28 August 2008

The Amenta - Occasus


I haven't posted about music in a while, mainly because I just listen to too much of it. I guess I'll just write when something hits me in a profound-ish way. This album does that. I've had a digital copy for quite a while now, maybe a year or so, but just got a physical version the other day while browsing through the used CDs at StereoShop. That was the first time I've been there, and I was impressed by the number of good albums I found there. I'll probably be heading back at some point; maybe when I get a car.

Anyway; Occasus can be pretty well defined as an industrial death metal album. There are also bits of black metal going on, but not strongly enough to merit inclusion in the genre labeling. The Amenta is one of those bands that likes to make themselves sound really serious and evil, not unlike Semargl, another favorite of mine of which I just ordered a record today. I'm pretty sure their main schtick is nihilism, i.e. the belief that nothing actually exists and that reality is a projection of our own minds. My introduction to nihilism was The Big Lebowski, so I don't really know a whole lot about it. Their lyrics don't seem to consentrate much on nihilism itself, although they do touch on it (especially on the track 'Nihil'). Most of the time they're just painting a big bleak picture of some sort of doom or something. References to gods or demons and whatnot all over the place. I don't really care all that much about the subject matter, and I didn't even know a single line from the lyrics until I bought the album.

The music is what's important. It's primarily a wall-of-sound deal with jackhammer drums and heavily distorted guitars, interspersed with creepy computer screeches and hums, and of course the vocalists deep grunt-growls all over the place. This album took quite a while to grow on me, probably because of the vocals really. They aren't all that great, but I think they fit the music nicely. This guy seems to have left the band though and their next album, n0n, is going to have a big ol' collection of established vocalists. You can hear one track from the album, 'Slave', on their myspace. Anyway I'm rambling.

It isn't all just in-your-face metal. There are several ambient passages, some in between songs and others in the middle of songs. I think they're really what make it special. Going from systematic pummeling to more randomly flowing apocolyptic noises really create an atmosphere that brings me back again and again. I think you can really call this a work of art; not something you can say for a lot of metal albums.

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