Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Misanthropic Rage - Qualia (2016)

A two-piece avant black metal act from Poland, there's certainly something worth chronicling here on the act's debut EP which is as textured and odd as you might expect. The title cut actually appears first and nearly encroaches on twenty minutes of great, pulse-pounding music that takes the listener on a journey through the bleak unknown. The drumming and the guitar compositions on the piece aren't always quite so stable and we're not really quite sure as to where the vocals will end up either. We do hear scowls and horrific shouts, but sometimes a cleaner and slightly spoken-word vocal approach is also utilized. These gentlemen are also no strangers to the keyboard nor the use of subtle background choirs. Qualia seems like the kind of record where the musicians made it up as they went along, but that to me is a wonderful way of composing music that doesn't have a set boundary or style in which it must be played. Even death growls could appear in the piece, which can change drastically from a cool glass of water to the blazing mass of volcanic magma that buried Pompeii. As a whole, this piece really tells the listener all that they need to know about such an interesting and adroitly composed piece as I'm currently experiencing. There is far more to it than this, like the more vicious and straight-forward approach of “Katharsis” (which is recommended to fans of more common black metal approaches over the title cut) which in itself contains a fantastic solo, but it only feels like a side-note to the title piece, depending on how you like your poison. Additionally, a cover of Satyricon's “KING” is included, but the timing is off slightly on the vocals and that irks me. That being said, such a song is pretty tough to record in keeping with the disco-black metal style. I could do without that piece in particular, but these guys have already offered more than fifteen minutes of astounding possibility. That's good enough for me.

(3 Tracks, 25:00)

8/10

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