Having missed these Australian extremists playing with Obituary a few months back, I felt compelled to right that wrong by getting to grips with their new album. ‘Flesh is Heir’ is their third full-length in the space of nine years and, quite surprisingly, my first contact with them outside of gigs. In fact the only time I have heard their music was in 2008 when they opened for Deicide, Samael and Vader. What I recall from then is a hybrid mix of death, black and industrial metal played by a set of gnarly-faced individuals. The promotional material for 2013 conforms to what I expected image-wise but also sets the band apart as ‘music for the true adventurer’, with lyrical themes dealing with the ‘war in the human psyche between the faction that desires obliteration and the faction that struggles in the mud’. Sounds a bit like contemporary British society to me…
The album commences with a dark, black metal-styled riff and some notably robotic bass drums. Strange industrial noises descend upon some alternately fast and slow metal, creating quite a grimy atmosphere. Cain Cressall’s vocals are in that characteristically hard Aussie vein and add perfectly to the dehumanised instrumentation. As a newcomer to this overwhelming current of sounds, bands like Nile and The Bezerker immediately spring to mind, with a mix of ambition, technicality and electronic intensity. Perhaps most impressively, a paradoxical sense of majesty emerges through the grime and mechanisation to evoke some true sci-fi soundscapes – as in the lingering riffs of ‘Ego Ergo Sum’ or the dark, dystopian ‘Obliterate’s Prayer’. Elsewhere, the Cryptopsy-esque insanity and mixed rhythms of ‘Teeth’ are starkly contrasted against ‘Womb Tone’, which as a track in its own right, certainly underscores the abstract mission of The Amenta. A heavy, bassy tone and limited notes on the keyboard act as the backbone to a bizarre collection of child-like whines, quasi-tribal instrumentation and unsettling noises from the ether.
Running through much of the material is what could best be described as a strand of resistance; from ‘The Argument’, which sounds like the internal conflict of one individual deviating between fits of rage and equally incomprehensible whispers, to the manic speed of ‘Disintegrate’. The greatest diversion from this oppositional stance is the simply titled ‘Cell’. My initial sense draws me towards the term ‘trip hop’ to best describe the basis of this one; a thick, apparently programmed kick drum/snare and keyboard lead the track until guitars discordantly protrude over. It’s quite surreal but the detached context which they have created throughout the album is really magnified by this decidedly un-metal sound at work. A real slow-burner, with repetition and subtlety as a nucleus, ‘Cell’ feels appropriately like being suspended in a cold alien womb. Towards the end of the album, the abstraction count is furthered with ‘A Palimpesest’, which imbues its cerebral scenery with a sense of religious ceremony via ritualistic drums and unidentified wind instruments. ‘Tabula Rasa’ has the last pummeling word however, and closes the album powerfully.
The first thing to conclude about ‘Flesh is Heir’ is that the musicianship is top-notch – the tight drumming and guitar work mesh perfectly with those alien electronics to create an involved and involving sound. I guess the biggest and hardest question to answer is how it works as an album. After a few listens, it’s still hard to say. The Amenta has deliberately set out to commit an ambitious and alienating record to tape, so in that sense it is ‘mission accomplished’. However, forty-five minutes of being repeatedly attacked, ground down and abducted by celestial beings is as challenging as you would expect it to be. As suggested at the beginning, ‘Flesh is Heir’ is ‘music for the true adventurer’. As I’m just ‘a bit of an adventurer’…
(7.5/10 Jamie Wilson)
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