Never was an album title so apt as this one. Paroxsihzem just purvey apocalyptically blackened heaviness. Guitars occasionally shriek like wild horses but this is just an exercise in anarchy, chaos and extremity. The vocals are deadened growls rendering lyrics pointless. The sleeve notes contain just two statements: “Increasing aggravation” and “culminative erosion”. That’s to go with the relentless torture, maniacal hatred and other “focused themes” of this release, as the publicity describes them.
And so “Dillanties Torture”, the first of the five tracks on this 25 minute EP, comprises a deep chasmic wall of sound and vocals which sound like a volcanic eruption. The vocals are just incident as this is a blackened instrumental maelstrom, which just ends. In fact Paroxsihzem don’t really know about endings in general. It’s as if they just bring an end to their crashing metal when they feel they’ve had enough. “Bellicose Psychosis” is more Canadian Sturm und Drang. There’s a faint whistle but it’s really three or four minutes of roaring thunder. No surprise then that “BZ Experiment”, which follows, is another cavernous abyss of frantic nihilistic blackness. After the meaty cacophony of “Isolation” where the sound explosion overrides the vague appearance of a riff, the five track EP ends with a cover of Arkhon Infaustus’s “D.C.M”. It’s entirely in keeping, the difference being the sample at the beginning and the fact that it’s on the face of it a more structured representation of the apocalypse.
”Abyss of Excruciating Vexes” clearly isn’t about a sunny day. It’s just five apocalyptic and fiery slabs. I liked this journey through extremity but it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s great if you like to absorb in music which is as heavy as hell.
(6.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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