Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Thee Maldoror Kollective - "New Era Viral Order" [2002]

Artist: Thee Maldoror Kollective
Title: New Era Viral Order (Dogma Slaughterhouse and the Children of Anaemia)
Genre: Industrial Metal
Country: Italy
Release date: 2002

Track List:
  1. Xaos DNA Released
  2. Haemorrhage Transmission
  3. Drain-Wound-Cosmosis (Iera Porneusis)
  4. Rhythmagick Disturbance (Embodiment Cell)
  5. La Flamme Vivant
  6. Rigid Pulse Starfire (93)
  7. The Toxium Discipline (Null Industries)
  8. Slaughter Mass 2002
  9. Epidemic Noise Age (Remix by MZ.412)
Along with Aborym, Thee Maldoror Kollective were one of the most influental industrial black metal bands to come out of the Italian scene during the early 2000s. Their history is quite lengthy, starting in the early 90s (if not late 90s) under the name Inquisitor. In 1991, they changed name to Funeral Fog, and in 1997 - to Maldoror. As Maldoror, they released several black metal demos and two full-length albums, out of which I'd recommend "In Saturn Mystique" - quite interesting "cosmic" black metal, somewhat reminding me of "Nexus Polaris" by Covenant. Right now they're playing a kind of avant-garde electronica/jazz that has very little to do with any metal, and prefer to call themselves simply TMK, or Textbook of Modern Karate.

"New Era Viral Order", however, is definitely metal, albeit with large amounts of avan-garde electronic sound thrown in (which is the reason why it got a rather low score on metal-archives.com). This album is often compared to "With No Human Intervention" by Aborym (which was also released on Code666), but as for me, TMK should be rather compared to Italian avant-garde doom metal bands, like Void of Silence or Ensoph. However, the best description of this album I've seen so far was "That's how Zyklon-B would sound if they started to play industrial metal". Anyway, it definitely wouldn't disappoint any lover of really cold and "robotic" extreme music, that's enough avant-garde and complex yet still relatively easy to listen to - in other words, industrial metal done the way it should be :) My personal favourites are "Xaos DNA Released" and "Rigid Pulse Starfire". TMK's Bandcamp page has only the abridged version of this album, so I'd post the complete version in the video below:



Thursday, November 1, 2018

Void of Silence - "The Sky Over" [2018]

Artist: Void of Silence
Title: The Sky Over
Genre: Atmospheric Doom Metal, Dark Ambient
Country: Italy
Release date: 2018

Track List:
  1. The Void Beyond
  2. Abeona (or quietly gone in a hiatus)
  3. The Sky Over
  4. Adeona (or surfaced as resonant thougths)
  5. Farthest Shores
  6. White Light Horizon
Here's another album from Void of Silence, released this summer after a long hiatus. It's less avant-garde than their early works, featuring mostly lengthy doom metal compositions with clean vocals and lots of keyboards, and short ambient interludes. Musically, the whole thing sounds as if Puissance decided to start playing doom metal, and the vocals reminds me of Arcturus. It's certainly a more mature release than their early stuff, despite it being less complex and eclectic.

"The concept behind this record both musically and lyrically, in the words of mastermind Riccardo Conforti, “is focused on the great human achievements of the early twentieth century, and the fiery courage of those few men whose bravery led them to set their limits far beyond humanity’s fragile horizons. Aviators and their zeppelins, the great polar expeditions, the epic journey of the Airship “Italia” led by Umberto Nobile and the tragedy of the Red Tent. The unbelievable resilience of Salomon August Andrée and his men, who traveled through the merciless vastness of the Pack, without ever turning back. The cold and blinding light that reverberates from the glacial regions as the only guidance that accompanied them until the end, is what we tried to portray. This is our tribute to them.”"