I do it to myself. I only have myself to blame. I read a short excerpt from a PR or label and something pricks at my core. I thrust my hand up like a needy toddler and before I know it, I have something crashing in my inbox that challenges and confounds me that I then need to write some semi-intelligent words about for the whip cracking editor.
More fool me. That’ll learn you.
Non Serviam are an anonymous extreme music collective from Paris. No names. No pics. A handful of likes on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform and an opening track on this album that spans 25 minutes!
Yoda on a Skoda this is some trip!
Non Serviam mix up Black Metal, Industrial, Crust, Doom, Grindcore with Baroque and classical elements to create a complete headfuck of a noise that never loses itself and always leaves some breadcrumbs for the listener to keep following the path. The opening track manages to mix all of the aforementioned styles without becoming a cut and paste cacophony. There is always something I found to cling to for anchorage, whether it be a manic piano riff, an industrialised blastbeat or a lilting French vocal. Midway through a shotgun is cocked and all hell is unleashed. This could be Haute Tension in audio form. With 12 minutes left of the opening title track I can feel my anxiety rising. I need to be in a better place mentally to deal with this crazy bat.
Hitting skip brings immediate relief which seems a strange thing to type as “Infanticide” is up next ushering in a trippy sound collage that washes in and out of my speakers dragging snippets of every genre under the sun in its wake. Listening to Non Serviam is a little like being a sonic beachcomber after a storm. There is the delight of discovering a golden treasure and then the horror that it is attached to the torn flesh of a dismembered corpse. Dick Dale style guitars are smothered by noise, beatific vocals are crushed by Black metal screams. This is a glimpse into the mind of musical madness and is certainly an experience. “Nights in Black Masses” is no Procol Harum – more like a found reel to reel from a 1950’s prison for the criminally insane. I expect Nurse Ratched to walk round the corner at any moment.
“Salem” begins with a guitar distortion that actually sounds like a cat being strangled (all those times your gran said that to you – this is the reality). Lo-fi occult doom meets noise, like Electric Wizard took the wrong drugs and watched Japanese torture porn instead of Hammer Horror and Manson Family home videos.
“S’ Evaporer is a trip hop n glitch ridden groove laced with a toy piano and pseudo new wave synth stylings. I gotta say I kinda dig it. Whereas “I watch you from Afar” is a more (not much more) straightforward rock affair which leaves aftertastes of Japanese punk pop, Anaal Nathrakh, gabber and 60’s surf pop as it thrusts itself into my ear canal. Bloody brilliant!
The three minutes of frantic drumming and grindcore blast of ”Inno Individualista“ is a delicious slice of punk fury punctuated by mad electronics. I am definitely in the groove of these maniacs.
Le coeur bat (the heart beats for non Francophiles) crescendos with Je Contre (I against). A Nine minute mix of everything that has come before it. Bit of a 60’s chanteuse style and layer upon layer of every sonic texture known to personkind.
I started this album wondering if I could survive this album – now I am not sure if I can survive without it.
(9/10 Matt Mason)
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