RH-01

The cool little scene Rhinocervs have carved out is well worth exploring. The band themselves were easily the cream of the crop when it came to demo-only black metal bands, spewing forth some of the most interesting and unique psychedelic metal this side of Oranssi Pazuzu. Their solo bands Odz Manouk and Tuukaria have one of the best splits in all of metal. Even A.'s funeral doom project Absum did a killer split with Odz Manouk. Anyway I'll stop gushing and just leave it with Rhinocervs are fucking awesome.

How did their first volley into the void fare? Heh. RH-01 is an entirely acceptable black metal demo but it leaves me a bit cold. There's not much to foreshadow the cosmic route they would soon blast off on. RH-01 is generally pretty fast and the riffing they employ is busy and jaggedy. The riffs are not bad but there's no real standouts. For guitar parts the only parts that stand out is a cool melodic lead in the first song (all the songs are just fucking titled "-" lol) and the cold psychedelic wandering of the fourth song are neat, and the only real inkling of what Rhinocervs would explore in future endeavors.

The rhythm section is not particularly impressive. The bass is mixed pretty loud and often comes off as a distracting rumbling. On the bright side, there's a cool melodic-ish slower bass line in the third song that works really well with the riff playing over top. The drumming isn't bad per se, it's just the mix kind of sucks. The ride and especially the crash cymbals are way louder than the rest of the drums and when they get all blasty on us good luck picking out the snare. I should probably mention here I'm actually reviewing the remastered version off the compilation RH-08 and not the original. However, the production is still pretty rough here and the remastering definitely can't save the drums.

Overall, RH-01 is an interesting curio listen for fans of the bands wanting to see how Rhinocervs evolved, but that's about it. This could be any black metal band's demo, really. Even with the remastering the production on the drums is quite iffy and there's really nothing special in the atmosphere or riffs. RH-01 isn't particularly bad, but I'd suggest skipping to the good shit.

I'll be honest: this should have been way better than it turned out being. Not necessarily because there's elements present here that could have been excellent if certain things were tweaked, but because A. and Yagian have been making music together for about a decade at this point, including extreme metal (see Nihilobstat, Ashdautas), so you'd expect them to have perfected the formula at this point. But no, RH-01 is a pretty mediocre demo, only somewhat above average, and definitely not alluding towards the slew of amazing releases that these two would release both solo and collaboratively. I guess the next demo they released, the same year, was a pretty dramatic jump upwards in quality, so I will give them credit for finding their footing quickly. That being said, this is one of maybe two Rhinocervs tapes that I very rarely actively listen to, for a variety of reasons.

So the riffing style is kind of hard to pin down - it's high-pitched and jangly tremolo like Tukaaria (or Krallice, if you've never heard a Rhinocervs album before, but much less noodly than Krallice), but on this tape it's less overtly melodic and not very hooky. You could probably draw a fair comparison to the CW Productions bands like Cirrhus and Furdidurke, although this comes across as a bit more evil than any of those bands because of the thick, rumbling bass presence on this tape. The music doesn't blast all that much, opting instead for steady, forward-motion rocking beats. What blasts are present here don't really sound much like blast beats, thanks to the crappy drum production where the snare is almost completely inaudible during the faster parts. A.'s the vocalist here, as with most of the untitled Rhinocervs material, and although his performance here has fewer howls or gurgles than some of his best work, the rasps he performs here are sufficient, albeit a bit loud in the mix.

There are some cool moments here, for sure. The surf rock-esque lead guitar that accompanies the outro riff of the first song is hella cool, and the slow, dirge-like final track is legitimately eerie and sets up a cool atmosphere as it slithers up and then fades away. All-in-all, though, I find the overall presentation of the material pretty lackluster. Most Rhinocervs material has a very distinctive, unshakeable atmosphere, and this is quite possibly the only tape that doesn't. A large part of it is probably the production, which is really quite bad. The bass guitar is way too loud and its awkward moping around overshadows the flimsy guitars. The drum performance is a little sloppy, which is fine, but there's the aforementioned problem with the blast beats. Really, it's so thin in the mix that it starts to resemble a train in places à la the infamous Jewicide. It also leads to the tempo/time signature changes feeling really unnatural, as if the music has to lurch to alter its trajectory. Rhinocervs switching to a drum machine in later material was definitely a move for the better. I think some moments on these songs would be pretty cool if they had a stronger guitar presence and a thicker mix on the drums, but in its present state, it just feels like a messy, run-of-the-mill live rehearsal tape.

I'm technically reviewing the remastered version of this tape which was released on the compilation RH-08, but I'm not sure whether that should count for or against the band. Do I rate it higher than the original version because it was shittier and probably buried under the fuzz of cheap, poor-quality tapes? Or do I take away more points because they recognized that there was an issue with the mix but didn't succeed in making it sound worthwhile? Whatever. From a composition perspective this is good, but I'm pretty sure I'm the biggest Rhinocervs fanboy ever and even I don't like this very much. In isolation it'd probably be decent enough, but with masterpieces like RH-11, RH-12 and RH-14 being released just a couple years later, there really isn't any point for anybody to listen to this. Or, at least, definitely don't let this be the first Rhinocervs album you hear.