Wrath Passion – Careful Saint
Be honest, when the words experimentation and Black Metal are uttered in conjunction, what springs to mind? Sucky keyboards, painted finger nails and some fucking boring music? In all cases that is totally correct…except this one.
I got this cd before Christmas and only now am I able to write about it. It stumped me for nearly four months!. Every time I played it I was left scratching my head like a confused ape (shut up, I know what you’re thinking!). Let me explain.
Six songs and an outro, no intro, no build up, just a banging riff straight from the first second of the cd. You’d be inclined to think this was routine BM. Prepare yourself. Pretty soon the structure of the song has gone flying out of the window and you’re hit by unpredictable changes in riffing that’ll have you rewinding to check what happened. It is fuckin’ nuts! The guitars are steady and mainly medium paced but offer some very well thought out breaks and changes and a catalogue of dozens of riffs.
The vocals are well demonic and fucked up, offering as much diversity and layers as the instruments. However they are not continuous through the songs like in almost all bands I can think of and only play a major part in about three of the songs. It doesn’t count against them though because the music is so interesting and doesn’t need vocals to carry it. You don’t even notice they aren’t there until the singing begins again.
Now normally when a band tries to do this everything becomes cluttered and the music trips over itself like a drunken spastic. Somehow, due to an unknown aural anomaly, Wrath Passion triumphantly manages to get it spot on and although the songs are wild and chaotic in construction they don’t loose any of their momentum or rhythm. A magnificent achievement considering that in places it sounds as if a rampaging toddler is randomly pressing buttons on the mixing desk! All to good effect.
A sprinkling of samples help heighten the insanity: Police sirens, Lightning, Ravens and Trains! Yes trains! I still can’t get my head round that. It is so weird and fucked in the head that I don’t know how to accurately describe it yo you. The album is only 29 minutes long but it feels like it has gone on for an hour every time I listen to it.
The only bad points I can think of are the album name which comes across a bit weak by BM’s nasty standards and the creator of the music; a bloke with the most blood curdling evil name in all the universe: Daniel.
However, this is a major coup for experimentation and proves that it can work. If you feel like a new, enlightening and totally fucked up BM experience then try this; it’s madder than a one inch hospital!
Black Metal is dead. In the UK at least. Seeing as though it is the place that gave birth to the genre it is as fuckin’ useless a broke-dick dog. There is no scene to speak of, just the odd one or two equally useless bands trying in vain to mimic some of the more [...]
Opening with a song title of the length Bal Sagoth would be proud of (thankfully that’s as the only comparison to draw), the imaginatively titled ‘A Glimpse of the Image of Lucifer Gleaming Beyond the Subterraneous Black Sun’ marches forth. Mid paced, it stamps away with the precision of a well oiled Black Metal machine [...]
a bloke with the most blood curdling evil name in all the universe: Daniel .. lmfao, I was rolling on the floor laughing!.. yes, this is the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever listened, complete chaos and mayhem.. insanity and genius maybe?
just listen to the killer guitar effects..frequency high enough to kill aural senses..insanely brutal bm.To all,listen or die!!