These guys should totally have a crazy metal science show on
Aquarius Records | San Francisco | 02/18/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I love metal. A LOT. But there a two distinct strains that tend to drive me wild. There is of course the ultra precise, super heavy, complex and punishing perfectly crafted metal. Be it black, or thrash, stoner or doom. But then there's its bastard offspring, its deformed sibling, the one kept locked in the cellar, the damaged, demented, completely bizarre, totally unhinged and utterly and beautifully impossibly f-cked metal. Total outsider metal. It may be doom or sludge or black metal, but composed and played and recorded with total disregard for anything but the personal vison, no matter how skewed or off kilter. In the past I have worshipped before the likes of Benighted Leams, Urfaust, Striborg, Wold, Rehtaf Ruo, Spektr, Necrofrost, Furze and all of a similarly demented nature.
And now we have Hidden. A sort of doom / thrash hybrid, pre-occupied with some impossibly ridiculous science (fiction), the record is called Aleisstar Morphalite, some of the song titles: "Hydrodynamic Physics", "Interplanetary Space Physics And Climatology", "Planets Of Metal", "The Search For Where Life May Have Existed", you get the drift. And their sound is equally as scientifically and musically obtuse. Buzzing downtuned thrash metal, lighting fast riffs buried WAY down in the mix, the gutteral inhuman vocals way UP in the mix, spitting out impossibly complicated lyrics, you can catch a word here and there, 'radiation' gets mentioned a lot, as does the 'universe', 'carbon dioxide' does too, each line containing just a few too many words to fit in the designated space, so it comes out all gargled and jumbled together, a bit like old Slayer actually at least in terms of cadence, the sound though is like nothing you've ever heard, a sort of deathmetalized alien shriek.
Then there's the songs, the riffs and the song structures are super convoluted, lots of stops and starts, pauses where there will be no sound but a weird wheezing synthesizer, or some random droning rumble, creepy synths and almost Cradle Of Filth keyboards surface all over the record, sometimes in a thick sheet draped over everything, there are some weird trashcan sounding electronic cymbals that hover in weird spaces when the music sort of hiccups and skips a beat, sometimes just a haunting background, occasionally a black thrash attack will slowly peter out and turn into a strangley gorgeous melancholic doom dirge, but still peppered with haunting piano and all sorts of random sound effects and sonic weirdness, and of course the vocals slithering and shrieking out some strange alien scientific propaganda over the top.
But weird and bizzare and damaged and demented are not enough (well, almost), there has to be songs, you know actually songs, riffs and hooks and parts that stick in your head. And well, as impossible as it may seem, this record is full of 'em. Completely and impossibly catchy parts. The first song in fact, "Interferometer", has to be the catchiest damaged-alien-doom-black-thrash-sci-fi song EVER! Even the weird double kick / warbly space synth battle part way through gets stuck in my head. Holy crap! This record is so completely nuts, but so completely heavy and kick a--. These guys should totally have a crazy metal science show on PBS, where kids learn about gravity and time travel and wormholes, but each lecture is delivered as a sludgy buzzing convoluted blast of demented space metal! In our dreams!"
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1