalheads might boast about death metal with constant blasts and tremolo being so 'tr00' and 'br00tal', this shit is the REAL deal. Rhythmic patterns that never repeat and riffs that hardly ever indicate a key signature: this is actual audio chaos.
It's utterly pointless identifying songs and admonishing individual riffs. The beauty of the record is that everyone will latch on to different passages and consider different riffs great, over time. This is because, for the most part, they're all equally nuts. What's great also is how after a few preliminary listens you begin to hear things you never heard before. Unlike the black metal records of the day, this is not because of the music being buried by the production, no, these songs are just too insane to absorb on first spin. Not to mention that the experience of first hearing O.F.C. is similar to having your skull crushed by a panzer tank.
Similarly, the lyrics are so dense you feel bombarded. Pete's vo-kills are the raspiest of mid-ranged vomits. And he doesn't waste a second of you're time; cramming his hate for the human sheep down you're throat until you cough it back up with blood. When he tells you "I am an alien from another world/Sent to communicate a message" you believe him. I know I do...
As for the music, it really sits between black, death and thrash with the latter two getting emphasis. But the music is so frenetic it doesn't quite thrash and, as I said before, there are no blasts or growls here.
The bloodline linking O.F.C. to Canadian maniacs Axis of Advance is clearly seen in the war-crazed bastard kult of Revenge. But bands like Sacramentary Abolishment and Angelcorpse as well as the aforementioned all have their roots planted deeply in this toxic waste spill of a metal album.
Order From Chaos' strength came undeniably from their unrelenting vision and musical conviction. This debut showcases a band who've already upturned convention and carved their own niche. May they live on in fucking CHAOS!
Order from Chaos was really one of those “something special” bands. They played a style that couldn’t quite be pinpointed, partly because of its blending of different stylistic elements, but mostly because they really sounded like no one else at the time. Their first official outing, ‘Stillbirth Machine’, not only serves as a more than adequate example of this, but it’s also just a fine piece of ancient brutality that I think anyone with an appreciation for old school metal and a decent taste would enjoy as well.
Out of the whole Order from Chaos discography, ‘Stillbirth Machine’ contains my favorite production job. It’s fucking amazing. It captures and highlights every instrument in a fitting manner, so although it may not be conventionally “good” by today’s standards, it doesn’t hinder the music at all, and actually works much to the band’s advantage. Pete Helmkamp’s vocals are right where they should be: front and center. Not far behind the vocal track is his bass, which has an incredibly filthy, mucus-fueled tone. It’s also pushed up in the mix to the point where it’s clearly audible throughout the whole recording, which does a lot for the heaviness. Blazing along on either side of the bass is Chuck Keller’s guitar, and HOLY FUCK is that guitar tone great. Its crunch is the equivalent of what eating a frozen cockroach would be like, its low-end is about as heavy as an obese woolly mammoth, and its texture is indescribable, as it’s just so caked in filth, putridity, and vomit that I can hardly even tell it’s a guitar. In other words, it’s perfect. Mike Miller’s drumming was also given justice with a proper mixing job and a click-less bass drum that actually sounds like a real bass drum.
But the production obviously is not the only thing that makes this album the monstrous beast that it is, as the music itself is just as ruthless. It almost seems as though Order from Chaos purposely took all the conventionalities that went into writing a black or death metal song, dragged them into a field, and shot them in the head. Now that is not to say they were doing anything avant-garde or groundbreaking, as that was not their intent, but they just had a different way of paying respects to the genre’s forefathers. I’d say one of the most unique things about them was the riffing. They would take what would maybe originally be a rather average sounding riff and mangle it with some really bizarre sounding pinch harmonics, odd timing (not in like a 15/8 or anything type of way, just oddly placed stresses and pauses), and plenty of discordance and atonality to make it all the more fucked up.
As for the song structures though, the band leaned much further to the death metal side of things, using frequent tempo changes interwoven into pretty intricate arrangements. Order from Chaos’s signature vocal style is that of Helmkamp’s vile delivery, which is probably the most black metal-like element in the band’s makeup. It’s very raspy and stays in the higher register pretty much the whole time, but never goes into a hiss-like vocal style that would become so popular amongst most second wave black metal bands. The drumming is really the only department that the band was semi-lacking in, and even then, it wasn’t nearly enough to hinder the maliciousness this band was capable of. Of course it would have been awesome to hear the proficiency heard on ‘An Ending in Fire’, but I’m not complaining.
This album definitely warrants the title of being a “classic”, and the test of time has shown that the majority of black/death metal diehards agree. If you were to dig around for one particular pressing of the album, I’d say go with the eBay route and find a copy of the NWN! Prod. Reissue. Or you can wait for the upcoming Osmose reissues, but whatever you do, DO NOT buy the shitty Shivarage bootlegs. You’d be better off downloading it and just waiting it out for a physical copy.
Order From Chaos were one of the most brutal and raw acts in the entire world, I think. They were influenced by Repulsion in the buzz guitar/bass sound and by the growing black metal scene in the inhuman Pete vocals, so screamed, brutal and original. One of the best screamers in extreme metal.
The music is never on blast beats because the drummer prefers at maximum up tempo sections, but more frequently quite fast bass drum parts with lots of tempo changes and mid paced parts. Anyway the production is quite raw and it privileges the vocals. “The Edge Forever” is truly a group’s classic while “Power Elite” features some of the most brutal screams ever. The solos are distorted and approximated, voluntary incomplete and raw.
The brutality level is so high that sometimes deletes even the refrains but the ones in “Iconoclasm Conquest” or “Forsake Me This Mortal Coil” are well stuck and audible. When the band is on mid paced parts it is fucking good because they are never chaotic but quite well structured with some classic thrash influences. The drumming on “Blood And Thunder” is great and this song is one of the most violent here along with “As The Body Falls Away” with a great death/thrash riffage.
Overall, a classic in this genre. I’m not gonna give a too high mark like in the reviews before because to me there are better releases in this kind of extreme metal and I surely prefer Pete with Angelcorpse for the music there done. Anyway this is a fucking brutal album that surely will make happy any black/death/thrash metal fan.
The word "Classic" isn't a word I throw around lightly. Classics must be ahead of their time, innovative yet grounded in the best tradition of metal's basic framework. Order From Chaos's full-length debut is one such album that aptly embodies this definition.
What we get here is 35 minutes of crushing, horrific death metal insanity. There's not one blastbeat or grindcore-based riff to be found here - it's pure, old school violence in the great Hellhammer/Possessed tradition. That said, I doubt Tom G Warrior or Jeff Becerra ever imagined that their brainchild would grow to give birth to such a monstrous, entrail-ripping beast such as "Stillbirth Machine". This is truly horrible music, searing insanity made sound, wrapped in an abrasive, horrendously distorted wall-of-noise production, rawer than a steak that's still on the cow. Helmkamp's vocals belch over the top of the cacophony like some enraged ghoul, while the guitars run through a series of ear-ripping riffs underpinned by fuzz-encrusted bass abuse and a neverending gamut of time changes. The drumming is quite primal, often sounding like the drummer is struggling to keep up with the band, but it works. Oh yes, it fucking works.
The haunting buildup of "The Edge of Forever" gives way to a seething mess of violence, pulverizing all eardrums within range. The songs switch easily between monstrous brutality and pummeling thrash-fueled aggression, never bothering to slow down or allow room for pointless acoustic interludes... and keyboards? These guys would probably smash a keyboard into jagged pieces of plastic if they ever saw one in the studio. The intro is the only non-metal-based piece of music on here, and it's ripped from 2001 - A Space Odyssey anyway. Otherwise, the entire album is just a spiked fist to the face. Other highlights include the short, violent "Iconoclasm Conquest" and the album's high point IMO, the pounding deathhammer that is "Blood And Thunder". And after that, the bass shreds into action again for the final death-charge of "As The Body Falls Away", which is literally the ultimate take-no-fucking-prisoners death metal anthem.
Buy this if you can find it, or just download the fucker if you can't. You simply can't afford to exist any longer without hearing it.