Prion - Uncertain Process [2015]

Floridian death metal has long ceased to be a Floridian export. Bands like Brutality, Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse are all responsible for producing milestones in the genre, masterworks of heedless brutality, but I think we can all agree the spread of their influence has become one disease too sickly to bear nowadays. In all honesty, if a half of all the new death metal in world subscribed to the riffwork of Morbid Angel and Hate Eternal in some way or another, I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked either if hopping on the Hate Eternal bandwagon came at price of sacrificing one's gravitas and nearly their entire capacity for originality. Argentina is not one of the world's leading metal exports, in any genre, as far my knowledge goes, yet as it turns out, the country is home to Prion, a three piece who is continuing to promulgate the Floridian tradition.

Of course, the field supporting their influence is quite formidable. The triad doesn't just know how to play things by the book: they've revised the formulas of brutality and technicality penned by the masters over and over until their build of muscular, clinical guitar frenzy and busied progressive Ulcerate-esque chord fests boil down with natural ease. You'll find that the rhythm section on ''Uncertain Process'' borrows its tenets from several sources across the spectrum, with plenty of bombastic tremolos and huge, swaying grooves supported by delectable death/thrashing insanity that almost takes things back to 1989. Prion isn't exactly an aspirant of the old school - the production values are so gigantic and boisterous that they crush the studio imprint of the early 90's - but they're not so immersed in the more modern column of brutal/technical death metal (acts like Severed Savior, The Faceless or Beyond Creation come to mind) as to pin their formulaic, mechanized intensity down solely on rampant guitar wankery which many practice so fervently nowadays. In any case, Prion assure cerebral pulverization.

As much as the +200 riffs on this disc feel appropriately murderous and punishing for the pre-match listen of an angry pugilist, Prion aren't quite pushing the envelope here. Prion know that they're not fooling anyone into thinking that ''Uncertain Process'' is a dish far removed from its core of ''Pierced from Within'' or ''Conquering the Throne'', and to be sure, the mechanical abandon of the record feels somewhat stale after 1-2 spins. There is sufficient variety conveyed here: whether by the huge, scabrous grooves of the opener ''Power Obsessed'' which plods with a Gojira-esque drive, or the chaotic splash of chords on ''Control Societies'', yet the problem remains that the album fails to deliver any major compromise of genuine engrossment through its frothing delivery of sledgehammer blows and unhinged engagement; and with tracks averaging 4.5 minutes, Prion take sweet time to pummel you, but ultimately their hammering chalks up to their redundancy.

That said, ''Uncertain Process'' is fairly interesting when you start to focus on the vocal lines over the splurge of grooves and chugs. Gregoria Kochian has a lower bark than usual, and frequently dishes out prolonged shrieks of incendiary anguish, and fits the bill well. There's no one track where he truly shines out, but ''Losing Itself in the Infinite'' is a good example of his prolonged barking and even high-end screaming reaching a high point in the album; it's certainly reassuring to hear that the vocal duties are never a far cry from the textbook brutal/technical inflection, since the likelihood of Kochian stealing into deathcore territory becomes a fearful prospect during some of his more singular moments. The drums are also great here, even if staple, ballasting the rhythm of guitars in a fulfilling manner, with plenty of audibility, (courtesy of the production) and while independently the double-bass drumming and blast beating galore may not amount to much, they are fully intact and compliment the guitars well.

Both the cover art and the band's origin suggest a kind of tropical extremity, some unprecedented serpent bursting out of the belly of the abomination shackled with huge prickly vines, but unfortunately, that flavor doesn't come with the dish. I can't possibly complain about the performances of each musician on this album, since ''Uncertain Process'' holds up with surprising professionalism and sturdy musicianship. Obviously I wasn't mesmerized the whole way through, even though they were a few moments which were noteworthy. Still, unless it comes with some magical protection from Argentine demons or a gold-plated vinyl edition, I hardly think this is essential for anyone's listening pleasure.

Highlights: 

Lose Itself in the Infinite

Control Societies

Anhedonist

Rating: 53%

Asilo - Geografias/Wardance [Single]

Chugging out queer processions somewhere amid doom, drone, sludge and crust, I did not see Argentina's Asilo coming at me at all. Seriously, the moment I was contacted by the band and was not disappointed with what I heard from this two track single was the moment when hope and expectancy rose to a considerable level once again, and believe me, finding unknown modern gems underneath a bedrock of geniality is something worth being ecstatic about. Motions aside though, let's get on with the real deal here. Asilo, with whatever dwindled, grotesque murk they could muster present us with a third release, after two singles, and obviously the first release I've heard by them. This Argentinian quartet put the pedal to the drone to present with a lugubrious, almost nightmarish upheaval of dissonant bliss, something that fans of Hell, a rather recent blackened drone abomination will rather like.

The single has two songs, a total of nine minutes if you want to measure how long the lumbering inquisition will last. There's a weird twist though, the band has omitted the usage of electric guitars, and in the stead of the gushing voracity of the guitars, you have two bobbing, discomfiting bass lines, channeled and adorned with numerous effects and pedals to ravish the glory of the horrible atmosphere. They've distorted the basses in such a way that their excursions sound almost like clean, reverb-ridden electric guitar trudges, only a deal heavier by nature. Except the brevity, I really couldn't find anything wrong with the release. The opener ''Geografias'' introduces an introspective channel of hazy sludge and stoner/doom, while surpassing typical boundaries with a witty compulsion of monotonous drudgery, the terrific bass line always constant, and discordant, completely ear-gashing flutters of raw production pushing in and out of the aura; the second half of the song encloses the first chapter almost abruptly and indulges the listener in a completely new array of space-y sludge lumbers.

Wardance embraces the crust-like tendencies of the band to a far more diverse extent. The bass lines crawl along a punky passage while primordial ooze spews from their wretched rumbles, and the band completely switches to all-out-attack mode - screams radiating amid screams. The cathartic damage that the two tracks deal are so compulsive that the listener doesn't even mind the turbulence and aural disturbance, making the fluctuation seem completely viscous. And besides the terrific sludge/drone patrols that stalk you constantly throughout nine minutes, Manuel Platino arranges the analog devices and mechanical portions of the music expertly; not to mention his hellish, transient vocal deliveries. Asilo deserves praise for sure. Through the resonant, cave-riddled abyss they drive the listener through, despite the shortness of the experience, torture and pleasure at the same time is granted, guaranteed. In all, one daunting release may not suffice for such contemptuous, ravenous entities as I, but Asilo has built the essentials of a certain miserable grasp that helps it branch away from its fellow counterparts of drone and crust, and I'm overly excited about what torturous hymns they can churn out on their major craving, a planned full-length for 2013; an unavoidable opportunity for them to not only enrich their engrossed, barren content, but also to work out for an even more experimental expenditure on their disheveled aesthetics.

Highlights:
Geografias
Wardance

Rating: 82%

Hellige - Demo

There are just so many demos popping out that I just can't keep up with their speed, and even though most of these demos are mostly pretty mediocre, and stand as just terribly standard, there are a few finds that you'll discover that will cheer you up and give you strength to continue your conquest. Hellige's so called ''DEMO'' is to be taken seriously and with great precaution, for the monstrosities that this demo possesses can be eternally numbing. Among tens and thousands of mediocre thrash and death metal demos I finally come across this mega demo, an oppressive monolith of haunting decrepitude, a cavernous monolith that represents all things abhorrent and all things depressive, sending tremulous waves of shattering evil and oppression through its spiral vortex of subterranean power. No, this is not a death metal demo. Nor is it a thrash metal demo, or black metal demo. What Hellige created on their misery laden effort is something that you just do not come across easily, and the execution is stunning, shunning all others who have tried yet failed miserably at this task.

Hellige combine black and doom metal, the most extreme genres of extreme metal in my opinion, and it holds such strength and such insanity within itself that it's an absolutely troubling task for me to explain with words, let alone explain it by writing. This is transcendental black/doom. Hellige have perfectly bestirred the darkest, most abysmal aspects of both genres and they have eagerly pursued the music until it reached its uttermost peak in evil, oppression and heft. This demo's burden consists of two essences for the main part; the atmospheric, haunting feel of black metal, a looming lament of despair, obviously borrowed by acts like Darkthrone, or Burzum and even recent groups like Vattnet Viskar or Obolus, and the crushing, most depressing force of doom metal soaked in a deep, dense liquid that intensifies everything that is possesses. I've heard a very similar drowning aspect on Helvetron's latest album, and the mighty obelisk ''Netherwards'', produced by the death/doom act Anhedonist, but even if we consider these mutants were both excellent in every way possible, the eternal, fathomless crater opened by Hellige manage to surpass these records.

And just like the records I mentioned previously, Hellige drown the listener within a chaotic hole, while sludgy black metal chords slowly inundate, then grind and gnaw. The expression on your face after you experience this album is priceless, and I doubt face expressions will be the only thing that will change after you hear the demo. Demo. What an unnecessary way to call this an album, while it obviously is, consisting of  forty minutes of sheer brain crushing black metal devastation, with a fine yet murky production quality engulfing it. The guitar tone is as twisted and cavernous as it can get, incredibly hefty and blunted, and the vocals are similar to what you would hear on a typical black metal record, eerie rasps that echo and then slowly become one with the hollow monolith. Thus with that eerie, raw touch they have, their importance in the demo's efficiency is no doubt crucial.

Just cause I dubbed this as black/doom doesn't mean that its exactly the mixture of traditional doom and black metal. The doom influence is a drowning mixture that you scarcely hear on traditional doom albums, and perhaps a bit like the hefty impacts on Paul Bearer's most recent album, and the black metal sound is swarming array of splintering arrows, callous and diverse. I also mean to brag about the excellent usage of clean guitars swaggering drowsily upon the distorted black metal chord sequences as their execution is perfect an they're used in pretty much all the riffs, drowning slowly into the dense mixture, much like the vocals. ''The Rotten Waste'' has to be my personal favorite among the other three tracks that encircle it. It's beginning is not dissimilar to the other tracks, but the vocals have interesting guttural death metal twist to them that garnishes the riffs, and towards the ending sequences thousands of power laden riffs start ignite around the inundating riffs and slowly take over the song--until a blood chilling acoustic interlude enters the cavernous aura, only to be ceased by the atmospheric assault of the black metal tremolo pickings and planting an entirely different mood into the music within mere seconds. The last two tracks lean more towards the doomier side of things, disposing of the rare increase in speed that was present in the first two tracks.

I'll follow any band which follows pieces that Hellige carves out, and I'l follow them to the death. This tops everything that has been released so far and crushes so much more, opening new gateways to metal and also showing that small things can achieve huge things. Although I loved this four track masterpiece, I must admit that I won't be listening to frequently. This a drowning vortex that can suck me whole before it's even concluded, and even if I had the strength to bear the its crushing calamity for a few spins, I'll suffer terribly afterwards. Therefore, I offer this to people who have built up their stamina for such cavernous releases, inhuman releases almost as they swallow what is in front of them whole with no hesitation and this will be ranked as both the most tormenting and the most sorrowful release of the year. This mournful manifestation of heft and darkness is not to be missed, for the ones who can bear it, of course.

Highlights:
Degraded To Mortals
Rotten Waste
Obnubilum


Rating: 95%


Free download of the demo: http://helligearg.bandcamp.com/