Stillbirth Machine

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.