By now if you are a regular reader of this blog, you should all know that when I am going to be reviewing a band that is working with Sentient Ruin, I am probably going to be extremely descriptive and very complimentary in terms of the band’s unforgiving artistic expression. This time I have to be quite honest and admit that Sentient Ruin has found a band that is utterly insane and offers up one twisted sounding release. Vessel of Iniquity’s new full-length album, “The Doorway,” is an unholy doorway into one volatile sounding musical landscape full of unorthodox sounding arrangements.
This one-man project takes extreme dynamic creativity and literally throws a hornets nest of sounds and styles together to achieve a harsh hellish sound. At times I am drawn to the entropy and brutal confidence, then there are times where I am left scratching my head wondering where everything went wrong. From black metal to industrial noise elements to even some cinematic sounds to create a horror movie like atmosphere, this album is the equivalent of a Fellini film on demonic acid.
Out of the nine tracks, I can tell you that there is always something that grabs your attention and then there will be moments where you are completely consumed by some chaotic sounding composition. “A Glimpse of the Pattern,” kicks off the album with an ominous sounding riff that is slow at first, but eventually sets up one devastating blast beat assault. Throughout the album listeners will notice the music constantly shifting from slow tempos to extremely intense tempos, which creates a climate of unpredictably and constant chaos. The second track, “By Allusion Called,” has a more terrifying doom structure that makes you feel like everything is falling apart as you are hit unmercifully by a bludgeoning of violent sounds.
The production quality on this album is solid for the most part and on songs like, “The Doorway,” the ferocious compositions are well recorded to bring about a sense of primitive sounding brutality. At times you feel like some of the tracks are used more to inject a sense of surreal horror in the album’s overall theme like on, “Death State Boundary.” During that track I had no idea what was going on, because the muffled voice completely took me by surprise. Eventually you start to become dizzy from all the agonizing riffs and ear shattering blast beats, plus the ghastly vocals are almost inhumane sounding. Until the very end, I felt like the vocal parts on this album complimented the overall abysmal atmosphere.
Vessel of Iniquity definitely shares in the Sentient Ruin mentality, which is to create music that has no boundaries and looks to strike audial fear amongst the extreme metal community. “The Doorway,” is one release that I find has a lot to dissect, but in the end even if there are moments you might find to be a bit overwhelming, the overall execution is fairly solid and delivers plenty of unforgiving arrangements. If you like black metal mixed with some grindcore and industrial sounds, then you will definitely want to give this a listen. Sometimes these unconventional sounding albums are most welcomed, because let’s be completely honest, one can only listen to so many shitty Norwegian black metal copycats before one goes totally mental from hearing the same album over and over again.
Check out the entire album below:
Sentient Ruin Bandcamp:
No comments:
Post a Comment