Year : 2012
Genre : Experimental Metal with rabid Fusion Jazz and Avant-Garde flavors
Label : Epidemie
Origin : Czech Republic
Rating : 9.2 / 10
If you did not yet see Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe, then now is as good of a time to check out that superb cinematic accomplishment as any other "now" is. The 1973 classic movie tells the story of a high definition gastronomic exploitation exercised by a group of French gentlemen, as they are determined to eat themselves to death, - as a start - scoring some top tier prostitute meat in the process, too. You see - you can try arguing with a French about food, but you need to be extremely well versed in said subject matter to be able to offer relevant information, or, to stand a fricking chance at all. French people are the premiere food fetishists.
Forgotten Silence is a group form the Czech Republic that has been putting out music since 1993, and, following a hiatus dating back to 2006, 2012 is the date they emerge to declare ruthlessly again, and with not less ambitious of a project than a spiritual/musical interpretation of the Ferreri classic I have been mentioning to you. The album, first and foremost, wears the same title as the movie does, and the soundscape features soundclips from the fabric of the film, sometimes exhibited as stand-alone atmospheric elements, while, at other times, snippets from the original soundtrack of the movie - dialogs, mainly - get mixed with the music contributed by the band. Ah, yes - in case you have been wondering, the audio data on the disc kicks your ass to hell and back. Please read more to find out why and how.
The album has a massive-, yet also soberly limited set of key musical territories it wants to rely on and utilize, and I must say - with delight! - that it turns pretty much everything it touches to pure effin gold. The most persistent pastime of the 46 minutes sonic feast affair is a thrillingly mature, ballsy-, yet gentle rendition of heavy duty fusion jazz, but do not at all think fusion jazz in masturbatory "lookwhaticandomom!" terms, - fap! fap! fap! - as creating an eloquent overall shape/domain of music always reigns superior to the intent to provide a backdrop for fretboard acrobatics or other similar attraction of high frequency ornamentics. In fact, the release weighs in as a sturdy heavyweight regarding complexity, only surpassed by the hopelessly and sublimely perverted, - see the technical death metal tag cloud on this site - WITHOUT all that much high frequency detail. Not a single "solo-for-the-sake-of-the-solo" is included on the delivery, and still it comes to you as a massively successful instrumental accomplishment, courtesy of the top of the foodchain mid-frequency detail the album primordially is about.
Not "only" it is about THAT though, as I already have been mentioning, and I apologize for the repetition. And I apologize for the repetition. The record is a supremely legitimate - tautology? - package, depicting a row of premiere rhetorics that enjoy being flattered with exigent compositional techniques. The ultra-exigent , rich/lush quasi-fusion jazz with the very easily and enjoyably comprehensible premier shape to it is instant delicacy, and it takes a douchebag armed with a zeppelin big enough to make the staff of hell evacuate in terror to dismiss the direction as farce, yet these guys also deliver the simpley most effin efficient and legitimately frightening (!!!) black metal song I personally have heard in this year so far. I have NEVER heard a truly/honestly frightening black metal song so far, prior to this one. With a masterfully chaotic, rich, and nauseating structure that manages to cause a sublime variant of disorientation that takes the liberty to decide if it wants to play with you or if it wants to crush you, the track "Aalborg" is a black metal song played by soulless evil cyborgs that are out to Eradicate All, - as a start -, conveying the Magical "Fukcing" Original Black Metal Antimood other artists struggle legendarily to approximate enough so the mere promise of IT is finally on the horizon. The deal is not so with THIS song, as this delivery pushes your face into it. The black metal vibe later comes back to you with a less perverted-, quasi-melodic character as an additional vibe to such installments as the massively vibrant "Fermeture de la Bouche", an entry which exhibits a tendency to incorporate all the elements and rhetorics the disc is fond relying on.
The flow of things surely is reminiscent to the extremely high standards of recent experimental sonic massacre, - Unexpect comes to mind, also Diablo Swing Orchestra - yet a more hectic - but not less inferior in quality - overall structure is observable in a sense that Unexpect's latest is constantly out there to take you on a psychedelic trip, whereas this baby moves along a spectrum that contains very steep and hilarious extremes. Like the track "Dichroisme" : melodic death metal in character, but, oh my fucking God, the lead singer literally sings on the top of his lungs like there is NO tomorrow, and he is about to spit it out as a pile of spazzing meat, so the neighboring hellvulture/hellhound hybrids - gotta make a song praising those - finally can make a move for it.
One of the Epics - the disc features 3 statements weighing around or above the 8 minute mark - called "The Black Rider 4K8" is yet another contribution that showcases a supremely mature image of what the release wants to do, and the band exhibits a whole set of perfect, related understandings : superb psychedelic groove metal (!) that is flattered by black metal gets traded in for a minute of alternative metal, then you are subjected to a hilarious intersection of psychedelic reggae with a "Bertold Brecht on LSD while reading Aldous Huxley" vibe, so nothing at all is wrong herein, things are totally normal in their devious abnormal totality.
I personally thought - and still do - that the disc is a superb accomplishment when scrutinized from the angle of its mere-, commendable intents, and remains so even if you are insistent to inspect the individual parts. Not a weak moment herein, the whole flow sounds to exhibit thought, intent, and clarity all over the place, amended by consistency. Like the piano motive coming in at around the 6:00 minute mark in "The Black Rider 4K8" : music of elegant simplicity and simplistic elegance with legit and eloquent thought behind it, and it emerges with doubled significance when situated between two segments of deliberately over the top intensity. One could go on and on, because, every music critic and film critic writes about himself, secretly, covertly. Yet, now is not the time to write about myself for you, because you have high definition top tier music to listen to, and it is La Grande Bouffe by Forgotten Silence, which comes to you as one of the most pleasant surprises of the year 2012. I'm loving this top level spin, and I'm pretty sure that you're loving it, too.
Rating : 9.2 / 10
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