Genre : Chaotic Black Metal with Ambient and Funeral Doom tendencies
Label : Season of Mist
Origin : The Netherlands
Rating : 7.9 / 10
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Dutch Dodecahedron's take on extreme music weighs on the curious soul as an inventive combination of madness-level black metal with a notable funeral doom and ambient affection amidst its focal interests.
This LP has a set of key behaviors, and, while some of these narrative stances are ready and able to subject you to top of the food chain stimuli, the reoccurring drive to render freely positioned atmospheric interludes, - synonym : drunk-ass jamming - and, to fire the cannons of madness via a relatively predictable strategy of sonic punishment administration, - more on this later - the record is not at all shy to reveal its precious limitations, either. Read more to find out how this contribution seeks to put a bounty on your sanity.
Dodecahedron's self titled affair, no doubt, meant to be listened as a full spin, and that indeed is the way the release is able to convey its intentions most efficiently. As suggested, the shape of music you will hear on this carnivorous LP belongs to a particularly chaotic rendition of black metal, - which you have heard before - and the production values largely are akin to what you would anticipate from the modernistic standards of the genre, too. As such, the sound is much more clean than that of early contributions of the style, yet its intentions are not a tad less vile. Quite the opposite : the vileness factor is particularly strong on the LP, and, in my opinion, reigns among the autonomous aspects the record is able to deliver convincingly and looks best along. These intense mid-tempo segments always sound to sport clearly identifiable hooks and ideas, and the flow of the sonic data finds superb melodies to transmit fine stimuli from the narrow field shared by decaying classical music and zombie-infestation-groove metal. In other words : necessarily great stuff. This eminent tendency though is not ubiquitous on the delivery, as the album will exhibit its segments of API - Absolute Peak Intensity - with no other notable method in its possession than to engage everything in the vicinity that is capable to produce a sound. While the approach is legit, of course, its limitations become evident as soon as there is a lack of adventurous-, at least semi-precise route to take through the various sonic domains. In my opinion, the LP could use more sense of definition when engaging full power punishment. Hell, I should be careful what I wish for.
Other aspects that demand separate mentioning are the funeral doom / extreme-sludge leanings of the output. Track number 3, called "Vanitas" is one awesometacular funeral doom track, one that masters of the genre would gladly call their own declaration. It is genuine soul-disturber stuff with a perfect sense of the aforementioned-, special musical percepts of decaying classical vibes, coming to you with the power of a gargantuan Space-T-rex. I'm in all the time. The similar feeling once again emerges rampant/unalloyed in the climax of track number 6, "View from Hverfell II : Inside Omnipotent Chaos". The prolonged mid-and outtro sequence gives you a menacing funeral doom riff very reminiscent to the main riff of Pantera's "This Love", now coming to you with superb poly-rhythms, dwelling amidst larger than life decay-atmospherics. Moments of exquisite sonic entertainment.
One other thing the release seems and sounds enjoy doing, is to throw you in front of freely positioned musical spaces ambient interludes. I have nothing against these entities as concepts, yet, I do not think that they are THAT much effective on the release. I especially am unhappy with the freely positioned musical spaces. I mean, they are not bad, sure, but they aren't any more stellar than what I would expect to hear form a drunk-ass live black metal band jamming around. The ambient interludes have their decent moments, but I'd prefer them to touch-, or shatter me instead. Other than that, don't let the not-too-high score fool you. Remember, I scored this delivery as a full spin, and, whenever I do that, I especially am in troll mode. Thank you for your attention. Dodecahedron's Dodecahedron. H. P. Lovecraft : Approves. This is a mindhack.
Rating : 7.9 / 10
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