Defective Epitaph

It's unfortunate that most artists look at music in terms of what has been done, how to conjure emotion with tried formula's, many are unable to look past the aesthetics and thus stagnation. I have seen Xasthur criticized everywhere, as far as I am aware they have created their own sound, perhaps sub-genre. I'm truly glad that I came across this because even with their ritalin dosing fan base, they really exceptional.

Xasthur have created one piece of work here. It employs a severely tortured atmosphere, one which anyone with any degree of intelligence would be able to feel and in turn see. The songs are all relatively the same tempo, droning through with complete suffocating agony and chaos. I've heard many depressive and suicidal bands, what to me makes this different is the fact that it is full of hate, the intro to Oration of Ruin is a shining example of this. It pounds like gunshots from the nightmares in the mind of a failed suicide. The vocals are what really help bring this hate to the forefront, they are some of the worst I've heard, you can tell that some degree of pain must come from doing them. Even though there are some effects to alter the final result you can still tell that he has a tremendous amount of talent. He implements the sort of screams which use the throat more than the gut, meaning more force must be exerted. Imagine the sound one would make when swallowing razors, now reverse that and there you go.

There is an immense degree of compositional skill displayed on this album, primarily by the guitarist. I would go so far as to say that even though it is void of anything flashy (solo's) it still has the capability of capturing the listener in a multitude of directions. In the genre I'd say he has few competitors, either in the departments of concept or musicality. The very fact that he doesn't do anything flashy speaks for itself. You don't hear much of anything on this album that could be considered drab or uninspired, it has without a doubt taken considerable time and effort to shape this into form. As a whole it ranges in style from more keyboard laced ambient black metal, to funeral doom influenced droning, to all out riff dementia.

The only problem I have been able to find with this is the fact that given more time it could have been a masterpiece. It lacks that flowing continuity that all of the greats have. It just appears as a collection of decent to amazing songs. The situation isn't helped any by the fact that it appears to have been recorded at different times, or mixed by someone who didn't know what they were doing. Overall it's an excruciatingly surreal album full of all the negative/darker aspects of existence. It's miasmic breathe is one which won't leave my blood for some time to come.