PSYCHEDELIC ANGER
Trust the hub of weird and original doom, Italy, to come up
with something refreshing in a genre that is too over stuffed, too unoriginal
and too weak to experiment and try something that is not the widely accepted
conventional norm. However active the stoner and sludge scenes today might be
it cannot be denied that most are just run of the mill Electric Wizard, Sleep
and Queens of the Stone Age worship (unless you’re from Germany), and within
this saturated realm, a vortex of originality has stepped in a',three piece going by the name Nibiru, and they bring with them a breath of fresh, questionable air.
Nibiru, are a new band, which formed late in 2012 and have
self released their debut album entitled ‘Caosgon’. Nibiru’s music can be described as a portal
between the music of the past and the present. Though it has one foot in the
boat driven by the likes of Sleep with its hazy elongated riffs immersed deep
in the background, it has its other foot ingrained in the roots of early 60’s
psychedelic rock with long trips into the psychedelia infused unexplained
expanses. With an immensely drowned out production, like the ones adopted
recently by Windhand and Saturnalia Temple one discerns as if the music is emanating
from deep within your subconscious, and once you wrap your head around that, underlie
this with the simmering anger of entire ancestral tribes,
all the while heavily laced with long ambient passages that are atramentous, stygian, ritualistic and
bleak, and still possesses within them a sense of all that is unholy and the
forbidden occult and you have the description of the music made by Nibiru.
If this wasn't enough to warrant
bubbles of excitement and a self inquiring attitude, the ingredient that endows
the most towards the trio’s sound both stylistically and aesthetically are the vocals
which are extremely guttural and throaty. The vocals, which are deeply laden in
reverb and echo are reminiscent of ancient throat singing techniques used by
tribes in places like Malaysia and Africa, and alternate between growled and
clean and gives an added dimension and an experience which I have never in my
musical journey ever encountered before. Though the band emanates a clean sound
most of the time, feedback isn't a rare phenomenon giving the music the feeling
of filth but another prominent idiosyncrasy of the music is the gargantuan
amount of attention given to the bass guitar. Taking of most of the playing
time, the bass is an entity of its own, the bass interludes, whether a short
strum or a powerful splurge, interspersed with the ritualistic drums and the
smoky atmosphere gives the band an extremely dense feeling that permeates
throughout the 5 tracks that run over 50 minutes. Such an odd use of
instruments and choices gives the band the atmosphere they intent to create
which is that of a moon bathed dense forest where the listener is subject to a
highly psychedelic ritual and the wrath of an entire tribe, and as the tribal
shaman does his violent ritualistic dance, his mask glistening in the moon
light, you still possess a sense of calm.
Though the band does shift from its
usual mid paced tempo to higher paced on tracks like ‘Smashanam, the
crematorium ground of Kaly’ and experiments with its soundscape while embracing its ritual vocal sound the tightest
on tracks like ‘Aster Argos’, the song writing for a concoction as original and
with a thought pattern like this, is highly derivative. Though the songs move on
with extreme fluidity lubricated by the emotional performances of the band
members and blend of instruments like the liturgic organ and the cowbell with
the rare Hawkwind-esque spacey passages thrown in, there are no massive
upheavals in sound or enough variations to keep this dynamic enough. Though
interesting and adventurous, a trait that most metal seems to be missing today,
a lot is left to be desired and the scope of improvement for the band is rather
massive. ‘Caosgon’ certainly deserves your attention, but it is an experience
only the connoisseur of the sludge genre will want to take a chance upon to
quench their thirst for innovative music. Still, the band has easily managed to
strum my brain strings enough to keep them in mind and look forward to more
from them in the future.
SCORE - 63/100
No comments:
Post a Comment