Skip to main content

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy
Sentient Ruin Records – 2017

DSKNT has been active since 2013, and somehow I only discovered them recently. As a fan of catastrophic black metal à la Deathspell Omega or Plebeian Grandstand, I was delighted to find another band in the relatively barren field of good avant garde black metal.

The album kicks off with the best kind of strange, unnerving riff that sends a warning to the listener – you're in for a project with greater amplitude than most. Almost all of the riffs, excluding one or two in the latter portion of the record, have been soaked in the bath of avant garde, dripping with experimentation. Not scared of narrative composition, giving us a trip into his strange maze of a mind, Asknt creates sinuous riffs, with jagged edges and unnatural angles, but with more focus on the sinues and flow than similar artists, who often go for a slightly sharper aesthetic. There are moments of clarity, descents into madness, and long trips across bleak hellscapes laden with jagged rubble and void of life – PhSPHR Entropy is one hell of a story.

Everything is fluently played, with great articulation and tone – something that's necessary when going for this style of black metal. The drums are worth a mention as being impressive, despite their limited space in the mix. Obviously, the aesthetic of the album requires high guitar mixes, but there are still great fills that go on for multiple bars that embellish PhSPHR Entropy and give it that little edge. Another instrument that goes unnoticed in black metal is the bass, which is much clearer here than in other more orthodox bands. Some slides and interesting bass lines can be heard, but it's the fluttering, almost buzzing drone it generates that has the most relevant effect - the album gains a lot of power from simple 16th note drones.

There is a noise interlude, and it's exactly as eerie as you'd expect it to be. Synth backgrounds are present, and while I'm not sure wether there's a field recording of a factory or it's something else, Asknt has certainly nailed the dark ambient/industrial/noise sound. My only complaint was the lack of vocals, which, given the performance on the album, could only make it better. Speaking of vocals, they're the second star of the album.


While Asknt's style is slightly closer to your traditional black metal vocalist, he still manages to surprise from time to time. As the album develops, so does his voice – there are moments wherein he actually sounds reversed, an impressive feat which inspired fear in my heart for a second. Other times he'll enter songs with almost untimely bellows of anger, and overall he reinforces the already liquid dynamics with his singing.




Giuseppe Fitzsimmons
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sulphurous - Dolorous Death Knell

Sulphurous – Dolorous Death Knell December 2018 – Dark Descent Records 90s revival and cavernous death metal started gaining popularity about two years ago, with bands such as Phrenelith and Pissgrave being propelled into quasi-mainstream success thanks to a couple of public figures introducing their audiences to an otherwise relatively underground facet of death metal. Dark Descent Records have certainly capitalized on said revival, signing giants of the genre like Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, and previously Chthe’ilist (and Mitochondrion to a certain degree). As with any other cavernous death metal record, the production is the first thing you’ll notice – it’s all suffocated, as if the amps were draped in thick curtains. Few effects and no triggers are applied to the drums, giving the whole package a very live/practice room aspect. Despite the apparent muddiness of Dolorous Death Knell, everything’s quite audible – even the lower registers somehow retain ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kataplexia – The Rise of the Unknown

Kataplexia – The Rise of the Unknown January 2019 – Rotten Music Kataplexia is Finland's best Indonesian brutal death metal band. You read that right, Indonesian is now a valid qualifier for brutal death metal. For those unaware, I explored and wrote about the Southeast Asian brutal death metal scene two years ago, discovering a gigantic scene with an uncharacteristic public acceptance. One of the members of Jasad began a side-project, Kaluman, which is the definition of high-quality Southeast Asian brutal death metal. A couple seconds into Kataplexia's latest, I expected to see Rottervore or Extreme Souls as their label, as every element pointed towards Indonesian origins – the tone, production, vocals, riffs and even album art all felt like Ferli Suferli (Jasad, Kaluman) was behind the project, yet Helsinki is listed as their base of operations. Admittedly, there's only so much one can actually say about the music without endless comparisons. A modern ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Uboa, the interview

UG You’ve gone over the “Jouissance” title in the past. Would you mind going over Coma Wall? It’s got quite grave and final undertones. First, Coma Wall has no totalised meaning for me, but death of the author could suggest otherwise. But there are themes. The Coma Wall, also known as the CfA2 Great Wall, is a galactic filament - thread-like structures composed millions of galaxies - of and one of the largest structures in the observable universe. It’s 750 million ly high x 200 million ly in width x 16 million ly in thickness. There are few structures bigger than it before you get to the “End of Greatness”, where the universe no longer is seen in discernible structures (filaments and voids, which combined look awfully organic, almost like clusters of interconnected neurones) and you get undifferentiated noise, like static on a TV or white noise. Basically, in cosmology, there seems to be an upper limit to how big things get before the universe seems to become pure undifferentia...
Post a Comment
Read more