Mors Principium Est - Liberation = Termination
Listenable
2007
As I get older and scruffier, the music I like also gets older and scruffier. Part of me, though, will always appreciate Century Media-style metal: strong, precise, overproduced to the hilt. It has a fist-pumping appeal lacking in, say, black metal or the NeurIsis sound. A recent black metal show reminded me of this; most of the guitarists were literally limp-wristed, as they were doing tremolo picking or fast strumming. Somehow, that seemed so un-metal.
Mors Principium Est has been satisfying my fist-pumping jones recently. This Finnish band plays melodic death metal with keyboard touches - like a million other bands. However, MPE has gotten the sound down to an exact science. The harmonic territory is not the most exciting, so songwriting becomes crucial, and here it's perfect. The riffs are catchy, the transitions are logical, and the performances are tight and occasionally insanely shredding.
The speed here - or, rather, the feeling of it - is impressive. The band actually isn't that fast, but it's found the upper reaches of tempos that physically feel fast; any faster, and the body can't keep up. Slayer will always have more physical impact than Nile for this reason. I wish the album had more detours like its half-speed last song so as not to feel like such a sprint. That said, the songs' tempos do vary slightly, and their sequencing generally spaces things out.
"The Animal Within" begins with a dodgy electronic intro that recalls the crazy rave scene at the beginning of Blade. Then the goth club becomes a metal show, and everything is all right - raining blood, indeed. Liberation = Termination is out in Europe and Japan, but I've seen conflicting US release dates, so keep checking your favorite distros. You can also buy it directly from Listenable.
Labels: clee, death metal, finland
4 Comments:
Excellent point about Slayer/Nile. When I was playing in a DeaThrash band back in the day with an overeager to blast drummer, I developed a distaste about blasting over thrash riffs. I told him to tone it down and he wouldn't listen just because of it being my 'preference' so I had to actually formulate an explaination about why I felt he shouldn't blastbeat on parts that are supposed to feel propelled.
What I came up with is division of beat, and the approximate bpm speed on which it becomes senseless. If you have sixteenths on a hihat and kicks and eights on snare at about 200 bpm that's the busiest you can get on drums while keeping the sense of propulsion going (reign in blood LIVES at 200bpm polka beat), because the rhythm has stress (snare beat)and release (kick beat). If you have a blast at 200 (which would naturally mean unison snare-kick-hat/ride on every sixteenth) then it seems like a crazy-fast shuffle or 'constant fill', but it's no longer grounded and defined because there's no arsis. It's constant downbeats which remind me more of -appropriately- violence and chaos than they do of speed and precision.
I enjoyed the Mors Principium Est tracks, but still a bit too faceless the metal for me.
Yes, you're right about the arsis - it's the space between notes that creates impact. I listen to and enjoy so much blasting stuff, but when modern drummers with thrash beats in their arsenal pull those out, my body responds much more to that than blasting.
Man, Soilwork's first two records kicked so much ass. I'm probably going to buy this and listen to the hell out of it, simply because it sounds so comforting. Thanks for introducing me, IO...
floodwatch, you might like the new Omnium Gatherum then, too. Glad to see the first few Soilwork records get love, they were insanely shredding.
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